© Brittany Murray / Staff Photographer The Duran
Brian Banks is an innocent man as he walks out of the courthouse flanked by his parents, Jonathon Banks and Leomia Meyers. Judge Mark C. Kim of the Long Beach Superior Court exonerated Brian Banks, 26, who was wrongly convicted of the rape and kidnapping of a high school acquaintance following a consensual encounter on the campus of Long Beach Polytechnic High School in 2002. For the last five years Banks has been wearing a ankle bracelet GPS tracker and had to register as a sex offender. Now Banks hopes to make up for lost time and possibly join the NFL.
There have been countless cases of people confessing to crimes they didn't commit, including under torture or simply intense psychological pressure. Sometimes the psychological pressure isn't that intense. History offers many examples. The witchcraft trials of the 1600s saw people, mostly women, confessing to crimes they had not only not committed but were clearly imaginary.
In England, the
Pendle Witch Trials of 1612 saw women confessing to impossible crimes, while the 1682 case in Scotland of Issobell Gowdie and her accomplice Janet Breadheid saw a four day long confession by the former to renouncing her baptism to the Devil, being baptised in his name, and even having sex with him, his being "abler for them sexually than any man could be. His members were exceeding great and long, but he was as heavy as a sack of malt and as cold as ice."
The above quote is taken from the 1975 book
Why Men Confess by O. John Rogge.
The same author covers the Moscow purge trials of 1936-8; there were 16, 17 & 21 defendants respectively, including former members of Lenin's Politburo. They all confessed, one even explained that he hadn't been drugged or hypnotised. He said that if he had to be executed he would rather die a good Bolshevik.
Comment: Not hard to guess what's next: Dems launch another Trump probe... See also: $6 Billion unaccounted for at State Department