“The general technique, unfortunately, was not uncommon,” he said. “What I saw was not an aberration.”

Jim Trainum, a former Washington, D.C., homicide detective who now works as a consultant for law enforcement agencies, said he uses portions of the Livers interrogation to teach how to avoid false confessions. He argued Nebraska law enforcement agencies should learn from the Livers tapes.

The stakes are high: Not only do false confessions accuse the innocent, they can allow the guilty to remain free, Trainum said.

The Nebraska Law Enforcement Training Center in Grand Island uses the Livers interrogation to show what police should do, and not do, to ensure confessions are legal. In particular, the case is used to help trainees learn how to recognize signs a suspect is cognitively impaired, said William Muldoon, the center’s director.

The training center serves all Nebraska agencies except the patrol and the Omaha and Lincoln Police Departments.

Several experts who reviewed the interrogation were most troubled by the amount of crime scene information the investigators provided to Livers before and after he confessed.