Write From the Heart

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

The Law of Confessions

A confession to a crime is considered a direct evidence of guilt, not a presumption of guilt. It is the main thing most often used and relied upon for a conviction.

The law of confessions is rather involved and is a conglomeration of Constitutional law, Federal and State statues (legislative law), and Anglo-American tradition. There are five hurdles a confession must pass in order to be considered valid:

1. 4^th Amendment exclusionary rule -- this rule forces a suppression hearing

anytime someone claims a confession is not valid. In a nutshell, a

confession is not acceptable if obtained illegally.

2. 5^th Amendment self-incrimination right -- no person shall be compelled in

any criminal case to be a witness against himself. This entails testimony,

not physical evidence.

3. 6^th Amendment right to counsel -- this is extended to all “critical” pretrial

phases of criminal procedure.

4. 5^th Amendment due process clause -- this rule is combined with the 14^th

Amendment due process clause. Together they make up the basis for the

free and voluntary rule and is the major test in the law of confessions.

5. McNabb-Mallory rule -- a legislative law which prohibits any “undue

delay” in arraignment and holds null and void any confession, no matter

how voluntary, if derived from lengthy delays in bringing the suspect to

to justice.

The free and voluntary rule is a two-part test involving subjective and objective factors. One part focuses on the susceptibility of the suspect which includes: background of the suspect, intelligence of the suspect, education of the suspect, prior experience with the system, physical condition of the suspect, mental condition of the suspect, and coping skills. The other part deals with the environment and methods used: location of the setting, length of the questioning, intensity of the questioning, frequency of the questioning, food and sleep deprivation, and intimidating presence of officers.

The Anglo-American tradition says that confessions must be a product of free will and voluntary choice. Free will should not be “overcome,” and voluntary choice should not be “coerced.” In other words, there must be a positive freedom of choice.

Suppression hearings generally occur when the accused’s lawyer determines the confession was obtained illegally. The motion for suppression must be made prior to trial, and the burden of proof is on the defense lawyer that a search was illegal or a confession was coerced. A motion for suppression is generally looked upon with skepticism by the prosecutor and the judge as a delay tactic by the defense lawyer.

As you can see, there is a lot involved in the acceptance of a confession. As writers we cannot always go through these steps in our story as it could be rather boring to our readers. But there may be some of you who can use some part of this to enhance your story or to even add suspense to a courtroom scene.

Faye M. Tollison

Author of: To Tell the Truth

Upcoming books: The Bible Murders

Sarah’s Secret

Member of: Sisters in Crime

Writers on the Move

www.booksinsyn.com

Monday, March 25, 2013

Hearing Voices

Do you hear voices? You should. It is important to hear the voice of each and every character in your story.

Each character is an individual, and as an individual speaks, thinks, and acts differently from the other characters. After all, that is what gives them individuality, makes them their own person. Otherwise, they would all sound alike, flat and boring. It is up to you as the author and their creator to bring your characters to live and give them substance. In other words, you have the duty to your readers to make your characters sound like real people.

How do you breathe life into a character? First I would suggest taking note of the people around you, the ones you know and don’t know. Watch them for gestures, facial expressions, favorite words they use frequently. Do they sigh frequently as they talk? Do they have a habit of laughing at times that do not call for laughter? Do they frown a lot or have a twitch? Is there a favorite word or phrase they interject often such as “oh,gosh” or “good gosh a mighty?” Does the person have a quick temper or is he/she a mouse?

Next get your character profiles for each character and study them. Once you have an idea of your character’s personality and background, you need to figure out how you can reflect the character’s personality, education, social background, birth place, gender, and even job-related way of talking. Have their grammar match education and slang match age and lifestyle.

Don’t forget dialect. This could reflect the area of the country from which the character comes. Foods they eat can show where they were raised or simply show an idiosyncrasy. Be careful, though, not to overdo dialect. It could cause your reader to stop reading your book.

Be sure to match all the elements to your character. Body language (yes, it is an unspoken voice), thoughts, and speech should all match. Otherwise you could give your reader the impression your character has multiple personalities!

Faye M. Tollison

Author of: To Tell the Truth

Upcoming books: The Bible Murders

Sarah’s Secret

Member of: Sisters in Crime

Writers on the Move

www.booksinsync.com

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Writing Monologues

A number of years ago I attended a workshop given by David Page. It was one of the most inspiring workshops I have ever attended. I realize now how important that workshop was to the improvement of my writing, and I highly recommend all new writers (actually all writers new and experienced) to practice writing monologues. The following is just a list of points he gave in that workshop. As I read over them, it occurred to me that they can apply to all writings in the fiction genre. I thought I would share them with you. The list is not long. I hope everyone can find at least one point that will help them.

1. If you don’t develop a good character, you cannot have a good monologue.

2. Don’t sit in the easy seat when you want to write monologue. Write about

something you don’t know about.

Note: This is certainly different from what I’ve been told, but you have to

admit it would challenge you, and I love a challenge.)

3. Learn to do interviews.

4. Go to where people tell you not to go -- Taboo Land.

5. Find your hook.

6. In order to be somebody, you have to see/be everybody.

7. Got to feel your character’s heartbeat in their monologue. Should have attitude.

8. Monologue does not have to have just one emotion.

9. If you write something phony, it brings your work to a standstill.

10. Do not write about something you do not have feelings about.

11. To make it real-- it has to have connections to other things: place, personalities

that are insinuated, etc.

12. Need a tone to your dialogue. Needs to sound individual. Imbed the tone into

the monologue.

13. When writing a monologue, remember what it is-- don’t make it its own novel

within your novel.

14. You have to know who you are in order to write good dialogue.

A monologue has one main character, and the monologue is written from that character’s POV. You can use either or both exterior dialogue or interior dialogue. The monologue must be more creative and more personal than a manuscript that has more than one character.

Everyone is different, and we all have our own methods, but I like to sit down and write a monologue just for the practice. I have found that it can also help me when I get a bad case of writer’s block. It seems to stimulate my creativity. At any rate, it is good practice for improving your writing skills, especially if you are a young writer.

Faye M. Tollison

Author of: To Tell the Truth

Upcoming books: The Bible Murders

Sarah’s Secret

Member of: Sisters In Crime

Writers on the Move

www.booksinsync.com

Friday, November 23, 2012

Lie Detectors

Even though scientists question the accuracy of lie detectors, the CIA, FBI, and other federal agencies use polygraph machines to screen applicants and to hunt for lawbreakers. There are many researchers and defense attorneys who say polygraph is prone to a higher number of false results. Despite this it has emerged as a tool in the CIA’s effort to identify suspected leakers of government anti-terrorism tactics.

The polygraph machine measures various physiological changes such as blood pressure, respiratory rate, heart rate, and electro-dermal activity (sweat). The point is to determine when subjects are getting anxious. The idea is that deception involves an element of anxiety. The clincher is that an emotion (anxiety) can be triggered by many factors other than not telling the truth. As a result the experts feel that the tests can overlook smooth-talking liars while indicating innocent people who are simply rattled.

Polygraph tests results are generally inadmissible in federal courts and most state courts. On the other hand, statements or admissions made during the course of the test can be used in court. Some people seem to feel some of the polygraph’s value is in prompting people to tell the truth.

Questions which focus on whether people have memory of a certain event give far more reliable results than screening tests which rely on emotions triggered by a wide range of factors.

Polygraph examinations are designed to observe significant involuntary responses going on in the person’s body when that person is subjected to stress, such as the stress associated with deception. The exams are not capable of detecting if the person is lying.

How do liars beat the test? The exam is started out with baseline questions which provide the examiner with baseline physiologic responses. The liars simply increase their physiologic responses with exciting thoughts, altering one’s breathing pattern, or biting the side of their tongue. All these measures increase all the physiologic parameters that are being measured, thus providing these false numbers as their baseline. When later in the exam they tell a lie, these increased parameters are compared to the false baseline parameters and are viewed to be normal.

If you use the lie detector in your story, you may want to keep in mind how it is viewed, how it works, and how it can be beat. Lie detector results are not considered as valid by some and are not allowed in most courts. Remember that it cannot detect a lie, only if there is possible deception. And most of all, that the lie detector can be beat by someone who knows how.

Faye M. Tollison

Author of: To Tell the Truth

Upcoming books: The Bible Murders

Member of: Sisters in Crime

Writers on the Move

www.booksinsync.com

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

A Sophisticated Writer

There are a few tricks to not appearing as an amateur writer, and it is the desire of every writer to sound like they have been writing for many years.

One of the most mistakes a young writer makes is using -ing words and as. Now don’t get me wrong. An occasional use of these is not a bad thing, and sometimes it is necessary. However, most of the time the ing words and as can be dropped or moved to elsewhere in the sentence. It can be placed in the middle or at the end of the sentence.

Example:

Pulling the books off the top shelf, Meg knocked the vase over.

Meg pulled the books off the top shelf and knocked over the vase.

As Cassie picked the bag of groceries up, the bottle of juice fell and broke.

Cassie picked up the bag of groceries. the bottle of juice fell out and broke.

Another way to avoid appearing like an amateur is to eliminate as many -ly words as possible, even those in dialogue. Where there is an adverb, there is a weak verb. Drop the adverb and replace the weak verb with a strong one.

Example:

Angrily she put the file on the table.

She slammed the file on the table.

There are exceptions to this rule. Though not a perfect solution, it does provide effect.

Example:

Eyes cold as steel, she lifted gun--slowly, deliberately.

Clichés. What can I say but no, no way, and forget it. If you use a cliché to describe a character, you run the risk of making him appear like a cartoon character or, at the least, unreal.

There are some other small items you need to consider. Commas, for instance. If you’ve ever listened to people around you, you will notice they don’t always talk in sentences. They often string their sentences together. Doing this in dialogue could make your character sound more real, though it doesn’t have to be just in dialogue. How do you string sentences together? With a comma instead of a period.

Example:

“Come on, I’m in a hurry, we need to leave now.”

Some small things which make a writer sound amateurish are: emphasis quotes, exclamation marks, and overuse of italics. Need I say more?

And my favorite the flowery, poetic figures of speech. Use this method of writing very sparingly or chance losing your reader (he’s probably dying of laughter).

Metaphors and any phrase that draws attention to itself rather than what is actually being said is not sophisticated at all. The more subtle approach can convey the idea and allow the reader to use his/her imagination, and your reader does like to do this.

Profanity is acceptable only if it is appropriate to your character. Otherwise leave it out.

Writing is an art, and it takes a lot of hard work to perfect it. However, it is not impossible to be a sophisticated writer.

Faye M. Tollison

Author of: To Tell the Truth

Upcoming books: The Bible Murders and Sarah’s Secret

Member of: Sisters In Crime

Writers on the Move

Thursday, September 27, 2012

The History of Fingerprinting

As I dug into the history of fingerprinting, I was amazed at how old the art was. Now as writers we are generally more interested in how fingerprinting is used in crime situations, but how it all came about should give you an appreciation of it.

It surprised me to learn that the art of fingerprinting came into being back in 1000-2000 B.C. and was used an clay tablets for business transactions. My guess is this was their form of a signature. It was in 14^th Century A.D. that a physician notices that no two fingerprints were alike.

In the 1600’s the microscope was invented, and in 1686 at the University of Bologna in Italy a professor takes note of the spirals, loops, and ridges in fingerprints. It was not until 1823 that Johannes Evengelista Purkinje, a professor of anatomy with the University of Breslau in Prussia, wrote a thesis detailing a full nine different fingerprint patterns. Fingerprinting was a standard use for identification, especially on documents and contracts. In 1882 Gilbert Thompson, employed by the U.S. Geological Survey in New Mexico, uses his fingerprints on a document to guard against forgery. In the 1800’s Sir Francis Galton started studying fingerprints and in 1892 published a book, Fingerprints. It was the first of this type book which detailed the first classification system called Galton’s Details for fingerprints. This system is still to an extent used today. This same year Juan Vucetich, an Argentine police official, started the first fingerprint files based on Galton’s Details. He made history that year by making the first criminal fingerprint identification.

In 1896 Sir Edward Richard Henry, a British official instituted a fingerprinting program for all prisoners. In 1902 the Director of the Bureau of Identification of the Paris Police made use of the first criminal identification of a fingerprint without a known suspect. In the meantime the testing of the first systematic use of fingerprints in the U.S. is performed by Dr. Henry P. DeForrest. After that the use of fingerprinting spreads, and by 1911 the first central storage location for North America was established in Ottawa by Edward Foster of the Dominion Police Force. Today it is maintained by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. By 1924 the Identification Division of the F.B.I. was created.

The 1990’s he Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems had widespread use around the country. Fingerprinting of children became the vogue by 1996 for investigative purposes.

I was totally amazed that the history of fingerprinting went back as far as Babylon. Once it was discovered that no two people have the same fingerprints, the significance quickly accelerated over the years until law enforcement had one of the most important investigative tools known to man.

There is one thing I would like to mention. As fingerprinting advanced to greater technology, criminals also became innovative in erasing their fingerprints from their fingertips with acid. Painful but effective.

Faye M. Tollison

Author of: To Tell the Truth

Upcoming books: The Bible Murders

Sarah’s Secret

Member of: Sisters In Crime

Writers on the Move