Associate law Professor Richard Leo is the co-winner of the Herbert Jacob Book Prize for 2009.
Richard Leo, University of San Francisco associate professor of law,
has been awarded the prestigious Herbert Jacob Book Prize for 2009 by
the Law and Society Association.
Leo's book, Police Interrogation and American Justice, was the co-winner of the prize, intended to recognize new outstanding work in law and society scholarship.
Police Interrogation and American Justice,
which also won the Pacific Sociological Association's Honorable Mention
for Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship award for 2009,
chronicles more than a century of police interrogation in the United
States, from the use of physical torture to the rise of psychological
manipulation and the lie detector test. In addition, it examines how
interrogation techniques often elicit false confessions.
"Richard A. Leo's Police Interrogation and American Justice is
a major contribution in the classic tradition of socio-legal
scholarship, revealing how a crucial—and in this case, a carefully
hidden—aspect of the legal process actually works. Police Interrogation and American Justice
is essential reading for anyone at all interested in the quality of the
American criminal justice process," according to the Law and Society
Association award citation.
Leo is a leading authority on police
interrogation and confessions in the United States. He is
internationally known for his pioneering empirical research on police
interrogation practices, false confessions, and wrongful convictions.
He has written five books and more than 60 articles and book chapters
on this and related subjects. The U.S. Supreme Court cited one of his
articles in the Corley v. United States decision handed down in April.
