Emerging trends and contemporary analysis

Forensics, Law, & Psychology: False Confessions

It is a well accepted law in the forensic field, that only recently slipped through, that investigations can be helped by compelling people to confess. However this forensic law that encourages and enables forced confession spirals off methodological research in psychology that shows that such confessions can be harmful to the field since many prisoners end off confessing under duress and admitting to actions that they actually never perpetrated.

More than 80% of criminal cases are settled by a coercive confession (Zimbardo, 1967) and indeed, Dr. W. Sargant said that without confessions convictions may be reduced by about 70%. Confessions are an accepted part of the forensic scene and an "attractive way of solving crimes" (cited in Brandon & Davies, 1973). However, many confessions are elicited under duress -- an acceptable law in forensics -- and consistent empirical research shows that this may well result in miscarriages of judgment where the individual resorts to false confessions. How often false confessions actually occur, and how often they result in wrongful conviction, is unclear although there is significant research on the subject (e.g. Zimbardo, 1967) showing that the phenomena happens enough times to elicit signficant concern, particularly if the confession results in a conviction. Huff, Ratner, and Sagain (1986) estimated 6000 wrongful convictions in the U.S.A., whilst taking all the research into consideration and estimating that much remains unknown. Conti (1999) approximates that 300 false confessions occur each year in a high-volume area

Forensic law accepts three different types of confession: voluntary, coerced-compliant, and coerced-internalized (Conti, 1999). The latter two types of confession were not always allowed. In fact, the history of confessions in forensic legal system is interesting. In the nation's early history, confessions were seen as a significant part to conviction. Physical coercion to elicit confession was common but waned during the later 1800s to 1900s when the U.S. courts became cynical of such confessions and tended to dismiss them as questionable. Forced confessions however continued and were particularly common in Black / White cases where Blacks were often falsely convicted under duress of coerced confessions. One such notorious case was the Brown v. Mississippi (1936) case where three Black men had to sign a police-written confession to a murder of a white individual. The men were beaten, tortured, and threatened with their lives and were disallowed consultation with an attorney. Each was convicted and sentenced to death, but the Supreme Court reversed the decision insisting that a trial "is a mere pretense where the state authorities have continued a conviction resting solely upon confessions obtained by violence" (Conti, 1999, p. 287). So the confession has to be voluntary, given freely and compliantly without physical or other coercion. The repercussions of the Civil Rights Movement in the '60s and '70s set the precedent that "that a state court conviction resting upon a confession extorted by brutality and violence violated the accused's general right to due process guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment" (McCormick, 1992, p. 232).

Confessions elicited by mental abuse fall under the same category. In the case of Chambers v. Florida (1940) for instance, five drawn-out days of interrogation were castigated by the Supreme Court and similarly in the case of Haynes v. Washington (1963) where the defendant was refused telephone contact with his family and attorney as long as he did not sign his statement. Following cases of a similar kind, particularly that of Miranda v. Arizona (1966), the Supreme Court ruled that coerced confessions were inadmissible in court unless the defendant had previously been allowed to consult with an attorney and advised of his rights to remain silent. Nonetheless, as shown, false confessions remain a regularity of the forensic scene and this is due to the fact that numerous elements involve themselves in prompting such a confession. Unless these factors are known too many innocent people will continue to be convicted wrongfully. The only way to prevent this is to conduct reliable and insistent research into the factors that prompt false confessions. Disallowing coerced confessions is insufficient. As shown earlier, Bedau and Radelet (1987) discovered 350 cases of false confessions in the United States alone. In 49 of these cases, coercive strategies were used to elicit the confession. That this situation exists and continues may be primarily due to the Arizona v. Fulminante (1991) where the Supreme Court ruled in reversal to its former decision that convictions based on coerced confession need no longer be automatically reversed. Other evidence needs to be accumulated to show that the conviction was wrongful. In other words, the confession may have been coerced, but significant evidence nonetheless exists to convict the defendant. In this case, the prosecutors may continue with their judgment and the sentence stands.