Watch this video: The confessions,frontline. https://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-the-confessions/.

• Please describe what you understood and/or thought about false confessions prior to watching this documentary and discuss whether your understanding or feelings about false confessions have changed since watching this documentary.
• When interrogating suspected criminals, police are allowed to make accusations, lie about or make up evidence, yell at the suspects or get in their faces. In the case shown in the video, the police told one of the men that he had failed a polygraph (lie detector) test, even though he had passed it. Why do you think it is legal for police to lie when questioning a potential criminal? Do you think that is right? What do you think police should and should not be allowed to do during an interrogation?
• Before being questioned by police, suspects must be told their Miranda rights, which give them the right to remain silent and to speak to an attorney. Why might these men have waived their rights? In what ways might their innocence have affected their perception of the importance of remaining silent or having a lawyer present? How might their story have been different if they had insisted on exercising these rights?
• In this case, DNA tests of hair and bodily fluids did not indicate that any of the four men were at the crime scene. Why didnt the DNA test results help clear these men of the crime?
• Eventually these men were found or pleaded guilty of the crime in court, even though there was no evidence linking them to the crime, and a positive DNA match identified another man who had confessed to the crime. How could that happen? In what ways were the following parties responsible for the outcome: the four men themselves; the police; the lawyers; and in the case of a court trial the jury?
• This case took place in Virginia, which not only has a death penalty, but also has the highest total number of executions of all the states in the nation. How did the possibility of the death penalty play into this story?