Wrongful Convictions: False Confessions

Wrongful Convictions: False Confessions

Introduction

  • The lecture focuses on wrongful convictions resulting from false confessions.
  • It emphasizes that innocent individuals can be induced to confess to crimes they did not commit.
  • The content is based on police practices, psychological principles, and forensic studies.
  • The lecture updates the original Scientific Review Paper (Kassin et al., 2010) on police-induced false confessions.

Key Quote

  • Saul Kassin: "I have no doubt that under certain conditions, anybody could be made to confess to anything."

Statistics of Wrongful Convictions

  • 375 DNA exonerations in the US from 1989-2020.
  • Causes of wrongful convictions:
    • Informants
    • False confessions (17%)
    • Bad science (29%)
    • Eyewitness misidentification (43%)

Examples of False Confessions

  • The "West Memphis Three" case, where new DNA evidence showed no connection to the crime.
  • The Brendan Dassey case, involving the murder of Teresa Halbach.
  • A New Zealand case involving Tina Porter, who spent 20 years in prison.
  • Common factors in these cases:
    • Young age
    • Low IQ or intellectual disability

Types of False Confessions

  • Voluntary: Confessing without pressure, often for attention or to protect someone else.
  • Coerced: Suspects initially deny involvement but transition to admitting guilt due to police interrogation.
  • Compliant: Confessing to escape a stressful in-custody situation, avoid threats, or gain a promised reward, later recanting the confession.
  • Internalized: Believing they committed the crime and creating false memories.

Seminal Study: Kassin & Kiechel (1996)

  • Typing task experiment where university students were falsely accused of pressing the ALT key, causing a computer crash.
  • Conditions: False witness (confederate claimed to have seen the student press the ALT key) vs. No witness.
  • Measured outcomes:
    • Compliance: Willingness to sign a false confession.
    • Internalization: Coming to believe they pressed the ALT key.
    • Confabulation: Creating details to support the false admission.

Results of Kassin & Kiechel (1996) Study

  • Compliance: Participants in the false witness condition were more likely to sign a confession.
  • Internalization: A significant number of participants in the false witness condition came to believe they had pressed the ALT key.
  • Confabulation: Some participants provided supporting details about how they pressed the key.

Fabricated Evidence: Nash & Wade (2009)

  • Psychology students were falsely accused of cheating in a task.
  • One group was shown a fabricated video appearing to show them cheating.
  • Results: Those shown the fabricated video were more likely to sign a document confessing to cheating and believed they had cheated, providing false details.

Applicability to Real Confessions

  • Low stakes in lab studies compared to real-world criminal cases.
  • Participants are intelligent students.
  • However, lab studies align with patterns in real-world exoneration cases, showing how external suggestions can lead innocent people to falsely confess.

Risk Factors for False Confessions

  • Situational:
    • Interrogation time
    • False evidence
    • Minimization
  • Personal:
    • Neurodevelopmental disorders
    • Low IQ score
    • Suggestible and compliant personality
    • History of mental health issues or trauma
    • Adolescence and developmental immaturity

Interrogation Time

  • Most interrogations last between 30 minutes and 2 hours.
  • In 125 false confession cases, 34% lasted 6-12 hours, and 39% lasted 12-24 hours (average 16.3 hours).
  • False confessions tend to occur after long periods of time.
  • Isolation and sleep deprivation impair decision-making, causing individuals to prioritize immediate relief.

False Evidence

  • In the US, police can lie about evidence.
  • Presenting false evidence can convince suspects that denial is futile.
  • Misinformation makes people vulnerable to manipulation.

Minimization

  • A psychological tactic where police suggest the suspect’s actions were spontaneous, accidental, provoked, peer-pressured, or drug-induced.
  • Can include promises of leniency or immunity.
  • Creates a false sense of security.

Personal Risk Factors (Detailed)

  • Neurodevelopmental disorders (autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, fetal alcohol syndrome) can exacerbate risk.

Consequences of False Confessions

  • Police investigation often stops after a confession.
  • Confessions can taint other evidence (confirmation bias).
  • Multiple evidence errors are found in a high percentage of false confession cases.
  • Confessions are often obtained first.

Power of Confession Evidence: Kassin & Neumann (1997)

  • Mock jurors read a criminal trial transcript based on an actual case (State v. Wilson).
  • Evidence types: character witness, eyewitness ID, confession, and a control group with no evidence.

Evidence Types in Kassin & Neumann (1997) Study

  • Character evidence: Testimony suggesting the defendant was intense and had a troubled relationship with his wife.
  • Eyewitness evidence: A witness saw someone matching the defendant's description fleeing the scene.
  • Confession evidence: The defendant confessed but retracted it immediately, claiming to be upset and incoherent.

Results of Kassin & Neumann (1997) Study

  • Mock jurors were more likely to convict when a confession was presented, even though it was retracted.
  • Confession evidence was the most influential, even compared to eyewitness testimony.

McCormick Quote

  • "The introduction of a confession makes the other aspects of a trial in court superfluous."

Confession Effects on Juries: Kassin & Sukel (1997)

  • Jurors read a mock murder trial transcript with a confession obtained under high or low pressure.
  • The confession was ruled either admissible or inadmissible.

Ideal vs. Real Results in Kassin & Sukel (1997) Study

  • Ideal: When confessions were ruled inadmissible and obtained under high pressure, guilty verdicts should align with the control condition (no confession).
  • Real: The highest rate of guilty verdicts occurred in low-pressure, admissible conditions, but guilty verdicts were still more likely in other confession conditions compared to the control, even when the confession was ruled inadmissible.

Confession Effects on Judges: Wallace & Kassin (2012)

  • Experienced judges read a murder case summary and found high-pressure confessions to be coerced.
  • However, the improper confession still increased their conviction rate, even in the absence of other evidence.

Why People Don't Discount Unreliable Confessions

  • Fundamental attribution error: Overemphasizing internal factors and underestimating situational factors when explaining behavior.
  • Belief that people don’t engage in self-destructive behavior.
  • Inability to reliably distinguish truth from lies.

Proposed Remedies

  1. Video record all suspect interviews and interrogations.
  2. Require evidence-based suspicion to conduct interrogation.
  3. Impose limits on the confrontational approach.
  4. Adopt science-based interviewing practices.
  5. Protect youthful and other vulnerable suspect populations.
  6. Shield lay witnesses and forensic examiners from confessions.
  7. Abolish contributory clauses in compensation statutes.

Summary

  • Three types of false confessions: voluntary, coerced-compliant, and coerced-internalized.
  • Longer interrogations, false evidence, and minimization tactics increase the likelihood of false confessions.
  • Personal risk factors, like developmental immaturity and suggestibility, make individuals more vulnerable.
  • Confession evidence is powerful in court and difficult to discount, even when deemed unreliable.