Gerald Gault, Meet Brendan Dassey: Preventing Juvenile False and Coerced Confessions in the 21st Cen

The problem of unreliable confessions from juveniles still exists. For example, police officers used misguided techniques to elicit a confession from mentally limited teenager Brendan Dassey: they told him that everything would be “OK” as long as he told them what they already believed he had done; they fed him crucial nonpublic details, including that the deceased had been shot in the head; and they falsely led him to believe that he would be returned to school in time to finish a project – even after he confessed to rape and murder.