Academic

Garrett on False Confessions

By Lawrence Solum

Brandon L. Garrett (University of Virginia - School of Law) has posted The Substance of False Confessions on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

A puzzle is raised by cases of false confessions: How could an innocent person convincingly confess to a crime? Post-conviction DNA testing has now exonerated 221 convicts, 34 of whom falsely confessed to rapes and murders. As a result, there is a new awareness that innocent people falsely confess, often due to psychological pressure placed upon them during police interrogations. Studies have increasingly examined psychological techniques that can cause people to falsely confess and documented instances of known false confessions. This study takes a different approach, by examining the substance of false confessions, including what was said during interrogations and how they were litigated at trial. Doing so sheds light on the phenomenon of confession contamination. Not only can innocent people falsely confess, but all but one of these exonerees were induced to deliver false confessions with surprisingly rich, detailed, and accurate information. We now know that those details could not have originated with these innocent people, but rather must have been disclosed to them, most likely during the interrogation process. Unless criminal procedure mandates that interrogations be recorded in their entirety, such contamination of facts may go undetected, resulting in miscarriages of justice.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on October 21, 2008 (boomark / email).