Saul Kassin

In 1989, five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem were arrested and later convicted of raping a white woman in New York City's Central Park. They spent between 6 and 13 years in prison before a serial rapist confessed that he alone had committed the crime, leading to their convictions being overturned. Set against a backdrop of a decaying city beset by violence and racial tension, this is the story of that horrific crime, the rush to judgment by the police, a media clamoring for sensational stories and an outraged public, and the five lives upended by this miscarriage of justice.

Un interrogateur bien entraîné peut faire avouer à n'importe qui un crime qu'il n'a pas commis. L'avocate danoise Jane Fisher-Byrialsen se bat pour que soient abandonnées les techniques d'interrogatoire qui poussent trop souvent des innocents à avouer. A travers quatre affaires impliquant de faux aveux, ce documentaire se penche sur les mécanismes psychologiques qui amènent des innocents à avouer.