The Truth About False Confessions

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Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Welcome Decision
 
Last week's decision by the Supreme Court, holding that a high school student's Fourth Amendment rights were violated by a strip search (based on allegations that she was using proscribed medication), is welcome. The decision was a no-brainer, but we should applaud whenever the Court protects our rights against overzealous law enforcement.
 
9:04 am est

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Unfortunate Decision
 
The Supreme Court ruled today (by a 5-4 vote) that a convicted prisoner does not have a constitutional right to obtain access to the evidence against him in order to subject it to DNA testing. This decision will deprive numerous wrongly-convicted persons the opportunity to establish their innocence.
 
3:27 pm est

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

New Justice
 
The process of confirming Sonia Sotomajor to the Supreme Court will be the occasion for debate over constitutional issues. The rights of those suspected and accused of crimes should be part of the discussion. No doubt Judge Sotomajor will be asked her views on torture and the treatment of suspected terrorists. She should also be asked about interrogation practices routinely used domestically, as well as other law enforcement practices that contribute to the punishment of the innocent.
 
7:11 am est

Monday, May 4, 2009

The Torture Resolution
 
Americans feel increasingly disturbed by our government's torture of suspected terrorists, but it's unclear what will come of that reaction. Ideally, it will lead to reconsideration and eventually abandonment of the interrogation methods routinely used in domestic law enforcement. The danger is that these methods will come to be seen as more acceptable because they seem tame compared to physical torture such as waterboarding. In fact, psychologically coercive interrogation techniques have similar effects to physical torture, stripping individuals of dignity and producing false confessions.
 
6:40 am est

Friday, April 17, 2009

Torture Revisited
 
This important article in the New York Review of Books discusses, among other things, the tendency of "enhanced interrogation techniques" to produce false confessions.
 
 
12:57 pm est

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

The High Court Takes Notice
 
In an opinion earlier this week, the Supreme Court noted the "mounting empirical evidence that [interrogation] pressures can induce a frighteningly high percentage of people to confess to crimes they never committed." Given this recognition, perhaps the Court will reconsider its lamentable holding that a confession may still be admissible even when police lied to the suspect about evidence allegedly implicating him. This tactic is among the leading causes of false confessions.
 
9:19 am est

Monday, April 6, 2009

Prosecutorial Misconduct
 
Kudos to Attorney General Eric Holder for dismissing charges against former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens. Stevens' conviction on charges stemming from corruption was reversed because the prosecution withheld important evidence. Such misconduct must be punished if it's to be deterred.
 
6:15 am est

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Fourth Amendment
 
Today's New York Times describes a pending Supreme Court case revolving around a school's strip search of a 13 year old girl -- based on the flimsiest suspicion. So goes the war on drugs and the war on the Fourth Amendment.
 
8:53 am est

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Death Penalty Repealed
 
Good news from New Mexico, where Governor Bill Richardson has signed legislation repealing the state's death penalty. Better still, Richardson gave as his reason the risk of executing the innocent. He noted that many people on death row were eventually exonerated (which include a number who were convicted based on false confessions).
 
10:44 am est

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Irreversible Punishment
 
Yesterday's New York Times reports that Europe is debating the propriety of castration as punishment for sex crimes. The many false confessions to sex crimes constitute a major reason to avoid this irreversible punishment.
 
9:29 am est

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Civil Liberties
 
In a recent speech, Attorney General Eric Holder said that "too often over the past decade, the fight against terrorism has been viewed as a zero-sum battle with our civil liberties. Not only is that school of thought misguided, I fear that in actuality it does more harm than good."
 
Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to interrogation methods. Some of the most inhumane methods also produce unreliable information and false confessions. This is the case not only with respect to the torture of suspected terrorists, but also of the psychologically coercive interrogation methods routinely used by law enforcement on American citizens.
 
10:41 am est

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Beyond Torture
 
Last night President Obama unequivocally declared that the U.S. will not engage in torture. That's welcome. Torture is bad policy for several reasons, including its tendency to produce false confessions. But we must not get the idea that anything short of torture is a legitimate interrogation tool. To the contrary, modern interrogation techniques, relying on bullying and deception, cause false confessions. It's good that we will no longer be torturing suspected terrorists. But we need to change the way we interrogate all suspects.   
 
8:13 am est

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Numbers Update
 
The Innocence Project reports 232 cases of post-conviction DNA exoneration, including 5 already this year.  In roughly 25% of those cases, the person wrongly convicted made incriminating admissions, pled guilty, or gave an outright false confession.
 
 
8:56 am est

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Wisdom In New York
 
Earlier this month, the New York State Bar Association released a report based on study of 53 overturned convictions.  The study found the usual causes of wrongful conviction, including faulty identification, mishandling of forensic evidence, and reliance on false confessions. Critically, the report calls for electronic recording of all interrogations of felony suspects.
 
12:25 pm est

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Corruption Of Evidence
 

This discusses an important collateral problem of false confessions – they corrupt other evidence.

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7:27 pm est

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

False Accusations
 
As the cases of perjury against baseball stars Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens move forward, it's worth keeping in mind that ideally the presumption of innocence extends beyond the court of law and to the court of public opinion. Just as there are many false confessions, there are many false accusations, and often for the same reason -- pressure from law enforcement authorities.
 
 
8:47 pm est

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Disappointing Decision
 
The U.S. Supreme Court recently decided that when the police arrest someone based on a withdrawn warrant that was mistakenly left in the computer, the evidence found during the arrest should not be excluded at trial. Especially as we learn about the extent of wrongful convictions (stemming from false confessions and other causes), the last thing we should be doing is encouraging sloppiness by law enforcement.
 
3:23 pm est

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Two Good Announcements
 
It's been a good week. On the national level, Barack Obama announced that his administration will not engage in waterboarding. On a local level, officials in Nassau County, New York announced that they will join the ranks of jurisdictions that videotape all interrogations related to major felonies. Both of these actions will help reduce the number of false confessions.
 
8:51 pm est

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Body Language
 
In a recent case where I served as a false confessions expert, at the suppression hearing the interrogating officer explained that he knew the defendant was guilty based on her body language. At one point he said that, when the defendant denied her guilt, she was crying, and "the two don't add up. If she had nothing to do with it and she was being honest about it, the emotions wouldn't have been coming out." 
 
This is nonsense, but it's dangerous nonsense. Police are taught that they can reliably make these kinds of assessments, but studies show that neither they nor anyone else can determine whether someone is telling the truth based on assessments of behavior or body language.
 
10:03 am est

Friday, January 2, 2009

Death In Georgia
 
There's a movement afoot in Georgia to eliminate the requirement of jury unanimity for imposition of the death penalty. The last thing we should be doing is making it easier to execute people, especially now that DNA testing has exonerated so many people wrongly convicted of crimes.  A number of them, including some who had given false confessions, had been on death row.
 
 
7:46 am est

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