False Confessions- Causes Implications

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False Confessions: Causes,Consequences, and Implications

Richard A. Leo, PhD, JD

In the past two decades, hundreds of convicted prisoners have been exonerated by DNA and non-DNA evidence,revealing that police-induced false confessions are a leading cause of wrongful conviction of the innocent. In thisarticle, empirical research on the causes and correlates of false confessions is reviewed. After a description of thethree sequential processes that are responsible for the elicitation of false confessionsmisclassification, coercion,and contaminationthe three psychologically distinct types of false confession (voluntary, compliant, and per-suaded) are discussed along with the consequences of introducing false-confession evidence in the criminal justicesystem. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of empirical research for reducing thenumber of false confessions and improving the accuracy of confession evidence that is introduced against adefendant at trial.

J Am Acad Psychiatry Law 37:332 43, 2009

In recent years, the media have reported numeroushigh-profile cases in which individuals were con-victed of and incarcerated for serious crimes they didnot commit, only later to be exonerated.1 Many,though not most, of these exonerations occurred af-ter postconviction DNA evidence established inno-cence of those convicted.2 In some of these cases,such as the Central Park Jogger case in New YorkCity, the DNA evidence established the innocence of

multiple defendants who had been wrongly prose-cuted, convicted, and incarcerated. To date, morethan 220 individuals have been exonerated by post-conviction DNA testing and released from prison,some from death row (e.g., see the Innocence Projectat www.innocenceproject.org). Although researchersand scholars have long documented the problem of

wrongful conviction,3 the use of DNA testing to ex-onerate innocent prisoners and the sustained mediaattention that it has received has increased publicrecognition that the criminal justice system often

convicts the wrong people.4

Although the number ofwrongful convictions continues to mount, the DNAexonerations represent only a small part of a muchlarger problem. For in most criminal cases, there wasand is no DNA evidence available for testing.

Nevertheless, the DNA exonerations provide awindow into the causes of erroneous prosecution andwrongful conviction. A disturbing number of thesecases involved false confessions given by innocentdefendants during a psychologically coercive policeinterrogation. In the Central Park Jogger case, forexample, all five juveniles falsely confessed afterlengthy unrecorded interrogations in which they

were yelled at, lied to, threatened, and promised im-

munity in exchange for their admissions to partici-pating in the assault and rape.5 In 15 to 20 percent ofthe DNA cases, police-induced false confessions werethe primary cause of the wrongful conviction.6,7

Here too, however, the documented cases appear torepresent the proverbial tip of the iceberg, as theDNA exonerations again do not include most casesin which there is no DNA to test. They also do notinclude false confessions that were dismissed or dis-proved before trial, those that resulted in guilty pleas,those given for crimes that were not subject to post-conviction review (especially less serious crimes), and

those given in cases that contain confidentiality pro-visions (e.g., juvenile proceedings).

False confessions raise important questions for so-cial scientists, mental health professionals, policy-makers, and the public. They are consistently one ofthe leading, yet most misunderstood, causes of errorin the American legal system and thus remain one ofthe most prejudicial sources of false evidence thatlead to wrongful convictions. In this article, I will

Dr.Leo is Associate Professorof Law, University of San Francisco, SanFrancisco, CA. Address correspondence to: Richard A. Leo, PhD, JD,University of San Francisco School of Law, 2130 Fulton Street, SanFrancisco, CA 94117. E-mail: [email protected]

332 The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law

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review and analyze the empirical research on thecauses and correlates of false confessions, the psycho-logical logic and various types of false confession, andthe consequences of introducing false-confession ev-idence at trials.

A false confession is an admission (I did it) plus

a postadmission narrative (a detailed description ofhow and why the crime occurred) of a crime that theconfessor did not commit. Although other research-ers have also documented and analyzed numerousfalse confessions in recent years, we do not know howfrequently they occur. A scientifically meaningful in-cidence rate cannot be determined for several rea-sons. First, researchers cannot identify (and thus can-not randomly sample) the universe of falseconfessions, because no governmental or private or-ganization keeps track of this information. Second,even if one could identify a set of possibly false con-

fessions, it is not usually possible as a practical matterto obtain the primary case materials (e.g., police re-ports, pretrial and trial transcripts, and electronic re-cordings of the interrogations) necessary to evaluatethe unreliability of these confessions. Finally, even indisputed confession cases in which researchers areable to obtain primary case materials, it may still bedifficult to determine unequivocally the groundtruth (i.e., what really happened) with sufficient cer-tainty to prove the confession false. In most allegedfalse-confession cases, it is therefore impossible to

remove completely any possible doubts about theconfessors innocence.Social science research on wrongful convictions,

however, has demonstrated that there are four waysto prove a confession is false: (1) when it can beobjectively established that the suspect confessed to acrime that did not happen (e.g., the presumed mur-der victim is found alive); (2) when it can be objec-tively established that the defendant could not havecommitted the crime because it would have beenphysically impossible to have done so (e.g., he was inanother location at the time of the crime); (3) when

the true perpetrator of a crime is identified and hisguilt can be objectively established; or (4) when sci-entific evidence, in recent years most commonlyDNA evidence, conclusively establishes the confes-sors innocence.8 Despite these four possibilities,only a small number of alleged false confessions con-tain the independent case evidence or circumstancesthat allow the confessor to prove his innocence be-yond dispute. Nevertheless, researchers have docu-

mented approximately 300 proven false confessionsin recent decades.7 Researchers have also categorizedcases involving likely, but nonproven, false confes-sions as highly probable or probable falseconfessions.8

Despite substantial documentation and analysis

by scholars,8,9

the phenomenon of police-inducedfalse confessions remains counterintuitive to mostpeople. Most lay people believe in what has beenreferred to as the myth of psychological interroga-tion: that an innocent person will not falsely confessto police unless he is physically tortured or mentallyill.10 This belief has been noted by several scholarsand documented in public surveys.7,11,12 The mythof psychological interrogation persists because mostpeople do not know what occurs during police inter-rogations, and because they wrongly assume that in-dividuals do not act against their self-interest or en-

gage in self-destructive behavior, such as falselyconfessing to a crime that they did not commit.

The Causes of False Confession:Misclassification, Coercion, andContamination

There is no single cause of false confession, andthere is no single logic or type of false confession.Police-induced false confessions result from a multi-step process and sequence of influence, persuasion,and compliance and usually involve psychological

coercion.13

Police are more likely to elicit false con-fessions under certain conditions of interrogation,however, and individuals with certain personalitytraits and dispositions are more easily pressured intogiving false confessions. To understand why criminalsuspects give false confessions, we must first under-stand how police investigators target criminal sus-pects and how police interrogation works as a psy-chological process, before eliciting a suspectsadmission and in the postadmission stage ofinterrogation.

There are three sequential errors, which occur dur-ing a police-elicited false confession, that lead to a

wrongful conviction. Investigators first misclassify aninnocent person as guilty; they next subject him to aguilt-presumptive, accusatory interrogation that in-variably involves lies about evidence and often therepeated use of implicit and explicit promises andthreats as well. Once they have elicited a false admis-sion, they pressure the suspect to provide a postad-mission narrative that they jointly shape, often sup-

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most documented false confessions occur in homi-cides and high-profile cases.2,5

Once interrogation commences, the primarycause of police-induced false confession is psycholog-ically coercive police methods.20 Psychological coer-cion can be defined in two ways: police use of inter-

rogation techniques that are regarded as inherentlycoercive in psychology and law, or police use of in-terrogation techniques that, cumulatively, cause asuspect to perceive that he has no choice but to com-ply with the interrogators demands. Usually theseamount to the same thing. Psychologically coerciveinterrogation techniques include some examples ofthe old third degree, such as deprivations (of food,sleep, water, or access to bathroom facilities, for ex-ample), incommunicado interrogation, and induc-tion of extreme exhaustion and fatigue. In the mod-ern era, however, these techniques are rare in

domestic police interrogations. Instead, when to-days police interrogators employ psychologically co-ercive techniques, they usually consist of (implicit orexpress) promises of leniency and threats of harshertreatment. As Ofshe and Leo have written, the mod-ern equivalent to the rubber hose is the indirectthreat communicated through pragmatic implica-tion (Ref. 21, p 1115). Threats and promises cantake a variety of forms, and they are usually repeated,developed, and elaborated over the course of the in-terrogation. Most documented false confessions in

recent decades have been directly caused by or haveinvolved promises or threats.5,8

The second form of psychological coercion, caus-ing a suspect to perceive that he has no choice but tocomply with the wishes of the interrogator, is notspecific to any one technique but may be the cumu-lative result of the interrogation methods as a whole.If one understands the psychological structure andlogic of contemporary interrogation, it is not difficultto see how it can produce this effect. The custodialenvironment and physical confinement are intendedto isolate and disempower the suspect. Interrogation

is designed to be stressful and unpleasant, and it ismore stressful and unpleasant the more intense itbecomes and the longer it lasts. Interrogation tech-niques are meant to cause the suspect to perceive thathis guilt has been established beyond any conceivabledoubt, that no one will believe his claims of inno-cence, and that by continuing to deny the detectivesaccusations he will only make his situation (and theultimate outcome of the case against him) much

worse. The suspect may perceive that he has nochoice but to comply with the detectives wishes,because he is fatigued, worn down, or simply sees noother way to escape an intolerably stressful experi-ence. Some suspects come to believe that the only

way they will be able to leave is if they do what the

detectives say. Others comply because they are led tobelieve that it is the only way to avoid a feared out-come (e.g., homosexual rape in prison). When a sus-pect perceives that he has no choice but to comply,his resultant compliance and confession are, by def-inition, involuntary and the product of coercion.20

Vulnerable Suspects

Even though psychological coercion is the primarycause of police-induced false confessions, individualsdiffer in their ability to withstand interrogation pres-sure and thus in their susceptibility to making false

confessions.9All other things being equal, those whoare highly suggestible or compliant are more likely toconfess falsely. Individuals who are highly suggestibletend to have poor memories, high levels of anxiety,low self-esteem, and low assertiveness, personalityfactors that also make them more vulnerable to thepressures of interrogation and thus more likely toconfess falsely.12 Interrogative suggestibility tends tobe heightened by sleep deprivation, fatigue, and drugor alcohol withdrawal.22,23 Individuals who arehighly compliant tend to be conflict avoidant, acqui-

escent, and eager to please others, especially authorityfigures.9

Highly suggestible or compliant individuals arenot the only ones who are unusually vulnerable to thepressures of police interrogation. So are the develop-mentally disabled or cognitively impaired, juveniles,and the mentally ill. The developmentally disabledare more likely to confess falsely for a variety of rea-sons.24,25 First, because of their subnormal intellec-tual functioning, low intelligence, short attentionspan, poor memory, and poor conceptual and com-munication skills, they do not always understand

statements made to them or the implications of theiranswers. They often lack the ability to think in acausal way about the consequences of their actions.Their limited intellectual intelligence translates intoa limited social intelligence as well: they do not al-

ways fully comprehend the context or complexity ofcertain social interactions or situations, particularlyadversarial ones, including a police interrogation.They are not, for example, likely to understand that

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the police detective who appears to be friendly isreally their adversary or to grasp the long-term con-sequences of making an incriminating statement.They are thus highly suggestible and easy to manip-ulate. They also lack self-confidence, possess poorproblem-solving abilities, and have tendencies to

mask or disguise their cognitive deficits and to lookto others, particularly authority figures, for appropri-ate cues to behavior. It is therefore easy to get them toagree with and repeat false or misleading statements,even incriminating ones.

Second, as many researchers have noted, the de-velopmentally disabled are eager to please.26 Theytend to have a high need for approval and thus areprone to being acquiescent. They have adapted totheir cognitive disability by learning to submit to andcomply with the demands of others, again especiallythose of authority figures.27 Because of their desire to

please, they are easily influenced and led to comply insituations of conflict. Some observers refer to this asbiased responding.26 The developmentally dis-abled answer affirmatively when they perceive a re-sponse to be desirable and negatively when they per-ceive it to be undesirable. They literally tell theperson who is questioning them what they believethe questioner wants to hear. A related trait is thecheating-to-lose syndrome. The developmentallydisabled eagerly assume blame or knowingly provideincorrect answers to please, curry favor with, or seek

the approval of an authority figure. It is not difficultto see how their compliance and submissiveness, es-pecially with figures of authority, can lead the devel-opmentally disabled to make false confessions duringpolice interrogations.

Third, because of their cognitive disabilities andlearned coping behaviors, the developmentally dis-abled are easily overwhelmed by stress. They simplylack the psychological resources to withstand thesame level of pressure, distress, and anxiety as men-tally normal individuals.26,27As a result, they tend toavoid conflict. They may experience even ordinary

levels of stress, far below that felt in an accusatorialpolice interrogation, as overwhelming. They aretherefore less likely to resist the pressures of confron-tational police questioning and more likely to com-ply with the demands of their accusers, even if thismeans knowingly making a false confession. Thepoint at which they are willing to tell a detective whathe wants to hear to escape an aversive interrogation isoften far lower than that of a mentally normal indi-

vidual, especially if the interrogation is prolonged.There have been numerous documented cases of falseconfessions from the developmentally disabled in re-cent years.5

Youth is also a significant risk factor for police-induced false confessions.28,29 Many of the develop-

mental traits that characterize the developmentallydisabled may also characterize young children andadolescents. Many juveniles too are highly compli-ant. They tend to be immature, naively trusting ofauthority, acquiescent, and eager to please adult fig-ures. They are thus predisposed to be submissive

when questioned by police. Juveniles also tend to behighly suggestible. Like the developmentally dis-abled, they are easily pressured, manipulated, or per-suaded to make false statements, including incrimi-nating ones. Youth (especially young children) alsolack the cognitive capacity and judgment to under-

stand the nature or gravity of an interrogation or thelong-term consequences of their responses to policequestions. Like the developmentally disabled, juve-niles also have limited language skills, memory, at-tention span, and information-processing abilitiescompared with normal adults. And juveniles too areless capable of withstanding interpersonal stress andthus are more likely to perceive aversive interrogationas intolerable. All of these traits explain why they aremore vulnerable to coercive interrogation and moresusceptible to making false confessions.

Finally, people with mental illness are also dispro-portionately likely to make false confessions,30 espe-cially in response to police pressure. The mentally illpossess a range of psychiatric symptoms that makethem more likely to agree with, suggest, or confabu-late false and misleading information and provide itto detectives during interrogations. These symptomsinclude faulty reality monitoring, distorted percep-tions and beliefs, an inability to distinguish fact fromfantasy, proneness to feelings of guilt, heightenedanxiety, mood disturbances, and a lack of self con-trol.9,12 In addition, the mentally ill may suffer from

deficits in executive functioning, attention, andmemory; become easily confused; and lack socialskills such as assertiveness.30 These traits also increasethe risk of falsely confessing. While the mentally illare likely to make voluntary false confessions, theymay also be easily coerced into making compliantones. As Salas points out: Mental illness makes peo-ple suggestible and susceptible to the slightest formof pressure; coercion can take place much more eas-

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ily, and in situations that a normal person might notfind coercive (Ref. 31, p 264). As a result, the men-tally ill are especially vulnerable either to giving falseconfessions or to misunderstanding the context oftheir confessions, thus making statements againsttheir own best interests that an average criminal sus-

pect would not make (Ref. 31, p 274).It is important to emphasize, however, that policeelicit most false confessions from mentally normalindividuals.5,8 For example, Drizin and Leo,5 in astudy of 125 proven false confessions, showed thatmore than 70 percent were given by mentally normalindividuals (i.e., neither developmentally disablednor mentally ill).

The Contamination Error

Psychologically coercive police methods (and howthey interact with an individuals personality) mayexplain how and why a suspect is moved, often pains-takingly, from denial to admission, but a confessionis more than an I did it statement. It also consists ofa subsequent narrative that researchers have referredto as the postadmission narrative.8 The narrativecontextualizes and attempts to explain the I did itstatement and transforms the fledgling admissioninto a fully formed confession. The postadmissionnarrative makes the story appear, at least on its face,to be a compelling account of the suspects guilt. Thecontent of and rhetorical force of a suspects postad-

mission narrative explains, in part, why confessionsare treated as such powerful evidence of guilt andsometimes lead to the prosecution and conviction ofthe innocent.7

Police detectives understand the importance of thepostadmission phase of interrogation. They use it toinfluence, shape, and sometimes even script the sus-pects narrative. The detectives goal is to elicit a per-suasive account that successfully incriminates thesuspect and leads to his conviction. For example, infalse-confession cases, interrogators have been adeptat inventing, suggesting, or eliciting an account of

the suspects motivation; indeed, they often use sce-nario-based inducements as a method of attributing amotive to the suspect, typically one that minimizeshis culpability, one that the suspect agrees to andthen repeats, even if it is completely inaccurate. [Inthe case ofLowery v. County of Riley, 522 F.3d 1086(10th Cir. 2008), who was accused and ultimatelyconvicted of raping an elderly woman and was exon-erated by DNA evidence many years later, police

pressured Lowery to admit to having committed therape because he had recently discovered that his wife

was having an affair with another man, and theypromised him psychological counseling in lieu ofprison, if he admitted to that motive].7 In addition,interrogators encourage the suspect to attribute the

decision to confess to an act of conscience and urgehim to express remorse about committing the crime.They may provide vivid scene details that appear tocorroborate the suspects guilty knowledge and thusconfirm his culpability. Interrogators may also try tomake the admission appear to be voluntary, portray-ing the suspect as the agent of his own confession andthemselves merely as its passive recipient.

Interrogators help create the false confession bypressuring the suspect to accept a particular accountand by suggesting facts of the crime to him, therebycontaminating the suspects postadmission narrative.

Unless he has learned the details of the crime scenefrom community gossip or the media, an innocentperson would not know either the mundane or thedramatic details of the crime.8 The innocent sus-pects postadmission narrative should therefore bereplete with errors when he responds to questions for

which the answers cannot easily be guessed bychance, unless, of course, the answers are implied,suggested, or explicitly provided to the suspect,

which, in fact, does occur, whether advertently orinadvertently, in many false-confession cases.8,32 If

the entire interrogation is captured on audio or videorecording, then it may be possible to trace, step bystep, how and when the interrogator implied or sug-gested the correct answers for the suspect to incorpo-rate into his postadmission narrative. If, however, theentire interrogation is not recordedand most doc-umented false-confession cases are notthen theremay be no objective way to prove that the interroga-tor contaminated the suspects postadmissionnarrative.

The contamination of the suspects postadmissionnarrative is thus the third mistake in the trilogy of

police errors that, cumulatively, lead to the elicita-tion and construction of a suspects false confession.

The Different Types of False Confession

In 1985 social psychologists Saul Kassin and Law-rence Wrightsman,33 drawing on case studies andsocial psychological theories of attitude change, firstidentified three distinct types of false confession,

which they called voluntary (occurring in the ab-

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sence of elicitation), coerced-compliant (occurringwhen the suspect publically professes guilt in re-sponse to extreme methods of interrogation, despiteknowing privately that he or she is truly innocent),and coerced-internalized (occurring when the sus-pect actually comes to believe that he or she com-

mitted the offense). Ofshe and Leo20

extended andmodified the initial typology of Kassin and Wrights-man21 to include five distinct types of false confes-sion: voluntary, stress-compliant, coerced compli-ant, coerced-persuaded, and noncoerced-persuaded.This classification scheme most accurately capturesthe psychological logic and variation in false confes-sions. For simplicity, researchers have dropped thevarious prefixes and simply refer to voluntary, com-pliant, and persuaded false confessions.7 It is impor-tant to understand that there are three conceptuallydistinct psychological processes at work in the pro-

duction and elicitation of false confessions.

Voluntary False Confessions

Kassin and Wrightsman33 initially defined a vol-untary false confession as one that is offered in theabsence of police interrogation. Voluntary false con-fessions are thus explained by the internal psycholog-ical states or needs of the confessor9 or by externalpressure brought to bear on the confessor by some-one other than the police.34 Most voluntary falseconfessions appear to result from an underlying psy-

chological disturbance or psychiatric disorder. AsKassin and Wrightsman33 point out, individuals vol-unteer false confessions in the absence of police ques-tioning for a variety of reasons: a desire for notorietyor fame, the need to expiate guilt over imagined orreal acts, an inability to distinguish between fantasyand reality, or a pathological need for acceptance orself-punishment. But voluntary false confessionsneed not be rooted in psychological maladies. A per-son may, for example, provide a voluntary false con-fession out of a desire to aid and protect the realcriminal,35 to provide an alibi for a different crime or

norm violation,36 or to get revenge on another per-son.9 High-profile crimes, such as the Lindbergh kid-napping in the 1930s, the Black Dahlia murder inthe 1940s, and the JonBenet Ramsey and NicoleBrown Simpson murders in the 1990s, tend to at-tract a large number of voluntary false confessions.37

Detectives tend to be far more skeptical and less ac-cepting of voluntary false confessions than of police-induced false confessions. Put differently, police

more readily recognize and discount voluntary falseconfessions than those they elicit.9

Compliant False Confessions

A compliant false confession is one given in re-sponse to police coercion, stress, or pressure to

achieve some instrumental benefittypically eitherto terminate and thus escape from an aversive inter-rogation process, to take advantage of a perceivedsuggestion or promise of leniency, or to avoid ananticipated harsh punishment.20 Perhaps the mostdistinct aspect of compliant false confessions is thatthey are made knowingly: the suspect admits guilt

with the knowledge that he is innocent and that whathe says is false. Compliant false confessions are typi-cally recanted shortly after the interrogation is over.

There are several reasons that suspects give com-pliant false confessions. Kassin and Wrightsman firstsuggested that compliant false confessions arisethrough the coerciveness of the interrogation pro-cess (Ref. 33, p 77). In the pre-modern era of Amer-ican interrogation, physical coercion, the so-calledthird degree, was the primary cause of such confes-sions. Innocent suspects knowingly falsely confessedto avoid or end physical assaults, torture sessions, andthe like.38 In the modern era, psychological coercionis the primary source of compliant false confessions.Psychologically oriented interrogation techniquesare just as capable of eliciting compliant false confes-

sions as are physical ones. Ofshe and Leo20

have iden-tified classically coercive influence techniques (i.e.,threats and promises, explicit or implied) as the rootcause of most compliant false confessions in themodern era.

Coerced-compliant false confessions are the mostcommon type of false confession. As Kassin notes,the pages of legal history are filled with stories ofcoerced-compliant confessions (Ref. 39, p 225).Compliant false confessions occur as a result of thesequenced influence process through which detec-tives seek to persuade a suspect that he is indisputably

caught and that the most viable way to mitigate hispunishment and escape his otherwise hopeless situa-tion is by confessing.40 As has been well docu-mented, American police use interrogation tech-niques that are designed, on the one hand, toconvince a suspect that he is caught and that it isfutile for him to deny the crime and, on the otherhand, techniques that are designed to motivate himto perceive that it is in his interest to confess.

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The most potent psychological inducement is thesuggestion that the suspect will be treated more le-niently if he confesses and more punitively if he doesnot. Unlike most police interrogation techniques,promises and threats are neither standard nor legal;rather, they are regarded as coercive in both psychol-

ogy and law.41

It is not hard to understand why suchthreats and promises in combination with standardinterrogation techniques, such as repeated accusa-tions, attacks on a suspects denials, lies about non-existent evidence, pressure, and inducements, maycause a suspect to confess knowingly to a crime he didnot commit. Put simply, the suspect comes to per-ceive that the benefits of confessing (e.g., release fromcustody, mitigated punishment) outweigh the costsof denial (e.g., arrest, aggravated punishment). Thismay be especially true for those suspects who naivelybelieve that the fact of their innocence will, in the

end, exonerate them.42Although psychologically coercive threats and

promises may be the primary sources of compliantfalse confessions, they are not the only ones. Stress20

and police pressure9 are also causes. Custodial inter-rogation is inherently stressful, anxiety-provoking,and unpleasant. The interrogators interpersonalstyle may also be a source of distress: he may beconfrontational, insistent, demanding, overbearing,deceptive, hostile, and manipulative. His accusato-rial techniques are also designed to induce distress by

attacking the suspects self-confidence, by not per-mitting him to assert his innocence, and by causinghim to feel powerless and trapped. The interrogationmay span hours, as often occurs with compliant falseconfessions, weakening a suspects resistance, induc-ing fatigue, and heightening suggestibility.

The combined effect of these multiple stressorsmay overwhelm the suspects cognitive capacitiessuch that he confesses simply to terminate what hasbecome an intolerably stressful experience. Facing anoverbearing interrogator who refuses to take no foran answer, he may reason that telling the interrogator

what he wants to hear is the only way to escape.21

Persuaded False Confessions

Persuaded false confessions occur when police in-terrogation tactics cause an innocent suspect todoubt his memory and he becomes temporarily per-suaded that it is more likely than not that he com-mitted the crime, despite having no memory of com-mitting it.20 Persuaded false confessions typically

unfold in three sequential steps. First, the interroga-tor causes the suspect to doubt his innocence. This istypically a by-product of an intense, lengthy, anddeceptive accusatorial interrogation in which the in-terrogator repeatedly accuses the suspect of commit-ting the crime, relentlessly attacks the suspects deni-

als (as implausible, illogical, contradicted by theknown facts, or simply wrong because of the interro-gators alleged superior knowledge or authority) andrepeatedly confronts the suspect with fabricated (butallegedly irrefutable) evidence of his guilt. When firstaccused, the innocent suspect thinks that his interro-gators are genuinely mistaken, and he counters byattempting to reason with them and persuade themof his innocence. At some point, however, the sus-pect realizes that they are not going to credit hisassertions of innocence. He may then begin to expe-rience dissonance because he cannot reconcile the

obvious contradiction between his knowledge thathe is innocent and his belief that the police are truth-fully reporting unmistakable evidence of his guilt.The suspect offers up the remaining basis for hisbelief in his innocence: that he has no memory ofcommitting the crime.

To convince the suspect that it is plausible, andlikely, that he committed the crime, the interrogatorsmust supply him with a reason that satisfactorily ex-plains how he could have done it without remember-ing it. This is the second step in the psychological

process that leads to a persuaded false confession.Typically, the interrogator suggests one version oranother of a repressed memory theory. He or shemay suggest, for example, that the suspect experi-enced an alcohol- or drug-induced blackout, a dryblackout, a multiple personality disorder, a momen-tary lapse in consciousness, or posttraumatic stressdisorder, or, perhaps most commonly, that the sus-pect simply repressed his memory of committing thecrime because it was a traumatic experience for him.

The suspect can only be persuaded to accept re-sponsibility for the crime if he regards one of the

interrogators explanations for his alleged amnesia asplausible. Once the suspect is convinced, he comes tobelieve that it is more likely than not that he com-mitted the crime. The suspect remains in an uncer-tain belief state, because he still has no memory ofcommitting the crime. Despite his lack of memory,once the suspect is over the line,21 he is ready for thethird and final step in the making of a persuaded falseconfession: the construction of the postadmission

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narrative. Once the suspect has accepted responsibil-ity for the crime, the interrogator pushes him to sup-ply the details of how and why he did it. The suspectdoes not know the facts; he is in the paradoxicalsituation of believing he committed an act that he

wants to confess to but cannot remember. He may

believe that if he thinks hard enough, searches hismind, or tries to imagine himself committing thecrime, he will somehow be able to remember it andsupply the desired details; but he does not rememberthe crime. Instead, the suspect either guesses or con-fabulates about how the crime could have occurred,repeats the details that the police have suggested tohim, knowingly makes up the details, or tries to inferthem from the interrogators suggestions.

Usually, the persuaded false confessors postad-mission narrative is replete with errors. Reasoningfrom inference rather than actual knowledge, his

confession is given in hypothetical, tentative, andspeculative language.9,21 His use of equivocal lan-guage reflects his uncertain belief state, confusion,and lack of memory. Assuming that the suspect islying, however, the interrogators sometimes reject hisspeculations and pressure him to use declarativerather than conditional language and to provide thedetails of the crime that they continue to believe heknows. Some persuaded false confessors bend to thedemands of their interrogators and confess in declar-ative language (e.g., I did instead of I must have

done), even though they lack any knowledge ormemory of the crime; others continue to use equiv-ocal, speculative, and uncertain language (I musthave done it, I probably did it, I guess I did it, Icould have done it), insisting that they still do notknow or remember the details. Ofshe and Leo20 havecalled this the grammar of confabulation. This lan-guage of uncertainty is present in all persuaded falseconfessions. Usually, the persuaded false confessorrecants either during the interrogation or shortly af-ter being removed from the interrogationenvironment.

Persuaded false confessions appear to occur far lessoften than compliant false confessions. They alsotend to occur primarily in high-profile murder casesand to be the product of unusually lengthy and psy-chologically intense interrogations.7 Once he is re-moved from the interrogation environment and itsattendant influences and pressures, the persuadedfalse confessor typically recants his confession.9,20

Some recant even before the interrogation termi-

nates. Regardless, ordinary police interrogation is notstrong enough to produce a permanent change in thesuspects beliefs.20

The Consequences of Police-Induced

False ConfessionsConfessions are the most incriminating and per-

suasive evidence of guilt that the state can bringagainst a defendant. False confessions are thereforethe most incriminating and persuasive false evidenceof guilt that the state can bring against an innocentdefendant. Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Wil-liam Brennans observation that no other class ofevidence is so profoundly prejudicial43 is amplysupported by social science research.44 Confessionsexert a strong biasing effect on the perceptions anddecision-making of criminal justice officials and lay

jurors alike because most people assume that a con-fession, especially a detailed confession, is, by its verynature, true. Confession evidence therefore tends todefine the case against a defendant, usually overrid-ing any contradictory information or evidence ofinnocence.8

A suspects confession sets in motion a seeminglyirrefutable presumption of guilt among justice offi-cials, the media, the public, and lay jurors.8 Thischain of events in effect leads each part of the systemto be stacked against the individual who confesses,

and as a result he is treated more harshly at every stageof the investigative and trial process.45 He is signifi-cantly more likely to be incarcerated before trial,charged, pressured to plead guilty, and convicted.Moreover, the presence of a confession creates itsown set of confirmatory and cross-contaminating bi-ases,46,47 leading both officials and jurors to interpretall other case information in the worst possible lightfor the defendant. For example, a weak and ambigu-ous eyewitness identification that otherwise mayhave been quickly dismissed in the absence of a con-fession is treated instead as corroboration of the con-fessions underlying validity. As the case against aninnocent false confessor moves from one stage to thenext in the criminal justice system, it gathers morecollective force, and the error becomes increasinglydifficult to reverse.

This chain reaction starts with the police. Oncethey obtain a confession, they typically close theirinvestigation, clear the case as solved, and make noeffort to pursue any exculpatory evidence or other

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possible leads, even if the confession is internally in-consistent, contradicted by external evidence, or theresult of coercive interrogation.45 Even when othercase evidence subsequently emerges suggesting ordemonstrating that the suspects confession is false,police almost always continue to believe in the sus-

pects guilt and the underlying accuracy of the con-fession.5,8 American police interrogators are poorlytrained about the risks of psychological interrogationand the phenomenon of police-induced false confes-sion,8,40 and, like most people, they tend to assumethat virtually all confessions are true and thus assumethat virtually all who confess are guilty.7

The presumption of guilt and the tendency totreat more harshly those who confess extends to pros-ecutors, defense attorneys, and judges as well. Likepolice, prosecutors rarely consider the possibility thatan entirely innocent suspect has falsely confessed;

some prosecutors are so skeptical of the idea of po-lice-induced false confession that they stubbornlyrefuse to admit that it occurred, even after DNAevidence has unequivocally established the defen-dants innocence.48 Once a suspect has confessed,prosecutors tend to charge him with the highestnumber and types of offenses49 and set his bail at ahigher amount50 (especially in serious or high profilecases), and they are far less likely to initiate or accepta plea bargain to a reduced charge.21 The confessionbecomes the centerpiece of the prosecutions case

against the defendant. Even defense attorneys treatsuspects who confess more harshly, often pressuringthem to accept a guilty plea to a lesser charge to avoidthe higher sentence that will inevitably follow from a

jury conviction.51,52 As the California SupremeCourt has noted, the confession operates as a kind ofevidentiary bombshell which shatters the defense.53

American judges too tend to presume that a defen-dant who has confessed is guilty and, accordingly,treat him more punitively. Conditioned to disbelievedefendants claims of innocence or police miscon-duct, judges rarely suppress confessions, even highly

questionable ones.54If the defendants case goes to trial, the jury treats

the confession as more probative of the defendantsguilt than any other type of evidence (short of a vid-eotape of the suspect committing the crime), espe-cially if, as in virtually all high profile cases, the con-fession receives pretrial publicity.8,44,55 Falseconfessions are highly likely to lead to the wrongfulconviction of the innocent. In their study of 60 false

confessions, Leo and Ofshe8,56 found that 73 percentof all false confessors whose cases went to trial wereerroneously convicted; this number went up to 81percent in the study of Drizin and Leo5 of 125 falseconfessions. Taken together, these studies demon-strate that a false confession is a dangerous piece of

evidence to put before a judge or jury, because itprofoundly biases their evaluation of the case in favorof conviction, so much so that they may allow it tooutweigh even strong evidence of a suspects factualinnocence.8 The Leo and Ofshe8,56 and Drizin andLeo5 studies show that real-world jurors simply fail todiscount false-confession evidence appropriately,even when the defendants uncorroborated confes-sion was elicited by coercive methods and the othercase evidence strongly supports his innocence. Thusthe false-confession evidence is highly, if not inher-ently, prejudicial to the fate of any innocent defen-

dant in the American criminal justice system. AsWelsh White notes, the system does not have safe-guards that will prevent the jury from giving dispro-portionate weight to such confessions (Ref. 41, p155).

The findings from these field studies of aggregatedfalse-confession cases are consistent with those fromexperiments and public opinion surveys. They allconverge on the same conclusion: that, as the U.S.Supreme Court stated in the case ofArizona v. Ful-minante, a confession is like no other evidence.57 It

is uniquely potent

58

in its ability to bias the trier offact in favor of the prosecution, overwrite contradic-tory or exculpatory case evidence, and lead to the

wrongful conviction of the innocent.8 Researchershave demonstrated that mock jurors find confessionevidence more incriminating than any other type ofevidence.44,58 Kassin and Sukel55 found that confes-sions powerfully increased the conviction rate even

when mock jurors viewed the confession as coerced,even when they were instructed to disregard the con-fession as inadmissible, and even when they reportedthat it had no influence on their verdict. Confessions,

especially detailed confessions, are devastating to adefendants case because, as Welsh White notes, ju-rors are often unwilling to believe that anyone wouldconfess to a crime that they did not commit (Ref.59, p 134).

Conclusions

As this article has shown, empirical researchershave documented and analyzed how and why con-

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temporary methods of psychological interrogationcan, and sometimes do, lead innocent individuals toconfess falsely to serious crimes. The consequences ofthese false confessions are disastrous for innocent in-dividuals who are wrongfully convicted and incarcer-ated. As a result, empirical researchers have also sug-

gested ways to minimize both the number of falseconfessions that police elicit and the number of falseconfessions that, once elicited, lead to wrongful con-victions. Mandatory electronic recording of policeinterrogations in their entirety is the single most im-portant policy reform available because it creates anobjective, comprehensive, and reviewable record ofthe interrogation that all partiespolice, prosecu-tors, defense attorneys, judges, juries, and even thepublic in high-profile casescan review. Although10 states (Alaska, Minnesota, Illinois, Maine, NewMexico, Wisconsin, New Jersey, North Carolina,

Maryland, and Nebraska) and the District of Colum-bia now require that police record interrogations intheir entirety in some or all criminal cases, most po-lice departments, as well as the FBI, still do notrecord interrogations, and there remains resistance tothe idea in many quarters of law enforcement.60 Re-searchers have proposed other reforms as well, in-cluding improved police training about false confes-sions, pretrial reliability hearings to exclude false-confession evidence, putting time limits oninterrogations, prohibiting certain interrogation

techniques, greater provision of expert witness testi-mony and cautionary jury instructions at trial, andproviding additional safeguards for vulnerable pop-ulations such as the developmentally disabled and

juveniles.7

Such reforms, however, are likely to occur slowlyin the United States. Great Britain has adopted sev-eral reforms, based on growing documentation andawareness of the problem of false confessions.9Amer-ican law enforcement, however, remains steeped inthe use of investigative methods and interrogationtechniques that continue to cause the three errors

that produce false confessions, and the Americanpublic continues to believe in the myth of psycholog-ical interrogation. Until the misconception that in-nocent suspects do not confess in response to psycho-logical interrogation is dispelled, police detectives

will continue to elicit false confessions that lead towrongful convictions. As a result, social scientists andmental health professionals must continue to con-duct empirical research and educate the public about

the increasing documentation of false confessionsand the interrogative influences that promote themand ultimately lead to the conviction of the innocent.

Acknowledgment

I thank Alan Law for research assistance.

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