I LOVE A IRONY

Blog number 435 ******** 26 October, 2010

This entry is in no way a slam on police anywhere. It is merely a journey towards an irony. That the irony involves police is akin to the fact that Western movies can contain good stories. It's the content, not the context.

So.

When we lived on the California coast, I had this very good friend who told me that when he was an ensign in the navy, he was interrogated by Navy Intelligence about an anti Semitic letter found in the locker of a Jew. He told me that they quizzed him in such a way, with facts and suppositions that he got to wondering if he really had done it - if he had blacked out or something, because they gave him what seemed a pretty good case that he was guilty.

Eventually they found the perpetrator, but this experience stuck in his mind. As well it should.

Several years ago four youths each confessed to murdering several Buddhists in a temple here in Arizona and after several months, the real perp's were convicted and the false confessors' convictions were thrown out. Subsequently many cases "solved" by these same interrogators were reinvested and some of these convictions were overthrown because the way confessions were obtained.

Watching "48 Hours" - a reality TV program, the interrogators decided to lie to the two suspects and tell them that the other had confessed. During the interrogation, the interrogator consistently asked, "well, could this have happened?" and the suspect, going along with the hypothetical situation would agree, "Yeah, that could have happened."

The two were arrested for the murder, although I heard nothing that gave me any indication that they really were the murderers. Both consistently said they didn't fight with the man, didn't kill him.

Last night I was watching another reality program and in this one, they had a guy that confessed to strangling a girl, although he gave two different methods of how he strangled her. Come to find out, both her and her boyfriend accidentally drowned when the boy tried to save his dog from a dam undertow, got caught in it himself, and the girl slipped in when she tried to save the boy.

The irony to this is that one of the detectives said he was puzzled by why the innocent person confessed to killing the girl. I guess he never heard the same stories I had.

Two ironies, actually. The dog saved himself.