A false confession is an admission and a postadmission narrative (a detailed description of how and why the crime was committed,) of a crime that the confessor didn’t commit. Social science research shows that there are 4 ways to prove a confession is false: 1) when it can be established that the suspect confessed to a crime that didn’t happen (ex. the murder victim is found alive.); 2) when it can be established that the defendant couldn’t have committed the crime because it would have been physically impossible (ex. they were in another place at the time of the crime.) 3) when the true perpetrator of a crime is identified and their guilt can be established. 4) when scientific evidence (e.g. DNA) establishes the confessor’s innocence.
Causes
Misclassification Error There are many errors that lead the police to classify an innocent person mistakenly as a guilty suspect. American police are taught that they can become human lie detectors using various verbal and physical cues. Social scientific studies have repeatedly demonstrated that people are poor lie detectors and are highly prone to error in their judgment about whether an individual is lying or telling the truth. Most people get it right at rates that are no better than 50%. Studies of police interrogators have found that they cannot reliably distinguish between truthful and false confessions at levels greater than chance (50%) and they routinely make incorrect judgments.
Coercion
Some types of actions by the police usually will lead to a finding that a confession was involuntary. These include threatening illegal actions, physically abusing the suspect, or holding the suspect at gunpoint during questioning. If the suspect is taken into custody and prevented from using the bathroom, or denied food or water, any resulting confession likely will be thrown out by a court. A confession resulting from a torture-like tactic or the deprivation of basic necessities of life would be involuntary. False promises of lenient treatment upon getting a confession also may be viewed as unduly coercive. Courts also analyze more subjective factors. They may consider the time, place, and level of detail of the police questioning. While the health of a defendant can be an issue to consider, a defendant who has a mental health condition or who is drunk or drugged may not be able to eliminate a confession on this basis. They must be able to show that their condition prevented them from thinking clearly in the circumstances. But, the police are allowed to threaten to take an action that is legally within their authority. They can tell the suspect that they will arrest or charge a family member whom they suspect of being involved in a crime. Perhaps counterintuitively, the police are allowed to lie to a suspect about the nature of the evidence or the overall strength of the case against them. If law enforcement issued Miranda warnings and heeded a defendant’s efforts to exercise their Miranda rights, a confession is unlikely to be found involuntary.
Contamination
Interrogators may help create the false confession by pressuring the suspect to accept a particular account and by suggesting facts of the crime to them, contaminating the suspect's postadmission narrative. Unless they learned information from the media, the innocent person wouldn’t know any of the details of the crime; so their post admission narrative would be filled with errors, unless, of course, the answers are implied, suggested, or explicitly provided to the suspect, advertently or inadvertently.
Types of False Confessions
Voluntary False Confessions A false confession that is offered in the absence of police interrogation. Voluntary false confessions can be explained by the internal psychological states or needs of the confessoror by external pressure brought on by someone other than the police. Most voluntary false confessions appear to result from an underlying psychological/psychiatric issue or disorder. There are many possible reasons this may happen, including: a desire for fame, the need to atone for guilt over imagined or real acts, an inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality, or a pathological need for acceptance or punishment. But they’re not always stemming from psychological explanations, for example: a person may provide a voluntary false confession out of a desire to aid and protect the real criminal,to provide an alibi for a different crime, or to get revenge on someone else.
Compliant False Confessions A compliant false confession is one given in response to police coercion, stress, or pressure. These are often made either to escape a coercive interrogation or to take advantage of a perceived suggestion or promise of leniency from the police. Compliant false confessions are made knowingly, the suspect admits guilt with the knowledge that he is innocent and that what he says is false. Compliant false confessions are often recanted shortly after the interrogation is over.
Persuaded False Confessions Persuaded false confessions occur when police interrogation tactics cause an innocent suspect to doubt his memory and he becomes temporarily persuaded that it is more likely than not that he committed the crime, despite having no memory of committing it. At first, an innocent suspect will try to reason with the detectives to persuade them of his innocence. But at some point, he’ll realize that they’re never going to believe him, and will start to question his own story. Eventually the only explanation he can offer for his innocence is that he has no memory of committing the crime.
Consequences of Police Induced False Confessions
Confessions are the most incriminating and persuasive evidence of guilt that the state can bring against a defendant. False confessions are therefore the most incriminating and persuasive false evidence of guilt that the state can bring against an innocent defendant. Confessions exert a strong bias on the perceptions and decision-making of the criminal justice system. A suspect's confession sets in motion a seemingly irrefutable presumption of guilt among the police, the prosecutors, justice officials, the media, the public, and the jurors. This chain of events leads each part of the system to be stacked against the individual who confesses, and as a result he is treated more harshly at every stage of the investigative and trial process. A confession also leads both officials and jurors to interpret all other case information in the worst possible light for the defendant. For example, a weak eyewitness identification that otherwise may have been quickly dismissed in the absence of a confession is treated instead as corroboration of the confession's validity. The deeper into the system they get, the harder the error is to reverse.
Reforms
One of the most important reforms is mandatory electronic recording of all police interrogations. It creates an objective, comprehensive, and reviewable record of the interrogation that all parties—police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, juries, and even the public in high-profile cases—can review. Although 10 states (Alaska, Minnesota, Illinois, Maine, New Mexico, Wisconsin, New Jersey, North Carolina, Maryland, and Nebraska) and the District of Columbia now require that police record interrogations in their entirety in some or all criminal cases, most police departments, as well as the FBI, still do not record interrogations, and there remains resistance to the idea with much of law enforcement. Researchers have proposed other reforms as well, including improved police training about false confessions, pretrial reliability hearings to exclude false-confession evidence, putting time limits on interrogations, prohibiting certain interrogation techniques, greater provision of expert witness testimony and cautionary jury instructions at trial, and providing additional safeguards for vulnerable populations such as the developmentally disabled and juveniles.