Last week, This American Life ran a riveting episode about confessions. The story exemplifies how cops and jurors are obsessed (to the point of irrationality) with confessions.
In the introduction, Ira interviews Father Thomas Santa about scrupulosity—a psychological disorder similar to OCD where people obsessively confess, even things that are not immoral or sinful.
Act I (“Kim Possible”) is described as follows:
Former DC police detective Jim Trainum tells reporter Saul Elbein about how his first murder investigation went horribly wrong. He and his colleagues pinned the crime on the wrong woman, and it took 10 years and a revisit to her videotaped confession to realize how much, unbeknownst to Jim at the time, he was one of the main orchestrators of the botched confession. (28 minutes)
Here is a description of Act II (“You Don’t Say”):
A person is accused of a murder he didn’t commit. But in this story there is no false confession. Jeffrey Womack spent most of his adult life as a suspect in one of Nashville’s most notorious crimes. And for all that time — until another man was convicted of the crime — Jeffrey refused to be questioned about it. Producer Lisa Pollak tells the story. (14 minutes)
Demetria Kalodimos’ documentary Indelible: The Case Against Jeffrey Womack can be seen here.
Jeffrey Womack and his attorney John Hollins Sr. have told their story in a book called The Suspect: A Memoir. It was ghostwritten by Nashville journalist E. Thomas Wood.