DEFINITION September 2018

SHOOT STORY | THE CONFESS ION TAPES

T his true crime series from Netflix has a narrow but chilling focus and that’s the based on crimes in America, mainly from the last three or four decades and it’s maybe because of their age that each crime has a recorded confession available for the episodes to gravitate around. The programmes centre on the question of forced confessions from mostly unscrupulous police officers who seemingly will say anything to achieve a conviction, in the most part concocting stories to ensnare their prime suspect who is already psychologically weakened by hours of interviews. This coercion and manipulation result in heavy sentences even though you could argue that there wasn’t ever enough evidence to achieve that. The programmes cleverly leave the question of innocence down to the viewer; they are happy just presenting the basic facts. The confession tapes themselves are intertwined with interviews of participants in the story, from police officers, lawyers subject of false confessions. The Confession Tapes series presents an anthology of different cases

DARKEST HOUR The Confession Tapes from Netflix resurrects past criminal cases. At its core are the all- important criminal interviews

WORDS JULI AN M ITCHELL / PICTURES NETFLIX

50 DEF I N I T ION | SEPTEMBER 20 1 8

Powered by