Lonnie Soury is a highly respected media expert with experience in high profile and complex criminal and civil litigation. He has a particular expertise in wrongful convictions issues. He has worked closely and collaboratively with some of the country’s top law firms, legal organizations, prominent attorneys and their clients. Soury led the public campaign to free Marty Tankelff in New York and is currently working with Damein Echols, on death row in the West Memphis 3 case.

Soury has advised General Motors on race and sexual discrimination issues; Ticketmaster in federal antitrust matters, and the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien in the largest profit participation case in Hollywood history. see www.soury.com

Matthew B. Johnson, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York.  Professor Johnson’s training is in clinical psychology.  He is widely published in the area of interrogation and false confessions, as well as in other areas involving psychology and law.  In 2008 he developed and began teaching the graduate level course titled, “Interrogation and Confession: Social Science, Legal Perspectives, and Current Controversies” which was offered to students in both Psychology and Criminal Justice.  During the Spring of 2010 Professor Johnson taught this course as a Visiting Professor at the Rutgers University, School of Criminal Justice.  Professor Johnson has served as an expert witness in numerous cases involving disputed confession evidence dealing with matters of reliability (false confessions) as well as the matter of a suspect’s competence to waive the right to silence and counsel.  Professor Johnson has published on interrogation and false confession in the Journal of Psychiatry & Law, Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice, Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, American Journal of Forensic Psychology, the American Psychology-Law Newsletter, and other professional forums.

From 2002 until the present Professor Johnson served on the Executive Committee of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (NJADP.org) which was the lead organization in the successful campaign to abolish the New Jersey death penalty in 2007.  Professor Johnson also served on the ABA, Section on Individual Rights & Responsibilities – Task Force on Mental Disability and the Death Penalty during 2003-2005.  In 2003 Professor Johnson delivered the Frantz Fanon, MD Memorial Lecture titled, “The Central Park Jogger Case – Police Coercion and Secrecy in Interrogation” which was later published in the Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice.  Professor Johnson was named the John Jay College of Criminal Justice Outstanding Teacher in 2007.  In 2008 Professor Johnson served on the organizing committee for the conference titled, “Interrogation and Torture Controversy: Crisis in Psychology” at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.  The conference focus was on the research, practice and ethical issues related to psychologists involvement in the interrogation of detainees. See article in The Journal of Psychiatry & Law.

Gisli H. Gudjonsson is from the Department of Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry in London. He created the Gudjonsson suggestibility scale to measure how succeptable someone is to coercion during an interrogation.

From:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gisli_H._Gudjonsson

Allison Redlich is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Davis. She joined the faculty of the School of Criminal Justice in the fall of 2008. She has two main research foci. The first concerns interrogation methods (police and military) and their potential to produce false confessions. Dr. Redlich is particularly interested in vulnerable populations identified as being at increased risk for false confessions (juveniles and persons with mental impairments) and attempts to understand the developmental and clinical mechanisms that may underlie the risks. In a related line of research, Dr. Redlich has begun to study false guilty pleas and Alford pleas. Alford pleas allow defendants who assert their innocence to plead guilty rather than risking convictions (and lengthy sentences) at trial.

Dr. Redlich’s second research focus concerns mental health courts (MHCs). MHCs are criminal courts for offenders with mental illness that divert eligible persons from the criminal justice system (being charged, being sent to jail or prison) into community treatment. Dr. Redlich is currently studying whether MHC clients make knowing, intelligent, and voluntary enrollment decisions, and whether informed decision-making at the outset predicts future MHC success. In addition, Dr. Redlich with Dr. Henry J. Steadman, is conducting a four-site, longitudinal study on the effectiveness of MHCs.

Dr. Redlich has received funding from the National Science Foundation, NARSAD: The Mental Health Research Association, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to address these lines of research. She is well published in both areas and has offered expert testimony in court. Prior to joining the faculty at UAlbany, Dr. Redlich was a Senior Research Associate at Policy Research Associates and a Research Scientist at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

From:  www.albany.edu

Steven Drizin is a Clinical Professor at Northwestern Law School where he has been on the faculty since 1991. He is also the Assistant Director of the Bluhm Legal Clinic, and since March 2004, has been serving as the Legal Director of the Clinic’s renowned Center on Wrongful Convictions. At the Center, Professor Drizin’s research interests involve the study of false confessions and his policy work focuses on supporting efforts around the country to require law enforcement agencies to electronically record custodial interrogations. He also writes a blog on the subject of false confessions and police interrogations and has lectured and published widely on these topics.

Prior to joining the Center on Wrongful Convictions, Drizin was the Supervising Attorney at the Clinic’s Children and Family Justice Center where he built a reputation as a national expert on juvenile justice related issues. He was a leader in the successful effort to outlaw the juvenile death penalty and co-wrote an amicus brief in Roper v. Simmons, the United States Supreme Court’s decision striking down the juvenile death penalty as unconstitutional. In August 2005, Drizin received the American Bar Association’s Livingston Hall Award for outstanding dedication and advocacy in the juvenile justice field.

Drizin received his B.A. with Honors from Haverford College in 1983 and his J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law in 1986.

From: Steve Drizin from www.northwestern.edu

Articles/links:

Drizin’s blog

“The Problem of False Confessions in the Post-DNA World”

Steven A. Drizin’s Scholarly Papers from Social Science Research Network

“Police-Induced Confessions, Risk Factors, and Recommendations: Looking Ahead”

“The Three Errors: Pathways to False Confession and Wrongful Conviction”

Kassin received his Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut. He later served as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Kansas; taught at Purdue University; served as a U. S. Supreme Court Judicial Fellow, working at the Federal Judicial Center; and was a postdoctoral fellow and visiting professor at Stanford University.

Dr. Kassin is author of the textbooks Psychology and Psychology in Modules. Along with Steven Fein and Hazel Markus, he is also co-author of Social Psychology (8th edition), published by Cengage Learning.  He has published numerous research articles, and co-authored or edited a number of scholarly books, including: Confessions in the Courtroom, The Psychology of Evidence and Trial Procedure, The American Jury on Trial: Psychological Perspectives, and Developmental Social Psychology.

Dr. Kassin is Past President of Division 41 of APA (The American Psychology-Law Society). He is also a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and Association for Psychological Science (APS). In 2007, he received a Presidential Citation Award from APA for his work on false confessions. He lectures frequently to judges, lawyers, psychologists, psychiatrists, criminal justice commissions, and law enforcement groups. He has appeared as an analyst on CBS, ABC, CNN, NBC, the Oprah Winfrey Show and other syndicated news shows, and has served as a consultant and expert witness in federal, military, and state courts.

Links:

Police-Induced Confessions, Risk Factors, and Recommendations (this is an official AP-LS White Paper)

Bibliography of Saul Kassin’s publications and press

Saul Kassin’s biography from Social Psychology Network

“Police-Induced Confessions, Risk Factors, and Recommendations: Looking Ahead”

Inside Interrogation: The Lie, The Bluff, and False Confessions

Silence is Golden

Richard Ofshe is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a member of the advisory board of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation advocacy organization, and is known for his expert testimony relating to coercion in small groups, confessions, and interrogations.

Ofshe has been characterized as a “world-renowned expert on influence interrogation.” He believes that coerced confessional testimony is extremely unreliable, and stated in a Time Magazine article that “Recovered memory therapy will come to be recognized as the quackery of the 20th century.” In a more recent Time Magazine article in 2005, Ofshe is quoted as saying that false testimony does not just occur through coercion, but may also occur in instances of “exhaustion or mental impairment.” However, he also stated that it is only recently that juries have been allowed to hear expert testimony about these kinds of theories.

Offshe has offered expert testimony in countless cases, including many we have profiled: Tyrone Noling, the Norfolk Four, Marty Tankleff, and the West Memphis 3.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Ofshe

Articles/Links:

“The Consequences of False Confessions: Deprivations of Liberty and Miscarriages of Justice in the Age of Psychological Interrogation”

Richard Leo works as a Law Professor at the University of San Francisco. Leo regularly serves as a litigation consultant and/or expert witness in criminal and civil trials. He has worked on high profile cases involving false confessions, including the cases of Michael Crowe, Earl Washington, the Norfolk Four, and two of the Central Park jogger defendants, as well as numerous lesser-known cases with victims of coercive interrogation.

He is the recipient of The Ruth Shonle Cavan Award from the American Society of Criminology, the Saleem Shah Career Achievement Award from the American Psychological Association, and a Soros Senior Justice Fellowship from the Open Society Institute.

From Richard Leo’s bio from the Universithy of San Francisco

and http://acadserv.usfca.edu/preview/law/faculty/fulltime/RichardLeo.html

Articles/Links:

Richard Leo’s research papers

“The Problem of False Confession in America”

“Police-Induced Confessions, Risk Factors, and Recommendations: Looking Ahead”

“The Three Errors: Pathways to False Confession and Wrongful Conviction”

Bibliography of Richard A. Leo’s Scholarly Papers