Talk:James Earl Reed

Forged confession

I am new to both wikipedia editing and true crime, so rather than edit the main page, I wanted to ask the community what they think of this.

In the 2009 non-fiction book Word Crime by Dr. John Olsson, a specialist in forensic linguistics (chapter 15, On Death Row) , the author recounts his contribution to the case of James Earl Reed, where he was asked by a private investigator to determine whether the written confession of Mr. Reed could have actually been faked. Based on the IQ of Mr. Reed (~77) and various indications of "police register" in the confession such as excessive details, dense sentence structure, etc., Dr. Olsson deemed that a good majority of the confession had been fabricated by the investigating officers. While this does not absolve Mr. Reed of the murder, it could have been grounds to avoid the death penalty, especially because the murder weapon had not been found, and the jury's decision to convict was (likely) based largely on the confession.

I cannot find any other indication of this story from a cursory Google search. Almost all articles related to the case seem to be about how Mr. Reed opted for the electric chair, with a brief description of the murder itself. There are far more details of the crime in this chapter than I could find on the internet (the book even includes verbatim the entire confession).

Does this count as a credible source? Is there any way to verify this account? Unfortunately, the author himself is recently deceased (obituary).

This is a rather serious allegation of police misconduct, especially since this ended in capital punishment. I'm a bit surprised therefore that no news article mentions this controversy.

Should this be included in the wikipedia article?

Blufuz (talk) 11:57, 31 October 2021 (UTC) Blufuz

References

The reason this article is notable is because this person is the last person to be executed by the electric chair in South Carolina, so how this came to happen, while relevant, is not the initial focus when editors began developing the article. The article now needs to be fleshed out by adding some details not yet included in the article. This source could be included to confirm and support some more detailed facts for the murder as detailed in the "confession" or otherwise, provided this origin is identified. But I think you need to treat this book as a PRIMARY source, as the author was involved in analyzing the confession and gives a verbatim transcript. Dr. Olsson's opinion is his own, so if it is included in this article then it needs to be attributed to him and him alone. Merely saying that the confession was written in a "police register" could just indicate the confession was ghostwritten by a police officer using Reed's words. To say it was a "forgery" needs an allegation from someone that police misconduct occurred. This could include the private investigator's motivations or explanations for having the confession analysed. If no sources actually challenge the confession then perhaps it is true. You need to find reliable sources that support any forgery allegations, and cite them, otherwise it is just SPECULATION. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 22:37, 8 July 2022 (UTC)