In 1989, police in Peekskill, New York, approached tenth-grader Jeffrey Deskovic about the rape and murder of a fifteen-year-old classmate.  Other students suggested that the police interview Deskovic because they considered him "strange."

 

For six weeks, they treated him like a “junior detective,” while secretly considering him their main suspect—even though DNA from the crime scene did not match him.

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Police eventually subjected Deskovic to a six-hour polygraph interrogation, using bogus tests, intimidation, and threats of violence. Exhausted and terrified, he confessed, then collapsed on the floor sobbing.

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The confession became the centerpiece of the case, and Deskovic was convicted of rape and murder. Sixteen years later, DNA testing identified Steven Cunningham, already imprisoned for another murder, as the true perpetrator, and Deskovic was exonerated.