Short, sweet, and to the point

Following up on what I shared last week

Welcome to all my new subscribers and “thank you!” to those of you who’ve been here since that awful day in April 2023 when my son was arrested. I appreciate all of you.

In last week’s newsletter I provided tips to share with your loved one should they have an encounter with the police. Shortly after it was published, I received a note from my friend Anne with an additional tip that’s too important not to share. (Anne used to be a public defender and now writes a heartbreaking but beautiful newsletter here on Substack that I invite you to check out here: https://substack.com/@thefuturewidow)

Here’s Anne’s note:

“I would like to add, the police are well within their rights to tell a suspect, "If you just tell us what happened, you can go home." Remarkably, this leads people to ‘confess’ even if they are innocent, because their eyes are on the prize of going home, WHICH IS A LIE. Once someone has confessed, the police will stop investigating. And they will take the suspect into custody and arrest him for the crime AND NOT LET HIM GO HOME.”

If you were being questioned by the police you’d want nothing more than for the entire thing to end so you could go home, right? So can you imagine how terrifying it must be to have autism and find yourself in this situation? I find it stunning that the police can lie like that but, until something changes, that’s how it is.

As author and autism advocate Nick Dubin says, “The investigators will play various games with you to get you to talk. They say they want to hear ‘your side of the story’ and will try to establish rapport with you to make you believe the investigators are actually on your side and there to help you.”

They are not there to help you and they are definitely not on your side. They’re employing what’s called the Reid Technique, and according to a 2023 article in Time magazine, in 1999 police used it to force a false confession from an autistic man who’s still in jail and will be for 50 years.

“At 23, (Michael) Ledford had just lost his one-year-old son and his (then) wife was in critical condition. But the police interrogated him for hours without a lawyer, using a brutal technique that left him powerless. This common interrogation method, known as the Reid Technique and what we casually call “the third degree,” allows police great leeway for intimidation and deception because it was originally intended to be used against hardened criminals. But according to Innocence Project lawyers, it’s often used to extract confessions from the most vulnerable—the young, the unrepresented, and those with spectrum disorders. According to the Innocence Project, of DNA exonerations since 1989, 29% included false confessions. Half of those were under 21 years old; 9% had mental health issues known at trial.”

All of this is to say please, talk with your loved ones. Of course you don’t want to overwhelm them, so having shorter conversations over a period of days or weeks or however long it takes is fine. But do teach them to stay silent except to say “I want an attorney.” The life you save could be your kid’s.

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Thank you for subscribing to LAWTISM: Autism. The Law. And What Parents Need to Know via Life on the Inside. I appreciate your comments and feedback and urge you to share this resource. Thank you again and I’ll be back with another installment the week of December 29th. Merry Christmas!