Imagine what it would be like to be a 14-year-old boy and awaken one morning to discover that your 12-year-old sister had been brutally murdered in the bedroom across the hall. Your distraught parents tell you to cooperate with the police to help them with their investigation.
But the police lie to you, browbeat you and coerce you to confess to the crime — a crime you did not commit.
This is no invention of a screenwriter. "The Confession of Michael Crowe" (Wednesday, 9 p.m., Court TV) is the true story of what happened to a California boy and his family in 1998.
It sounds unbelievable that anyone would confess to a murder he didn't commit, let alone the murder of his sister. But watching the TV movie, you understand how it happened.
And this is no case of a 14-year-old's word versus that of the detectives — the interrogation was videotaped.
"This interrogation tape saved Michael Crowe's life because it was a living, breathing record of all of the tactics that police officers used to get him to admit to killing his sister," said Steve Drizin, a juvenile coercive confessions expert who testified on the boy's behalf. "They are allowed to lie. They are allowed to deceive. They are allowed to fake polygraph or voice-stress analyzer results, which is what they did in Michael's case.
"My position is that with seasoned, hardened, adult criminals, we should give police officers the latitude to push the envelope. But two things need to happen — one is, these tactics should not be used on kids because they're more suggestible and more compliant than adults. And we have to have a tape of it so that we're not reliant on police officers' memories and the suspect's memories when the cases come to court."
Currently, only two states require interrogations be videotaped, and California isn't one of them. Crowe was lucky that the Escondido police department videotapes voluntarily.
"It's hard watching the tapes," said Crowe, who's portrayed by Mark Rendall in the movie. "It brings me back to memories I don't enjoy thinking about. I remember what it's like being in that room and having people just completely try to tear you apart and take everything from you.
"But I think that people need to be exposed to this story. They need to know what happened. So I'm very happy with the idea of more people being able to see this."
"It think it's a really important issue — that people need to know that this does happen," agreed Michael's mother, Cheryl (who's portrayed in the movie by Ally Sheedy). "It could happen to any one of us. It happened to us."
The Escondido police and prosecutors do not fare well in the movie. (No better than they did in a previous Court TV documentary on the case or in a report on the CBS News broadcast "48 Hours.") Not only do they doggedly stick to their theory that Michael and two of his friends (also coerced into false confessions) committed the crime despite the presence of the videotapes, but they bungle and ignore evidence that pointed to another suspect, who is now charged with the crime.
"They have a lot of power," Cheryl Crowe said. "We're just thankful that they did tape the confession, because that's not widely done."
The family has filed a civil suit against the police. And, four years later, they're trying to put their lives back together and deal with the loss of one family member and the false charges against another.
"We live with this every day," Cheryl Crowe said. "This is part of our life."
Michael Crowe could only say that his life is "different."
"That one word sums it up," he said. "It's just different, and it's been a constant attempt to cope with that difference . . . and then move from there."
E-MAIL: pierce@desnews.com