One of the most prevalent controversies in the criminal justice system is the presence of false confessions. How do you prove someone innocent when they confess despite no evidence pointing towards them? This issue is much more common than you may think. An estimated 30% of all wrongful convictions that are later overturned by DNA evidence are attributed to false confessions. Why would someone confess to something they didn’t do? The answer is not that simple.
False confessions fall into three categories: voluntary, police-induced, and internalized. Voluntary false confessions are most common in highly publicized cases where one could benefit from being involved in it. The motivators behind this type of confession are often greed, fame, success, and publicity. This is when someone will confess to a crime they didn’t commit with an end goal of self-benefit. An example of this is John Mark Karr, who confessed to being behind the murder of JonBenét Ramsey in the hopes of receiving fame and attention, however, a lack of DNA evidence linking him to the murder prevented the case from going to trial. These cases are often able to be disproved before entering the court system, therefore, they are not a prominent issue in the criminal justice system.
The second type of false confessions is those that are police-induced. This is the most common type of false confession, and it occurs when interrogation tactics are used manipulatively, often by making false promises, threats, and inducing stress, in order to coerce a confession out of the alleged suspect. In these cases, the interrogatee will maintain their innocence the entire time but will eventually give in and confess, hoping that they will finally be extracted from this extreme pressure situation. However, after being removed from their stress-inducing environment, these people will almost always recant their confession. When this happens, the judge overseeing the case will often order a pre-trial for them to determine whether or not the confession was legitimate, and if they deem that it wasn’t, they tend to dismiss the case, or the confession is made inadmissible in court. A case of police-induced confessions is that of the Central Park Five. There were five teenagers who were accused of assault, and after unfair and manipulative interrogations, the boys felt as though they had to confess. They did so and spent years in prison, their convictions only being overturned and their confessions deemed false in 2002. These kinds of false confessions are the most notorious for causing problems within the justice system.
The third and final type of false confession is an internalized confession. These confessions occur when innocent people undergo a harsh interrogation and begin to believe that they are truly guilty, even though they are not. This internalized guilt will cause them to fully confess to something they didn’t do, and these confessions will often be full of information that only the perpetrator would know, except for the fact that police will often drop these pieces of information during the interrogation in order to plant them in the suspect’s mind, leading them to believe that is what they must have done. The people most vulnerable to this kind of manipulation are often those who are mentally impaired, sleep deprived, of a young age, and have suffered a trauma. Billy Wayne Cope was a father who woke up one morning to find his daughter deceased in her bed. Police were immediately suspicious of him, and despite Cope constantly maintaining his innocence, he underwent serious interrogation, was held for multiple days, and was even lied to when police told him he failed his polygraph and that there was evidence/motive connecting him to the murder. This led him to believe he really was guilty; why else would the police be doing this to him? So, after continuously maintaining his innocence, Cope confessed, saying that he “must have done it,” and gave a detailed confession.
An average interrogation lasts only 30-60 minutes, while those involving a false confession often last 6-14 hours. In order to combat this issue, 25 of the 50 states require that interrogations be recorded in serious felony cases. The recording of these interrogations will allow a judge to conclude whether the confessions were voluntary and true or coerced and under extreme pressure. During trial, it is often difficult for a jury to tell the difference between a real and false confession just by watching the tape, and so policies are being implemented to prevent possible false confessions from even making it to court, although in most cases 73-81% of juries convict people who are later proven to be falsely accused or have falsely confessed to a crime.
https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/false-confessions
