The jury hearing the capital murder trial of 18-year-old Mason Sisk was not allowed to hear testimony from an expert on false confessions in Monday afternoon proceedings.

In pre-trial motions, Circuit Judge Chad Wise had granted a prosecution motion that the testimony of Dr. Jeffrey Neuschatz, whom the defense identified as an expert in false confessions, not be allowed. However, Wise allowed Neuschatz, a University of Alabama-Huntsville professor of psychology, to be called by the defense outside of the jury’s hearing.

Sisk, who was 14, at the time of the killings, is charged with the Labor Day 2019 weekend shooting deaths of his father, John Wayne Sisk; stepmother, Mary Sisk; brother, Grayson, 6; sister, Aurora, 4, and infant brother, Colson, 6 months, while they lay sleeping.

Sisk called 911 and told the operator that he was playing video games in the basement of his parents’ home a couple hours after the family returned from a holiday trip to Gulf Breeze, Fla., when he heard what sounded like five gunshots, and footsteps running out the door. When he went upstairs to investigate, he said he saw a vehicle — car or truck that sounded like a Chevy — fleeing out the driveway. He then discovered his five family members dead in their beds.

Sisk confessed to the killings to former Limestone County sheriff Mike Blakely and his investigator Johnny Morrell several hours later. Defense attorneys Shay Golden and Michael Sizemore say Mason was treated like a suspect from soon after deputies arrived at the murder scene on Ridge Road in Elkmont. As such, he was not read his Miranda Rights, nor allowed a call to an attorney nor an adult.

Former deputy Andrew King’s body cam video, which was offered into evidence, shows that King, whose orders it was to stay with Sisk outside the home where the murders occurred, received radio orders from a superior officer inside the home soon after to detain Sisk.

King is heard explaining to Sisk as he places him in handcuffs and confines him to the back seat of a patrol vehicle, “You’re just being detained until we can figure out what’s going on here.”

When Blakely arrived on the scene, he ordered that the handcuffs be removed from Sisk, and he placed Sisk in the cab of his truck, where they remained alone for some 20 minutes. Sisk was taken to the sheriff’s department, where he met further with the sheriff and Morrell without the presence of counsel or Department of Human Resources social workers who are customarily called when a juvenile is involved.

Neuschatz said he has studied the Reid Training nine-step process for interrogation, which has been used to train more than 500,000 law enforcement officials and others since the 1960s. He said he reviewed the tapes of Mason’s questioning and eventual confession that lasted 106 minutes, with the actual interview beginning 29 minutes in.

“[Blakely] used 39 tactics [identified in Reid Training], which is about one per minute,” said Neuschatz. He said since DNA evidence has been used in 1989, 200 suspects have been exonerated.

“[Of those cleared] 15 to 20 percent are estimated to have been [convicted] based on false confessions,” said Neuschatz. He said 65 percent of false confessions have come from people under 25.

However, under cross examination by Assistant District Attorney Bill Lisenby, Neuschatz conceded that the juvenile data was derived in a laboratory setting, using teens from Iceland and European methods of juvenile interrogation might vary somewhat.

Neuschatz said he has never talked to Sisk and his testimony was never intended to “opine on the veracity of Mason’s confession.”

In morning testimony, a former Limestone County Sheriff’s Department investigator who obtained search warrants for her team to collect evidence from the Elkmont home missed evidence according to defense attorney Golden.

Golden cross-examined Kristen King, now an investigator for District Attorney Brian Jones, about her role in collecting evidence from the Sisk home. King and her team of deputies spent from 11:30 p.m. Sept. 2, 2019, the evening of the killings, until 5 p.m. of Sept. 3, identifying, labeling and collecting evidence. She received a second search warrant for Sept. 5 to return to search for bullet casings and residue from walls and mattresses.

But King didn’t go far enough, although she retrieved five spent cartridges, according to Golden.

King processed a black Dodge Journey SUV that Mason Sisk was sitting in when deputies arrived after his 911 call reporting the killings. She acknowledged under questioning by Golden that the steering wheel, gearshift or door handle was not dusted for fingerprints or gunshot residue. However, she or those processing the Dodge did find an unspent 9mm Blazer bullet.

An open back basement door was also not dusted.

“From the information we had the crime scene was all upstairs,” said King “The only information we had was from the only living person on the scene, [and] that was that someone went out the front door.”

“Wouldn’t you agree that’s a lot of ‘I don’t knows’ from someone investigating the scene?” asked Golden.

Earlier, Golden asked King, “Have you ever had to explain away this many errors in you’ve made in other cases?”

Golden specifically zeroed in on drugs found in the home and their possible connection to John Sisk and his brother Lance Sisk, who sometimes lived in the basement of the Sisk home.

“There was nothing on the crime scene that would indicate that drugs were part of the crime,” said King.

Testimony will continue at 9 a.m. Tuesday, April 25.