ABSTRACT
As I wrote this chapter, my attention was drawn to a courtroom in South Carolina, where 41-year-old Billy Wayne Cope was just convicted for the rape and murder of his 12-year-old daughter Amanda. Cope awoke one morning to find the oldest of his three daughters face down, cold and lifeless in her bed. It looked as if she had been strangled to death. Cope’s wife worked the night shift, so she was not home. Immediately he called 911, but when the police arrived they treated him more like a suspect than a grief-stricken father. Based on an erroneous first impression that there was no sign of a forced entry and belief that Cope showed “too little emotion,” the police interviewed him twice, sent him to the hospital for a physical examination, and then took him to the station for questioning that would begin late at night and extend into the early morning.
