Step 1: Introduce “The Man Who Lived Underground” by Richard Wright.
Step 2: Have students read the text or introduce the following summary: The protagonist in the short story “The Man Who Lived Underground” cannot recover from the violation of his forced confession (“They know I didn’t do anything, he muttered. But how could he prove it? He had signed a confession. Though innocent, he felt guilty, condemned.”). A narrative twist allows him to witness the custodial interrogation of another innocent man, a watchman accused of theft.
Those were the same policemen who had beaten him, had made him sign that paper when he had been too tired and sick to care. Now they were doing the same thing to the watchman. His heart pounded as he saw one of the policemen shake a finger into the watchman’s face.… He watched the policemen clamp handcuffs on the watchman’s wrists and ankles; then they lifted the watchman and swung him upside‐down and hoisted his feet to the edge of a door. The watchman hung, head down, his eyes bulging.
He decides to confront his tormentors (fictional detectives Johnson, Murphy, and Lawson) and to surrender a second time to their abuse.
Before he knew it a sharp blow had clipped him on the chin; darkness covered his eyes. He dimly felt himself being lifted and laid out on a sofa. He heard low voices and struggled to rise, but hard hands held him down.
“What do you suppose he’s suffering from?” Johnson asked.
“Delusions of grandeur, maybe,” Murphy said.
“Maybe it’s because he lives in a white man’s world,” Lawson said.
The protagonist is summarily executed to cover up the initial coerced interrogation. He looked brightly at the policemen; he was bursting with happiness. He bent down and placed his hands on the rim of the hole and sat on the edge, his feet dangling into watery darkness. He heard the familiar drone of the gray current. He lowered his body and hung for a moment b his fingers, then he went downward on steel prongs, hand over hand, until he reached the last rung.
He saw Lawson raise the gun and point it directly at him. Lawson’s face twitched, as though he were hesitating.
Then there was a thunderous report and a streak of fire ripped through his chest. He was hurled into the water, flat on his back. He looked in amazement at the blurred white faces looming above him. They shot me, he said to himself. The water flowed past him, blossoming in foam about his arms, his legs, his head. His jaw sagged and his mouth gaped soundless. A vast pain gripped his head and gradually squeezed out consciousness. As from a great distance he heard hollow voices.
“What did you shoot him for, Lawson?”
“I had to”
“Why?”
“You’ve got to shoot his kind. They’d wreck things.”
Step 3: Ask students how this narrative highlights the constitutional questions addressed in the cases they learned about in this lesson. What does it say about custodial interrogations federal criminal procedure? Connect the fictional text about coerced confession to the information from the lesson.
Optional follow‐up: Connect this fictional account of a coerced confession and a summary extrajudicial execution to the 2014 Laquan McDonald murder at the hands of the Chicago police, recounted in the documentary 16 Shots. McDonald ran away from police in 2014 and was shot 16 times by officer Jason Van Dyke, sparking protests that resulted in the resignation of Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, the unseating of Cook County, Illinois, State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, and the decision by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel not to seek reelection. Officer Van Dyke served 3 of 6.5 years to which he was sentenced for second‐degree murder.