Testifying before the Colorado Legislature, CERL Advisory Council member Mark Fallon urged a ban on lying to juveniles during interrogation, outlining the dangers of employing deceptive interview tactics instead of science-based methods. According to Fallon,

I was taught, and I believed, an innocent person wouldn’t confess to a crime they did not commit. I was wrong. We were wrong. And there have been grave consequences. We now know that approximately 30% of those exonerations for wrongful convictions had confessed to crimes they didn’t commit. Juveniles are especially vulnerable.

Mark Fallon spent over three decades as a national security professional, principally as a special agent with NCIS. He has conducted interrogations in the United States and internationally and chaired the three-agency Research Committee of the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group. Fallon was a member of the 15-person international steering committee of experts overseeing the development of the Méndez Principles on Effective Interviewing for Investigations and Information Gathering. He is also the director of ClubFed, LLC. Read his bio here.

Watch the testimony here courtesy of Project Aletheia: