Soros Justice Fellowships

Richard Leo and Tom Wells are writing a book on a multiple-false-confession murder case in Virginia that led to the wrongful convictions of four innocent men for the brutal rape and murder of an 18-year-old woman. The book uses this case as a lens for illuminating the problem of police-induced false confessions and other elements in miscarriages of justice in the era of advanced DNA testing and exoneration. Leo and Wells hope to generate additional public and media attention on the problem of false confessions and contribute to the movement for videotaping of police interrogations. Dr. Leo, an associate professor of criminology, law and society, and psychology and social behavior at the University of California, Irvine, has authored numerous publications on police interrogation practices, false confessions, and miscarriages of justice, and has testified in (or consulted on) hundreds of criminal cases involving disputed interrogations and confessions in state, federal, and military courts across the United States. Dr. Wells is an independent writer and the author of two previous books: The War Within: Americašs Battle over Vietnam and Wild Man: The Life and Times of Daniel Ellsberg.