On December 8, 1991, the body of Cateresa Matthews was discovered on a path running through Dixmoor, Illinois. She was a rape, murder victim that was last seen on November 19, 1991 and her assailant was unknown. It was clear that she had been sexually assaulted because she was found unclothed from the waist down, her jeans were arranged across her chest, her panties were found on her right ankle, and seminal fluid was found on her vaginal and rectal area. She also had a gun shot directed at her mouth. Ten months after the discovery of her body Barr, Veal, and Taylor, all teens between the ages of 15 and 17, were implicated in a police report by Keno Barnes. Barnes stated that Barr had last seen Cateresa in a car with Robert Veal and Robert Taylor. Robert Veal was the first one to be interrogated and he signed a handwritten statement, implicating himself, Robert Taylor, James Harden, Jonathan Barr, and Shainne Sharp in the gang rape and murder of Cateresa. Robert Taylor and Shainne Sharp did the same later on that day. There was one factor that was odd about the three confessions and that was that they all countered each other on the rudimentary facts of the case. Before any of the adolescents were tried, lone, male DNA evidence was retrieved from the sperm recovered from the victim’s body. The source of the semen did not belong to any of the five accused defendants, but the prosecution pushed forward despite contradicting evidence. Sharp and Veal received 20-year sentences because they plead guilty of first degree murder in exchange for agreeing to attest against Barr, Taylor, and Harden. Unfortunately, Barr received the longest sentence, 85 years in prison. Luckily, years later, Jonathan and his co-defendants were exonerated when...
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...ommonly used interrogation method among law enforcement officers it was probably used as the main tactic of interrogation in the Barr case as well. These suspects were adolescents of ages 15 and 17, so the police were probably less sensitive to their developmental maturity, as research shows. These adolescents were most likely highly susceptible to the accusations made by the police officers due to their developmental maturity at that age, especially after unyielding hours of allegations. The possible use of the Reid technique on these adolescents could have been the main factor that caused the false confessions by these teenagers.
Works Cited
Kostelnik, J. O., & Reppucci, N. (2009). Reid training and sensitivity to developmental maturity in interrogation: results from a national survey of police. Behavioral Sciences & The Law, 27(3), 361-379. doi:10.1002/bsl.871
On May 7th 2000, fifteen year old Brenton Butler was accused of the murder of Mary Ann Stephens, who had been fatally shot in the head while walking down a breezeway of a hotel with her husband. Two and a half hours later, Butler is seen walking a mile away from where the incident occurred, and is picked up by the police because he fit the description of the individual who shot Mary Ann Stephens. However, the only characteristic of the description that Butler featured was the color of his skin. Police then brought Butler to the scene of the crime in order for Mary Ann Stephens’s husband, James Stephens, to confirm whether or not Butler was the individual who had shot his wife. Almost immediately, Stephens identifies Butler as his wife’s killer.
a. Victor Burnette lived in Richmond, Virginia in 1979. He cared for his blind and arthritic grandmother at night and was getting ready to get his career started. However this all change on the 5th of August that year, when a local woman identified him as the man who raped her. When DNA testing was done in 2009 it confirmed that he was not the attacker. It had taken 20 years for Burnette to clear his name. [Exoneration Case Detail. 2014]
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