Excerpted from "Mean Justice" by Edward Humes, Pocket Star Books, 1999.

 In a highly publicized, high-pressure case, four young men from Tucson, Arizona, are interrogated virtually nonstop for three days by Phoenix authorities until they confess - falsely - to nine murders at a local Buddhist temple. Later, two teenagers unrelated to the four suspects are found in possession of the murder weapons and confess (with little prompting) to carrying out the killings on their own. Although this second pair of confessions is consistent with the facts of the case, while the four initial coerced confessions were not, the Phoenix authorities continue to try to prosecute their original four suspects. Months pass before charges against the "Tucson Four" are finally thrown out. At around the same time, several studies are published that suggest current psychological-warfare techniques used by police interrogators may have increased the frequency of false confessions by innocent men and women.