Professor Richard Leo Posts Report on the Sedley Alley Case

As the Innocence Project has reported,

In 2006, Sedley Alley was executed by the state of Tennessee after the courts refused to conduct DNA testing that could have helped uncover the truth.

On May 1, 2019, his daughter April Alley, the executor of his estate, petitioned the Criminal Court for Shelby County, Tennessee for post-conviction DNA testing of the evidence in the case.

That petition was denied (and the denial is being appealed).

Now, Professor Richard Leo, a wrongful conviction expert we've had on Undisclosed a few times, had done a report on the case and posted it to SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This report by Dr. Richard Leo furnishes an overview of the relevant social science research on the psychology of police interrogation practices and techniques, police-induced false confessions, risk factors for false confession, psychological coercion, police interrogation contamination, and indicia of unreliability. Dr. Leo discusses these issues as they relate to the investigation, interrogations and confession statement of Sedley Alley.  Alley was convicted for the rape and murder of Marine Lance Corporal Suzanne Marie Collins in 1985, and he was executed in Tennessee in 2006.

-CM