Laura Nirider is a Clinical Associate Professor of Law and co-director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. An expert on false confessions, Nirider specializes in representing young people who confessed to crimes they did not commit, and working to reform the process of police interrogation. Nirider's work gained international visibility following her involvement in several high-profile cases involving juvenile confessions. Her clients have included Brendan Dassey, whose case was profiled on the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer, and Damien Echols of the West Memphis Three, whose case was profiled on the HBO docuseries Paradise Lost and the Wingnut Films documentary West of Memphis. She also hosts a podcast on false confessions, entitled Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions.
From 2009-2019, Nirider was co-director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth, alongside Prof. Steven Drizin. An expert on how children can be coerced into giving a confession for crimes that they did not commit, Nirider often discusses purposeful or inadvertent tactics which can break down or mislead young people. She states that even well-meaning police interrogators can induce a false confession from vulnerable people. Interrogation is often taught with the aim of extracting information from stubborn, hardened, and fully-grown individuals, hence making it unsuitable for use on young people and especially vulnerable young people. The center aims to tackle this issue through teaching upcoming law students, as well as attorneys and judges, and lobbying policy-makers. One such law that Drizin helped to introduce was one requiring juvenile interviews in Wisconsin to be videotaped, which was enacted in time to play a significant role in the ongoing trials of Brendan Dassey. Nirider currently teaches law students about false confessions in young people, a course she attended herself when she was a student. She has published extensively on the causes of false confessions, and has been invited to give keynote talks at multitudes of conferences and symposia concerning issues within the justice system and forensic science. Alongside the International Association of Police Chiefs, Nirider and members of the Center have published guidelines on how to effectively interview young people without coercing a false confession. Nirider has been interviewed about the concerning role of Reid technique interrogation being taught to school officials in order to extract confessions from students, highlighting the stark differences in awareness between adult and juvenile individuals. Changes to interrogation techniques, such as a move away from the Reid technique, could benefit both innocent juveniles and adults. In 2017 she and Drizin were jointly awarded the Northwestern Law Alumni Award for Public Service, dedicated to the memory of Dawn Clark Netsch, in recognition of their work for the CWCY.
Notable cases
Brendan Dassey
was featured on Making a Murderer. Nirider featured in the final episode of the first season of the documentary, which propelled her to fame among fans of the show thanks to her commitment to the cause and strong, intelligent demeanour. She is featured throughout the second series as it chronicles the CWCY's efforts to remove Dassey’s confession being confirmed as evidence, the only piece of evidence that links him to the murder of Teresa Halbach. Nirider has stated that one of her reasons for entering juvenile law was her involvement in the Dassey case while Drizin’s postgraduate student in 2007. Even while working briefly in commercial law Nirider continued to contribute to the Dassey case. Dassey remains behind bars; however, efforts to prove that his confession was extracted through unsuitable methods, with Nirider and Drizin at the helm, remain ongoing. Nirider is strongly critical of the methods used to interrogate a vulnerable and “mentally-limited” 16 year-old, as well as Dassey’s previous legal representation. Nirider, alongside Drizin, has undertaken tours of the UK and Ireland discussing her work on Making a Murderer and the science of coerced confessions. She has been interviewed extensively by the media, and also Innocence Project, as a result of publicity from the documentary.
Damien Echols
Damien Echols was a member of the West Memphis Three who had been sentenced to death, but was released in 2011 with Nirider as co-counsel. Nirider uses the cases of Echols and Dassey both to highlight the potential benefits of media attention to cases of wrongful guilt. Featured on the documentary West of Memphis.
The Dixmoor 5 were a group of men believed to have given false confessions in police interviews. Nirider was co-counsel for three members, and they were exonerated in 2011.
