John —

This is a landmark moment for justice reform in Illinois.

It just became the first state in U.S. history to pass legislation prohibiting law enforcement officers from using deception while interrogating people under the age of 18 — the bill will become law once Governor Pritzker signs it.

This means that police officers can no longer lie to juvenile suspects about evidence or other aspects of an investigation while questioning them. It’s huge news, and it needs to be shared. Take a moment, right now, to read more about this win and then share it with your friends and family on social media.

This is a big deal when it comes to preventing wrongful conviction because these kinds of tactics can often lead to false confessions. In fact, 100 innocent people in Illinois have been exonerated after falsely confessing to serious crimes.

The bill bans some commonly used deceptive interrogation tactics — like making false promises of leniency and false claims about the existence of incriminating evidence. Both of these strategies can significantly increase the risk of false confessions, which have played a role in about 30% of all wrongful convictions overturned by DNA. And recent studies suggest that children under 18 are between two and three times more likely to falsely confess than adults.

The Innocence Project’s initial foray into false confession reform was mandating the electronic recording of interrogations — a foundational change that makes a record of what transpires in the interrogation room. Now that more than half the states have implemented this reform, we have also turned our attention to interrogation methods employed by law enforcement. This historic legislation — the first of its kind to pass a state legislature — is a breakthrough in safeguarding against the wrongful convictions of young people.

I’m so grateful for our friends and colleagues at the Illinois Innocence Project, the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, the Office of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, and our bill sponsors, including Senator Robert Peters, for working with us to pass this landmark legislation. Senator Peters’ seat was previously occupied by President Barack Obama, who sponsored Illinois’s first law to record custodial interrogations when he was a state lawmaker nearly two decades ago.

If you want to learn more about the bill, head to our website and read our full statement about it now.

With great appreciation,

Rebecca

Rebecca Brown
Director of Policy
Innocence Project