Saul Kassin's analysis of false confessions and their influence on legal investigations

¶ … Confessions Trump Innocence

Saul Kassin's Why Confessions Trump Innocence uses the Amanda Knox case as a lead to illustrate a point that the author wants to make about the use and value of confessions within the legal system. The author begins by outlining the psychological elements of confessions, noting that there are three types of false confessions. The author posits that confessions create a situation where the investigation is compromised, both investigators and prosecutors seeking to build their cases to confirm the hypothesis that was derived from the confession.

The author focuses this article on the consequences of confessions. The first response to a confession is that the police generally close the case -- they either seek confirmatory evidence or stop seeking evidence altogether. Prosecutors as well place high value on confessions, and the author uses one anecdote about a prosecutor who refuses to accept DNA evidence exonerating a prisoner who had confessed to support his case.

Another issue is the effect of confessions on the jury. The author notes that juries are not nearly as well-schooled as he is with respect to false confessions, and therefore not surprisingly juries find confessions to have more influence than other factors on gaining convictions. The author had earlier explained that there are particular mental states or influencing factors for false confessions, such that many people cannot envision a situation where one would confess to a crime that they did not commit. A jury made up of such people, therefore, would find it implausible that a confession could be false. The author calls accepting a confession "noncritical acceptance of confessions" in any situation where the jury does not buy the defense team's attempts to discredit the confession . Kassin argues -- not very well, mind you -- that people believe what the ideas with which they are presented, and that this is why they accept confessions as truthful. On page 432, he states that 25% of confessions are false, so the reality is that a juror believing the confession is simply running with mathematical probability. Also, they cannot simultaneously believe everything both sides in a court case are telling them -- Kassin doesn't really address this apparent paradox in his logic. People do not believe everything at face value -- they can't in a trial where conflicting information is presented -- so this premise holds no merit.

Kassin speculates on some other influencers as to the weight of confessions -- theorizing for example that police must have dropped contextual clues into interviews were allegedly innocent confessors knew non-public details about the crimes. He offers no supporting evidence for this claim. Granted, given what Kassin says earlier about the nature of many police interrogations, he is not necessarily wrong, but on this critical detail his intensive use of citations dries up rather curiously.

Kassin offers a stronger case for his contention that confessions corrupt other evidence, both at the jury and prosecutorial level. Where there is a confession, other evidence is likely to be viewed differently. The criminal justice system presume the independence of different types of evidence, he notes, so confessions are problematic in that regard. Realistically, evidence is never independent, but he is right that confessions influence thinking at all other steps of an investigation and prosecution.

Lastly, Kassin offers some recommendations for addressing the challenges associated with confessions. First, he posits that there should be pretrial corroboration of confession. Second, he argues that the Fulminante decision was incorrect and should be reversed -- that confessions erroneously allowed into a trial constitute a structural defect and that a retrial should be ordered in such situations.