Death penalty report cites value of taping interrogations
The crime was brutal: Rebecca Lynn Williams, a 19-year-old mother of three, was raped and later stabbed 38 times, left dead in her home in rural Virginia in June 1982.
Justice was swift: Earl Washington, a local farmhand with an IQ of 69, confessed to the crime less than a year later and was sentenced to death in January 1984.
And, fortunately, a gross legal mistake was eventually caught: After 17 years in prison, much of it on death row, Washington was freed, DNA evidence having made clear he had nothing to do with Williams rape and murder.
A report issued by a committee of legal experts cited the Washington case in urging that all interrogations of suspects in capital cases be videotaped. Such recordings, the committee said, help to prevent wrongful convictions by deterring police coercion and documenting how suspects with serious mental impairments are handled.
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