On Monday, three of the Central Park Five finally got to attend a high school graduation and receive honorary diplomas. The three men missed their original graduation, as they were in prison for the 1989 rape of a woman jogging in New York’s Central Park–a crime they did not commit.

Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, and Raymond Santana Jr. joined 60 teenagers graduating from Bronx Preparatory High School on Monday, surrounded by family members. Marielle Colucci, a teacher at Bronx Prep, had used a 2012 documentary about their wrongful conviction when teaching students about the justice system. Earlier this year, Colucci’s students asked if they could meet the men, and Richardson came to speak to the class.

Later, the school invited the men to the graduation ceremony. Even though they had received diplomas while in prison, they never attended a ceremony. Colucci said that it’s important to inform students about what happened to these men, as all of her students are members of minority groups and could face the same discrimination.

Now in their 40s, three of the Central Park Five graduate from high school, receive honorary degrees. https://t.co/NAHFYTxfjl pic.twitter.com/EXU1H8AQfX

— Okayplayer (@okayplayer) June 27, 2017

In April 1989, a young woman was brutally beaten and raped in Central Park while on a run. Trisha Meili, the victim, barely survived. Police claimed that it was the deed of a group of schoolboys, and that at least four had taken part in the attack. Ultimately, the number of convicted assailants rose to five: Salaam, Richardson, Santana Jr., Kharey Wise, and Antron McCray. All are black or Hispanic. They became known as the “Central Park Five.”

The five were not allowed to see their parents before being questioned, and were interrogated for hours; none of their DNA matched what was found on the victim’s body, yet they all were found guilty. Eleven years later, Wise, who was 16 at the time of the rape, ran into a man in prison who confessed that he was the one who committed the crime. After confessing, police found that his DNA matched the DNA that was found on Meili.

But back in 1989, many thought the five men were guilty, and even Donald Trump played a part in vilifying them. Trump, who at the time was a real estate developer in New York, took out a full-page ad in the Daily News.

“How can our great society tolerate the continued brutalization of its citizens by crazed misfits? Criminals must be told that their CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS!” it said, complete with Trump’s now-famous capitalization.

As Trump complains about a “witch hunt,” remember his calls to execute the Central Park Five and refusal to accept that DNA exonerated them.

— Deborah Roseman (@roseperson) June 16, 2017

He also wrote that the death penalty should be brought back. The boys were between ages 14 and 16 at the time. As recently as last year, Trump still maintained that they were guilty. In an interview before the election, Richardson drew parallels to Trump’s campaign claim that Hispanic illegal immigrants are drug traffickers and rapists.

“Just like those ads, that speech was a call for extreme action based on a whole set of completely false claims. It seems that this man is for some strange reason obsessed with sex and rape and black and Latino men,” Richardson said.

One of the five, who changed his name, pointed out how Trump has a tendency to disregard facts and science and instead go with his own opinions. “Donald Trump told the world that my life had no value, no quality,” he said. “And he’s still saying pretty much the same thing today.”

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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False confessions happen, and they happen with a surprising and baffling frequency–approximately 25 percent of wrongful convictions involve some sort of false confession. We know some of the reasons that false confessions occur, including police coercion, but the psychology of why there are so many false confessions remains fuzzy. But a new study conducted at Michigan State University may shed some light on that question–it’s really pretty easy to get a false confession out of an individual who is sleep deprived.

Kimberly Fenn, who runs the sleep lab at Michigan State University and Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist at the University of California-Irvine, were joined by two of their former PhD students for the study. The study involved 88 student participants who were asked to complete simple computer tasks, but were warned not to press the “escape” key on the keyboard. The researchers told the participants that if they hit that key, the data from the study would be lost. Then, they made half the students stay up all night, while the other half got a full night’s sleep. The next morning, they were interrogated about whether or not that they had pressed the escape key and erased all that data. According to the study, 50 percent of the participants who were sleep-deprived gave a false confession when first asked, in comparison to the 18 percent of not-sleepy students. When a second opportunity was given, 68.2 of the sleep-deprived subjects confessed to something they didn’t do, in comparison to 38.6 of the well-rested participants.

While it may not make sense to most of us why someone would give a false confession, being interrogated is often exhausting and frustrating, and sometimes abusive, and individuals may just want it to stop. So, a person being interrogated may give a false confession just to get the interrogator off their backs, assuming that because they’re obviously not guilty it won’t really matter and their innocence will be quickly discovered. Saul Kassin of Williams College explained:

There are two types of false confessions that come about from police interrogation…These are situations in which people who know they are innocent reach their breaking point. They are under stress and will do whatever it takes to escape the immediate short-term punishing situation—even if it involves a possible negative consequence later.

He also told Smithsonian Magazine that another way that false confessions come about is that someone becomes convinced of their own guilt based on the evidence he is shown and “internalizes” it. Sleep deprivation could play a role in both of those types of false confessions, and it’s fairly common for suspects to be interrogated for long periods of time or at night. According to the Innocence Project:

The report says that around 17 percent of custodial interrogations happen between the normal sleeping hours of midnight and 8:00 a.m., and that the majority of false confessions occur during interrogations which last longer than 12 hours, with many lasting longer than 24 hours.

So, will we start seeing a change to the way that police interrogate suspects? Maybe, although this study on students obviously isn’t a perfect match to the conditions faced by potential suspects. But it does shed some light on a phenomenon that can be hard to understand–and that’s going to be a first step to combatting the alarmingly high number of false confessions in the U.S.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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