ABC News has a special report on false confessions.

Also, Prime Time Thursday will highlight the Central Park Jogger case with an interview with Matias Reyes saying he was alone that night. We will weigh in on this again after watching Matias.

From the ABC article:

"Just as DNA evidence has raised questions about traditional crime-fighting tools such as fingerprinting and eyewitness testimony, a slew of recent cases have shed light on the frequency of false confessions. "

"Of the 110 exonerations due to post-conviction DNA evidence in recent years, 27 included confessions as evidence, according to the non-profit legal clinic Innocence Project. "That number is really shocking," said Richard Ofshe, a leading expert on false confessions and University of California at Berkeley professor. Systemwide, no one knows how often phony confessions occur. "

"In my wildest fears I do not imagine the number can be 20 percent. On the other hand, if that's the result to come out of the Innocence Project, that's really scary," Ofshe said. Indeed, dubious confessions have surfaced in several recent exonerations, reopened cases and police abuse lawsuits."

"The infamous Central Park Jogger case, thought long solved, will go to court again in October even though five teens who confessed already served their sentences. Now, a convicted rapist-murderer says he committed the brutal 1989 rape and beating of a New York City woman. In an interview to air on ABCNEWS' Primetime on Thursday, the man, Matias Reyes, says no one else was involved: "I was alone that night."

"Falsely admitting to a crime may seem unfathomable to those who have never stepped inside a police interrogation room. Experts say the young, old, mentally or emotionally disabled, and people with substance abuse problems are particularly vulnerable to coercion."

"Asking a jury to judge the credibility of a confession without seeing the interrogation is like a medical examiner conducting an autopsy without a body," [Professor Saul] Kassin said.

"Taping interrogations can also protect police from false accusations of abuse and coercion, Ryan said. "Courts have already ruled police can lie, as long as I am not using any force on the suspect it's OK," he said. "

For more on false confessions and other forms of injustice, visit TalkLeft's Injustices page.