False Confessions

Prevalence of False Confessions

Amanda Knox Case - Background

• Meredith Kercher found raped and murdered on 2 November 2007

• Room-mate Amanda Knox (no history of crime, violence and no motive) arrested, along with her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.

• Did not believe her alibi

• Interrogated on and off for 4 days after the murder

• Final interrogation: started 10pm on 5^th Nov, ended 6am on 6^th Nov

• Vulnerable:  overseas, young (20 years), not fluent in Italian

Amanda Knox - Interrogation

• Repeatedly threatened and called a liar

• Falsely informed that her boyfriend had denied her alibi

• Falsely told that physical evidence placed her at the scene

• Told to shut her eyes and imagine how the crime had occurred

• Told she had obviously repressed the trauma

• Interviews were not recorded (despite law)

Amanda Knox - Confession

• Eventually broke down crying, screaming and hitting herself

• Two ‘confessions’ produced during this phase

• One at 1.45am, one at 5.45am

• Nothing in either confessions revealed she had ‘guilty knowledge’

• Both immediately retracted in a handwritten letter as soon as she was alone

Amanda Knox - After

• Case proceeded in a hypothesis-confirming investigation, prosecution and conviction

• The man whose DNA was found on the knife had originally said Knox was not present now changed his story

• Dubious eyewitnesses emerged

  • A homeless drug addict who said he saw Knox and Sollicito nearby

  • A convicted drug dealer who said he saw all three suspects together

  • A grocery store owner who said Knox bought cleaning products

  • A witness who said he saw Knox wielding a knife

Amanda Knox

• December 2009

  • Sentenced to 26 and 25 years respectively

• March 2013

  • Italian Supreme Court overturns the acquittal and orders a retrial

• January 2014

  • Knox and Sollecito are found guilty again

• March 2015

  • In the final appeal of the case, the case is found to be without foundation and Knox and Sollecito are acquitted again

Factors That Lead to False Confessions - Examples

• Stephanie Crow Murder (1998)

  • Michale Crow (age 14)

    • They wear you down to where you don’t trust yourself. You can’t trust your memory anymore

• Martin Tankleff (1988)

  • Falsely confessed to murdering his parents at age 17

    • All charges were dropped in 2008

    • tell the police what they want to hear to get the weight off your chest

• Calvin Ollins (1986)

  • Age 14 at the time

    • Told if he cooperate he could go home

    • Didn’t understand the seriousness of confessing

Suspect Factors - Vulnerable Groups

• Drizin and Leo (2004) documented 125 cases of ‘proven’ false confessions in the US

  • 32% of the sample were juveniles

  • 19% were described as having some form of special needs/mental impairment

  • 10% were described as mentally ill

  • >80% of cases involved a charge of murder

Suspect factors - Innocence

• Don’t understand the danger you are in because you are innocent

• Kassin, 2005

  • Waive their rights to silence

  • Waive their rights to lawyer

  • Behave in ways that are open and forthcoming

  • Offer up alibis freely without regard for the fact that inconsistencies may be viewed with suspicion

  • Seem oblivious to the dangerous position they are in

• Kassin and Norwick (2004)

  • half of the participants committed a mock theft and half were innocent

  • All participants were arrested and apprised of their Miranda rights to remain silent and only talk in the presence of a lawyer

  • “Innocent” participants were more likely to waive these rights

Interrogation Factors - Drizin and Leo 2004

• Reviewed 125 cases of proven false confessions

• Found that mean length of interrogation where false confessions were obtained was 16.4 hours

Interrogation Factors - Ofshe (1989)

• identified a number of common interrogation tactics associated with coerced internalised confessions

  • exhibiting strong and unwavering certainty about suspect’s guilt,

  • isolating the suspect

  • conducting sessions that are lengthy and emotionally intense

  • applying implicit and explicit pressure on the suspect to remember and confess

  • offering the suspect a ready physical or psychological explanation for why he or she does not remember the crime

  • presenting false but allegedly incontrovertible proof of the suspect’s guilt

Three types of false confessions

• Voluntary Confessions

  • When a person confesses to police or others without apparent external pressure.

• Compliant (Coerced) Confessions

  • When someone who knows he or she is innocent confesses anyway.

• Internalized Confessions

  • When an innocent person, subject to highly suggestive techniques, comes to believe that he or she may have committed the crime.

Voluntary confessions

• UK example – Sean Hodgson (1979)

  • Told a prison chaplain in London he had murdered barmaid Teresa De Simone

  • Then told a police officer verbally and in writing to detectives

  • Also claimed responsibility for two other murders as well as other crimes, some of which he could not have or committed or appear to never have occurred.

  • Withdrew confession at trial, described himself as a ‘pathological liar’

  • Convicted

    • Spent 27 years in prison

    • Cleared via DNA

    • Released in 2009

• Why?

  • Desire to protect someone (Gudjonsson & Sigurdsson, 1994).

    • Survey of 229 Icelandic inmates

    • 12% claimed to have made false confessions and in half of these cases this was done to protect someone

  • Need for ‘fame’ or attention-seeking

  • Inability to distinguish reality from fantasy

  • Psychological vulnerability (Kassin, 2008)

Compliant (Coerced) Confessions - Example

• Example – Jeffery Deskovic 1989

  • Age 16 at the time

  • Convicted for rape and murder of 15 year old classmate

  • Given polygraph

  • Interrogated (no lawyer, no parents, no food) between polygraph sessions

  • Alleged confession occurred after six hours

  • According to the detective, Deskovic then stated he “realized” three weeks ago he might be the responsible party.

    • During the confession, Deskovic sobbed. By the end of the interrogation, he was under the table, curled up in the fetal position, crying.

  • DNA evidence was available but ignored

    • Exonerated  via DNA evidence after 16 years in prison

    • DNA matched to convicted murderer already jailed for a similar crime

Compliant (Coerced) Confessions - Why

• Seeking instrumental gain

  • Escape pressures of interrogation situation

    • Psychological coercion even though they know they are innocent

  • Often complain confessions occur when suspect are convinced that denial won’t help

    • Will be more lenient if they confess

    • In their best interest to confess

• Negative (unethical) police behaviours

  • Impropriety throughout the investigative process

  • Manipulative interviewing techniques

    • Unlawful: brute force, isolation, deprivation of food/sleep, threats of punishment, promises of immunity or leniency

    • Psychological: feigned sympathy/friendship, appeals to conscience or religion, presentation of false evidence, good cop/bad cop, trickery and deception

Internalized Confessions - Example

• Paul Ingram a deputy sheriff in Washington was accused of raping his daughter, sex abuse, and Satanic cult crimes that included the slaughter of newborn babies

• After two dozen interrogations, which extended for 5 months, Ingram was detained, hypnotized, provided graphic crime details and told by a police psychologist that sex offenders typically repress their offenses.

• Urged by his pastor to confess.

• Ingram eventually “recalled” his crimes, pled guilty.

• Served his full sentence of 20 years in prison, released in 2003

  • No physical evidence to prove that the crimes to which he confessed had even occurred

  • Ofshe (1992) concluded that Ingram was “brainwashed” into thinking he was part of a satanic cult

  • To demonstrate Ingram’s potential for suggestibility, Ofshe manufactured a phony crime. Ingram denied the new charge at first, but after 24 hours he submitted a full confession—and embellished the story.

Internalized Confessions - Why

• Memory distrust syndrome (Gudjonnson et al., 2014)

  • Develop memories for having committed the crime

  • Falsely believe they committed the crime but cannot remember

• Memory is often vulnerable

  • Due to substance use

  • Fatigue

  • Low intelligence

  • Youth

Perceptions of Confession Evidence - People believe confessions

• Confessions have more impact on juries than other strong evidence (Kassin & Neumann, 1997)

• People do not discount confessions even when:

  • Retracted

  • Judged to be result of coercion (Kassin & Sukel, 1997; Redlich et al., 2008)

  • Told the confessor suffers from psychological illness or interrogation induced stress (Henkel, 2008)

  • The confession contradicts other evidence

Confession vs other evidence - Kassin and Neumann (1997)

• participants participate in a mock trial.

  • trial involved one of several types of crime (e.g., murder or assault), and participants were exposed to either confession evidence or another type of evidence.

• Confession evidence carried the most weight

Confession vs other evidence - Kassin and Sukel (1997)

• Participants read a transcript of a murder trial containing a confession and then render a verdict

• told that the confession was elicited in either a high-pressure or low-pressure interrogation.

• The confession resulted in a higher percentage of votes for conviction, even in the high-pressure condition

Confession vs other evidence - Believing you would never falsely confess

• Most people believe they would never confess

  • Believe others are the same

• Kassin, Meissner, & Norwick (2005)

  • Videotaped true and false confessions from inmates convicted of crimes and examined whether investigators and naive participants could distinguish between them

  • Investigators were significantly more confident in their judgments of deception

  • Investigators were not more accurate than students

    • But did demonstrate a bias to see ‘guilt’

  • Experience and prior training related to this biased perception

Confession vs other evidence - Investigator bias

• In several cases, investigators have also chosen to ignore or reject DNA evidence when a confession is present

• Pennsylvania vs. Godschalk

  • Bruce Godschalk was convicted in 1987 on two counts of rape

  • DA refused to release DNA for biological testing

  • Evidence from both cases was tested in January 2002. Not only were profiles obtained from the evidence in both rapes, but the male profiles also matched, meaning that the same perpetrator committed both crime

  • DA’s office refused to release Godschalk from prison, citing possibly flawed testing in the face of the evidence, namely the confession and the identification.

  • Finally released in 2002 after 15 years in prison

Scientific Understanding of False Confessions

• False Confessions in Lab

  • False confessions have been elicited in laboratory settings

    • Failure to follow instructions

    • Breaking equipment

    • Cheating on task or examinations

• Example

  • Kassin and Kiechel (1996), falsely accused participants of crashing the program they were using by pressing a specific button

  • In one condition, a confederate witness said they saw the participant press the button, while, in another condition, there was no witness.

  • Overall, 69% of participants falsely confessed, with this percentage being considerably higher when there was a witness

    • (recall that compliant confessions are more likely when the individual believes that denial is futile).