The "truth" about false confessions (original) (raw)
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From false confession to wrongful conviction: Seven psychological processes
A steadily increasing tide of literature has documented the existence and causes of false confession as well as the link between false confession and wrongful conviction of the innocent. This literature has primarily addressed three issues: the manner in which false confessions are generated by police interrogation, individual differences in susceptibility to interrogative influence, and the role false confessions have played in documented wrongful convictions of the innocent. Although the specific mechanisms through which interrogation tactics can induce false confessions, and through which they can exert enhanced influence on vulnerable individuals have been widely addressed in this literature, the processes through which false confessions, once obtained by police, may lead to wrongful conviction have remained largely unaddressed. This article addresses this gap in the literature, examining seven psychological processes linking false confession to wrongful conviction and failures of post-conviction relief: (1) powerful biasing effects of the confession itself, including incorporated “misleading specialized knowledge” (inside crime- relevant knowledge displayed by the suspect in the false confession, but acquired through outside sources (such as the interrogator) rather than in the course of the commission of the crime); (2) tunnel vision and confirmation biases, (3) motivational biases, (4) emotional influences on thinking and behavior; (5) institutional influences on evidence production and decision making; and inadequate context for evaluation of claims of innocence, including (6) inadequate or incorrect relevant knowledge, and (7) progressively constricting relevant evidence. We discuss reciprocal influences of these mechanisms and their biasing impact on the perceptions and behaviors of suspects, investigators, prosecution and defense attorneys, juries, and trial and appellate judges.
False Confessions and the Use of Incriminating Evidence
Linguistic Evidence in Security, Law and Intelligence, 2013
To date, few experimental studies have looked at the factors that influence people’s willingness to confess to something they did not do. One widely cited experiment on the topic (i.e., Kassin & Kiechel, 1996) has suggested that false confessions are easy to obtain and that the use of false incriminating evidence increases the likelihood of obtaining one. The present research attempted to replicate Kassin and Kiechel’s (1996) work using a different experimental task. In the present experiment, unlike Kassin and Kiechel’s (1996) study, the participants were completely certain that they were not responsible for what had happened, thereby providing a different context for testing the idea that false incriminating evidence increases the likelihood of obtaining a false confession. The results are discussed with respect to factors that may or may not increase individuals’ willingness to offer a false admission of guilt.
Inside interrogation: The lie, the bluff, and false confessions
Law and Human Behavior, 2011
Using a less deceptive variant of the false evidence ploy, interrogators often use the bluff tactic, whereby they pretend to have evidence to be tested without further claiming that it necessarily implicates the suspect. Three experiments were conducted to assess the impact of the bluff on confession rates. Using the Kassin and Kiechel (Psychol Sci 7:125-128, 1996) computer crash paradigm, Experiment 1 indicated that bluffing increases false confessions comparable to the effect produced by the presentation of false evidence. Experiment 2 replicated the bluff effect and provided self-reports indicating that innocent participants saw the bluff as a promise of future exoneration which, paradoxically, made it easier to confess. Using a variant of the Russano et al. (Psychol Sci 16:481-486, 2005) cheating paradigm, Experiment 3 replicated the bluff effect on innocent suspects once again, though a ceiling effect was obtained in the guilty condition. Results suggest that the phenomenology of innocence can lead innocents to confess even in response to relatively benign interrogation tactics.
The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-), 1998
Because a confession is universally treated as damning and compelling evidence of guilt, 1 , it is likely to dominate all other case evidence and lead a trier of fact to convict the defendant. 2 A false confession is therefore an exceptionally dangerous piece of evidence to put before anyone adjudicating a case. In a criminal justice system whose formal rules are designed to minimize the frequency of unwarranted arrest, unjustified prosecution, and wrongful conviction, police-induced false confessions rank amongst the most fateful of all official errors.. We thank Robert Perske and Michael L. Radelet for providing case materials, and we thank David T.Johnson, Gary Marx and Welsh White for helpful comments. .
Preventing False Confessions during Interrogations
2018
This study addresses the causal-result relationship of the phenomenon of false confessions during police custody interrogations. Every day in American jurisprudence suspects and witness are interviewed by law enforcement in criminal cases. Officers are usually cognizant of their cases and the circumstances surrounding it. Constitutional issues of Miranda Warnings are usually adhered to, and the background information of the interviewee and their relationship to the crime has been established. Yet the instances of false confessions continue to surface despite scholarly studies, extensive research and preventive training on this phenomenon. What induces a person to confess to a crime that is later revealed they knew nothing about has baffled law enforcement, the judicial, and laymen alike for decades. Law enforcement claim that those who have falsely confessed to crime related facts and circumstances only the guilty could have known. Does law enforcement bear an ethical responsibility...
Wrongful conviction cases indicate that not all confessors are guilty. However, there is currently no validated method to assess the veracity of confessions. In this preregistered study, we evaluate whether a new application of the Concealed Information Test (CIT) is a potentially valid method to make a distinction between true and false admissions of guilt. Eighty-three participants completed problem-solving tasks, individually and in pairs. Unbeknownst to the participants, their team-member was a confederate, tempting the participant to break the experimental rules by assisting during an individual assignment. Irrespective of actual rule-breaking behavior, all participants were accused of cheating and interrogated. True confessors but not false confessors showed recognition of answers obtained by cheating in the individual task, as evidenced by larger physiological responses to the correct than to plausible but incorrect answers. These findings encourage further investigation on t...
Handbook of Forensic Sociology and Psychology, 2013
In October of 1988. 20-year-old Nancy DePriest was tied up, rapcd. and murdered at the Pizza Hut where she workcd in Austin, Texas. Two weeks later, 22-year-old Christopher Ochoa, who worked at anothcr Pizza Hut. and his friend, 18-year-old Richard Danziger, ordcred a beer at the Pizza Hut where DePriest had been murdered. They spoke to the security guard about the killing. asked where DePriest's body had been found. and said they had come to drink a beer in her memory. Suspicious employees thcn called the police. Two days later, police picked up Ochoa, a former high school honor Student with no criminal record. and Danziger for qucstioning. For over 2 days. Austin police detectives interrogated Ochoa offtape. As later events proved, he was not actually involved in the crime. In Ochoa's recounting. the detectives yelled at, harassed, and threatened him for hours; denied his requests for an attomey; told him. lalsely. that he failed three separate polygraph tests; claimed that a codefendant was in the next room and about to implicate him; threatened to throw the book at him if he did not cooperate; thrcw a chair that missed him; threatened him with more violence if he continued
The journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 2010
The vast majority of false confessions occur in the context of interrogation, and in response to the sources of distress and persuasive tactics of the interrogation. However, there are widely held mistaken assumptions that a false confessor must suffer some personal defect such as a mental disorder. In this article, we explain that many normal people may give false confessions under certain social situations. We examine such situations and their effects on false confessions. We urge courts to recognize that suspect-enhanced vulnerabilities are not a necessary condition for the elicitation of false confessions, but rather that much lesser situational factors have just as much influence on the interrogated. We lay out a set of guidelines to assist expert testifiers in evaluating better an interrogation-induced confession.
The vast majority of false confessions occur in the context of interrogation, and in response to the sources of distress and persuasive tactics of the interrogation. However, there are widely held mistaken assumptions that a false confessor must suffer some personal defect such as a mental disorder. In this article, we explain that many normal people may give false confessions under certain social situations. We examine such situations and their effects on false confessions. We urge courts to recognize that suspect-enhanced vulnerabilities are not a necessary condition for the elicitation of false confessions, but rather that much lesser situational factors have just as much influence on the interrogated. We lay out a set of guidelines to assist expert testifiers in evaluating better an interrogation-induced confession.