Proximate Cause in Constitutional Torts: Holding Interrogators Liable for Fifth Amendment Violations at Trial

In 1996, a Texas trial court convicted eleven-year-old LaCresha Murray of injury to a child and gave her a twenty-five-year sentence. An appeals court overturned LaCresha’s conviction after she had spent three years in custody, finding that her confession should have been suppressed and not used at trial. After her release from custody, LaCresha filed a lawsuit in federal district court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, seeking damages from the officers who, she claimed, had violated her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by eliciting the involuntary confession used at trial to convict her.