FALSE CONFESSIONS
In more than 25% of the wrongful convictions overturned with DNA evidence, defendants made false confessions, admissions, or statements to law enforcement officials. False confessions can happen for many different reasons. A person can become confused and exhausted when the police use interrogation tactics that are never ending, abusive, or mentally tortuous. Sometimes the police intentionally confuse the defendant, or feed information to the defendant - and then minimize the outcome of a false confession. Sometimes they suggest to the defendant that he or she “did it” using “what if” scenarios.
False confessions may be one of the most confusing of all the primary contributors to wrongful convictions for the general public to understand because it is self-incriminating. Innocent persons, however, have been known to falsely confess to crimes they did not commit. Police-induced false confessions appear to occur primarily in the more serious cases, especially homicides and other high-profile felonies, most likely due to the high stakes perception of the police and the use of coercive interrogation tactics. In Bedau and Radelet’s 1987 study, false confessions were the third leading cause of wrongful conviction; In Warden’s 2003 study they were the single leading cause.
Innocent people sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit for many different reasons. Even when the police don’t use coercive tactics innocent people may make a false confession due to mental impairment, disability, or instability, intoxication or drug use, fear of violence, actual violence, threat of a long prison sentence, ignorance of the law, and misunderstanding.
Psychological research helps us understand why innocent people might confess to a crime they did not commit. Researchers who study this phenomenon have determined that the following factors contribute to or cause false confessions:
- Real or perceived intimidation of the suspect by law enforcement
- Use of force by law enforcement during the interrogation, or perceived threat of force
- Compromised reasoning ability of the suspect, due to exhaustion, stress, hunger, substance use, and, in some cases, mental limitations, or limited education. Young people who do not understand their rights and are taught to please authority figures are particularly vulnerable.
- Devious interrogation techniques, such as untrue statements about the presence of incriminating evidence
- Fear, on the part of the suspect, that failure to confess will yield a harsher punishment
We know the following about false confessions:
A good deal of people make false confessions.
The National Registry of Exonerations has collected data on 1,810 exonerations in the United States since 1989 (as of June 7, 2016). They include 227 cases of innocent men and women who confessed, 13 percent of the total, all after receiving Miranda warnings (at least according to the police). Nearly three quarters of those false confessions were in homicide cases.
Of those that confess, many – if not the majority - are not ever convicted
In a classic 2004 study, Steven Drizin and Richard Leo identified 125 proven false confessions in the United States from 1971 through 2002. Only about a third were cases of exoneration after conviction. In most, charges were dismissed before trial or never filed at all because of indisputable proof of innocence.
If a person is convicted based on a false confession it is unlikely they will be later cleared by exoneration
That’s true for all wrongful convictions, but especially for those based on confessions. It’s very hard to convince people that a defendant who confessed is innocent. Exonerations of defendants who confessed are more likely to depend on the most unassailable evidence, DNA, to overcome the weight of a confession. According to the research by the Innocence Project, 42 percent of exonerated defendants who had confessed were cleared by DNA tests, compared to only 21 percent of exonerees who had not confessed."
It’s very important to understand that not only are false confessions common, but once they happen it is nearly impossible to reverse the consequences.
To learn more about false confessions watch the following videos:
Dr. Saul Kassin and Innocence Project
Preventing False Confessions
It is critical to assure that any time a person is being interrogated by the police that the entire interrogation is recorded. Over half the states in the country and the District of Columbia require recording of certain custodial interrogations either through statute or court action. Federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, DEA and ATF, are required to record all custodial interrogations of individuals suspected of any federal crime.
The states that require recording of certain custodial interrogations are: Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.