RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — The son of a wealthy Long Island couple murdered in their home in 1988 may have been wrongly convicted because his lawyer never educated the jury about the then-fledgling science of police interrogation tactics, an expert testified Wednesday.

During an unusual post-appeal hearing, renowned social psychologist Richard Ofshe told a judge that his review of transcripts of Martin Tankleff's 1990 trial led him to the conclusion that police used tactics notorious for producing false confessions.

Among other things, Ofshe said, police were lying when they told Tankleff that his hair was found in his mother's hand and that a "humidity test" suggested he cleaned the murder weapons in the shower.

He said the biggest lie police told — that his father came out of his coma and told police the then-17-year-old boy was his attacker — led to statements by Tankleff that formed the core of his later trial and conviction.

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"The confession, whoever created it, is false," said Ofshe, a University of California professor who has testified in more than 230 cases.

Lawyers for Tankleff, now 32 and in the 14th year of a sentence of 50 years to life, contend that advances made in the science of police interrogation tactics would make it more likely that a second jury would see the confession as unreliable and acquit Tankleff.

The defense, which bears the burden of proof at a hearing that began Monday, is trying to persuade Suffolk County Court Judge Stephen Braslow that a crew of drug-addicted felons recruited by Seymour Tankleff's shady business partner committed the brutal slayings while Martin Tankleff slept.

Tankleff called 911 on Sept. 7, 1988, to report finding his father mortally wounded. He told police immediately to consider Jerry Steuerman, who owed his father $570,000, a suspect.

Homicide detectives, however, got a confession from Martin Tankleff within hours of his frantic call to 911. Tankleff quickly recanted, but he did tell the detectives that he was tired of living under his adoptive parents' rules, including a curfew and restrictions barring him from using the family boat and forcing him to drive "the crummy old Lincoln" to school.

At the trial, Tankleff and the two detectives who interrogated him, K. James McCready and Norman Rein, offered similar testimony about the confession.

Tankleff, however, told jurors that McCready's trickery and threats got him believing that he may have blacked out and attacked his parents. He said he was led him through a narrative that did not fit the crime scene before he realized he was being railroaded.

Tankleff acknowledged that he told detectives, "Yeah, I did it ... Could I have blacked out? ... Maybe it wasn't me but another Marty Tankleff that did this?"

Ofshe said the exchanges between McCready and Tankleff fit the pattern in a series of cases he has studied where miscarriages of justice were attributed to false confessions. He said McCready got Tankleff to believe his situation was hopeless by lying about evidence police never had and telling Tankleff he was a bad person.

The confession did not fit the facts of the case in 10 respects, Ofshe said, though he only offered a few examples Wednesday.

For one thing, he said, the detectives testified that Tankleff told them he attacked his mother and then his father. In fact, the physical evidence suggested that Seymour Tankleff was bludgeoned and stabbed in his study before the killer bludgeoned and nearly decapitated Arlene Tankleff in her bedroom on the opposite end of the home.

Martin Tankleff's confession also made no mention of using gloves, but a blood stain on a wall light switch in his bedroom contained a glove pattern, Ofshe testified.

"The confession doesn't fit the facts of the crime," he told the judge.

During cross-examination, Assistant Suffolk County District Attorney Leonard Lato pointed out that Ofshe's conclusions were based not on his review of the trial transcripts, but rather what the defense told him about their view of the physical evidence.

"I accepted those representations," Ofshe said. "I accepted what they told me."

According to Ofshe, who was not paid for his testimony, a study published in a law review found that 14 percent of 349 known miscarriages of justice in capital murder cases resulted from false confessions.

Of the 140 exonerations the Innocence Project secured by applying DNA science to old cases, 24 percent of the convictions stemmed from confessions, Ofshe said.

"False confession is a regularly occurring phenomenon in modern America," he added. "Juries presume innocent people don't confess unless they are tortured ... Jurors need to understand about the phenomenon."

Testimony resumes Thursday. On Friday, an inmate who claims he drove the getaway car for people the defense have characterized as the "real killers" is scheduled to take the stand.