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What Shocks the Conscience of the CourtA broken justice system is one in which interrogators pull confessions like rabbits out of hats, rather than seeking truth, yet it does not “shock the conscience of the court”. A broken justice system is one in which excessively confident interrogators believe they are experts on legitimate expressions of grief and conflate theatrics of sorrow with actual innocence. (Never mind that crocodile tears are the very thing an actually guilty criminal mastermind would perform for the public.) When suspects are reserved about showing emotions following a traumatic loss, “we call it a very flat affect,” says polygraph witch doctor John Palmatier in an interview with #theconfessiontapes director Kelly Loudenberg. By this assessment, innocent suspects ought to publicly broadcast remorse for what they DID NOT DO according to an accepted formula of expressing sorrow. There is no allowance for silent shock or attempts to distract oneself from profound emotional pain by engaging in some familiar mundane activity. The bookend episodes of The Confession Tapes feature innocent defendants who were condemned by the media and public for not performing formulaic theatrics of sorrow. Rafay, Burns, and DeLisle grieved over tragic losses in their own way, but the public did not view their form of grief as legitimate. This emboldened interrogators to pull rabbits out of hats and secure groundless convictions. How many media witch-hunts and coerced confession tapes will it take to shock the conscience of the North American courts?

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