Week 5 UticaOD comments- (using the word "Accrue" )Will Eternal Benefits Accrue from Confession?

http://www.uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060211/NEWS/602110311/1001/NEWS01


For some reason this article caught my eye. It deals with the assertion by an accused murderer that the police coerced her confession from her. Yes, that is a pretty standard claim from most defendants, that the police did something wrong to get a suspect to confess and that for that reason the confession should be thrown out. The new wrinkle here is what the defendant claims was done by the police to get her to confess.

The accused, Ms. Torchia, had a 19 year old grandson who was killed in car accident a few years ago. Since the murder, Ms. Torchia had a minor stroke and while in a nursing home recovering, police visited her to discuss the murder. She maintains they improperly coerced her into confessing to the crime by using her religious beliefs against her. How did they do this, one might wonder? At various times the investigators told her that she would die, go to hell, and never see her grandson again, that her grandson was with Jesus and wouldn't she want to be there with them, and that she wouldn't see her grandson for all eternity and did she understand how long that meant? Wow! What a coercion that must have been! No beatings, no electric shocks, no 'Chinese water torture', no bamboo shoots under the fingernails, just reminding someone who professed to have some degree of religious feeling the ramifications of what they were accused of doing. Well, evidently it worked. Ms. Torchia, whether from a love and desire to be with her deceased grandson, or from a fear of the judgement of God, confessed to using a hammer to beat to death the victim after the victim made insulting comments about the dead grandson. Ms. Torchia also confessed to burying the victim next to her boarding house, where the victim had resided. That would probably be the end of things as far as my interest goes, accept that I noted
her attorney has done what I suppose attorneys must do, try to get their client off however they can. Certainly one way to do that in this case, since the accused has confessed, would be to negate the confession. Her attorney is saying that she was on medications for the stroke and depression, and that, along with the "upsetting talk about religion and her grandson" , caused her "apparent confession". The judge in the case will rule on the admissability of the confession on the basis of whether Ms. Torchia was advised of her rights properly before the police spoke with her. My thought on the subject is, how can a lawyer, in good conscience, attempt to free someone who, because of the accused's own words, they know has done a terrible deed? And, if the accused has a professed religious belief, and her confession is ruled inadmissable to the court, where will that leave her when she someday stands before that greater Court?