Imagine being locked in a small, windowless room, exhausted beyond reason, with a police officer leaning close, repeating the same accusation over and over until your mind goes blank and your only wish is for it to stop. That is the moment Robin Dahlberg calls the breaking point, and it is the heart of her new photography book, Breaking Point. Dahlberg, a former lawyer turned photographer, spent years exploring the hidden world of false confessions and the interrogation tactics that produce them. Her work is not a legal brief or a policy paper; it is a visceral, visual journey designed to make people understand something that seems almost impossible to grasp: why an innocent person would confess to a crime they didn’t commit. On Monday, October 19, at 7:30 p.m., Dahlberg will discuss the book at Warwick’s, 7812 Girard Avenue in La Jolla, alongside exoneree Eddie Lowery and Justin Brooks, co-founder of the California Innocence Project. The event is free, with a $65 reserved seating option that includes a copy of the book. But the conversation will go far beyond the artwork, reaching into the trauma of wrongful conviction and the flaws in a justice system that can turn a terrified, exhausted person into their own accuser.
Eddie Lowery knows that breaking point all too well. In 1982, at just 22 years old, he was convicted of a sexual assault he did not commit. The nightmare began with an interrogation that stretched across two days, leaving him emotionally shattered. In a recent interview, Lowery described the desperation that overtook him: “I was so emotionally drained from going through all this interrogation after two days, that I just wanted out of the interrogation room. So I was willing to tell them anything they wanted to hear.” The police, he said, repeatedly lied to him and dredged up painful details from his family history, using them as weapons to break down his resistance. A still from his interrogation video, included in Dahlberg’s book, shows him slumped over the table, completely defeated. “I didn’t know what else to do but just put my head down and just kind of give up,” he said. That confession sent him to prison for a crime he never committed. It would take 21 years, and DNA evidence, to finally exonerate him. His case is a stark reminder of what can happen when the pressure of an interrogation becomes unbearable, and why advocates say the techniques used by law enforcement must be examined.
Justin Brooks, who co-founded the California Innocence Project in 1999, has spent decades working to free people like Lowery. He points to the interrogation methods taught to police for generations, most notably the Reid Technique, as a fundamental part of the problem. The method, he explains, is not actually designed to uncover the truth. Instead, it trains officers to construct a narrative they already believe and then push the suspect to agree with it, often through manipulation, deception, and relentless repetition. “That method is not focused on getting the truth,” Brooks said. “It’s focused on getting the suspect to agree to the narrative the police officer already has in their head, and that’s a very different thing than finding the truth.” He added that this is exactly how police officers have been trained for decades, and when truth is not the ultimate goal, wrongful convictions are inevitable. Innocent people, he noted, often confess because they are angry, exhausted, and simply want the interrogation to end. They think, “OK, I did it. Whatever, I did it,” believing that the justice system will later sort everything out. But that belief is dangerously misplaced. As Brooks put it, “That’s the problem with innocence cases — innocent people don’t believe they’re going to be convicted.”
Research supports the idea that false confessions are not bizarre anomalies but a predictable result of certain psychological pressures. According to the Innocence Project, about 30 percent of people exonerated through DNA evidence had made false confessions. Dahlberg, drawing on her legal background, explains that certain risk factors make someone more vulnerable: youth, neurodivergence, and even a personality type that instinctively respects authority. But perhaps the most astonishing risk factor is innocence itself. “People who are innocent, when they’re being interrogated actually talk more,” Dahlberg said. “Because they feel that if they just keep talking, if they just keep explaining themselves, then someone will finally believe what they’re saying.” She compares it to a familiar feeling: trying to talk your way out of a misunderstanding, explaining yourself more and more, and only succeeding in digging the hole deeper. Once a confession is on the table, it becomes nearly impossible to undo. It influences every step of the criminal process, from the decision to charge to the jury’s verdict. Jurors hear the word “confession” and, understandably, assume guilt. They do not consider the psychology of the interrogation room, the exhaustion, the years of pressure, or the lies told by officers. They just hear the words “I did it,” and that is enough to send an innocent person to prison.
Dahlberg’s book is deliberately intimate and unsettling. It is filled with stark black-and-white photographs, handwritten memories, transcripts, and newspaper clippings that piece together the lives of six exonerees: Lowery, Jeffrey Deskovic, Vanessa Gatheres, Byron Halsey, Christopher Ochoa, and Raymond Santana. For one powerful series, she asked the exonerees to revisit their interrogations by dressing and acting as their own interrogators. The effect is disorienting and deeply moving: through the camera’s lens, the viewer becomes the suspect, staring into the face of the person who once broke them. Dahlberg admitted that this exercise changed her perspective profoundly. “For me being on the other side of the camera, I was really struck by how terrifying having someone yell at you at close distance was — it took my breath away,” she said. She began to wonder how she herself would respond under such pressure. Her goal was not simply to document injustice but to create a space where readers could feel it, to bring them into the interrogation room that the public is normally never allowed to see. “I think that there’s a universality about art and photography that makes it more accessible to a wider audience,” she said. “Nobody’s going to read a legal brief besides the judge.” Through portraiture and text, she tries to convey what the exonerees experienced, and why wrongful convictions are not just legal problems but deeply human tragedies.
Above all, Dahlberg wants to remind people that this could happen to anyone. The idea that only guilty people end up in interrogation rooms is a comforting myth, but it is a myth nonetheless. “People like Eddie just happened to be on the wrong street on the wrong day at the wrong time and get picked up by the cops,” she said. “And that’s why it’s so important that the criminal justice system be a functional system that produces justice.” Raising awareness is the reason exonerees like Lowery continue to share their painful stories, even decades later. “I just want to use what happened to me in a positive way, in an encouraging way — fill people with the information they need so that this doesn’t happen to anybody else,” Lowery said. “This has taught me a lot about survival and not giving up.” His voice, along with Dahlberg’s photographs and Brooks’ legal expertise, will come together at Warwick’s in La Jolla for an evening that promises to be both sobering and inspiring. It is a chance for the public to look behind the curtain of the criminal justice system, to understand how a false confession can happen, and to leave with a renewed commitment to protecting the innocent. The book may be called Breaking Point, but its message is ultimately about resilience, empathy, and the hope that by confronting the harsh realities of wrongful conviction, we can build a justice system that lives up to its name.