Kassin cited the example of Martin Tankleff, a high-school senior from Long Island who, in 1988, awoke to find his parents bleeding on the floor. Both had been repeatedly stabbed; his mother was dead and his father was dying. He called the police. Later, at the station, he was harshly interrogated. For five hours, Tankleff resisted. Finally, an officer told him that his father had regained consciousness at the hospital and named him as the killer. (In truth, the father died without ever waking.) Overwhelmed by the news, Tankleff took responsibility, saying that he must have blacked out and killed his parents unwittingly. A jury convicted him of murder. He spent seventeen years in prison before the real murderers were found. Kassin condemns the practice of lying to suspects, which is illegal in many countries but not here. The American court system, he said, should address it. “Lying puts innocent people at risk, and there’s a hundred years of psychology to show it,” he said.
