Confessions and Innocence: A Critical Review of Kassin's Argument

Overview of Kassin's Argument

Saul Kassin's "Why Confessions Trump Innocence" uses the Amanda Knox case as a lead example to illustrate a central point about the use and value of confessions within the legal system. Kassin begins by outlining the psychological elements of confessions, noting that there are three types of false confessions. He posits that confessions create a situation in which an investigation is compromised, with both investigators and prosecutors seeking to build their cases in order to confirm the hypothesis derived from the confession rather than to test it objectively.

Police and Prosecutorial Reliance on Confessions

Kassin focuses his article on the consequences of confessions. The first response to a confession, he argues, is that police generally close the case — they either seek only confirmatory evidence or stop seeking evidence altogether. Prosecutors similarly place high value on confessions. Kassin uses an anecdote about a prosecutor who refused to accept DNA evidence exonerating a prisoner who had already confessed, illustrating how deeply a confession can entrench a case's direction regardless of subsequent findings.

The Effect of Confessions on Juries

Another significant issue Kassin raises is the effect of confessions on juries. He notes that juries are not nearly as well-schooled as he is with respect to false confessions, and therefore it is unsurprising that juries find confessions more influential than other factors in reaching convictions. Kassin had earlier explained that particular mental states and situational pressures can produce false confessions, yet many people simply cannot envision a scenario in which someone would confess to a crime they did not commit. A jury composed of such people would therefore find it implausible that a confession could be false.

Kassin labels the uncritical acceptance of confessions as "noncritical acceptance" — a pattern that arises whenever a jury does not credit the defense team's attempts to discredit a confession. He argues, though not especially convincingly, that people tend to believe the information with which they are first presented, and that this is why they accept confessions as truthful. On page 432, he states that 25% of confessions are false, which means a juror who believes a confession is in fact acting in accordance with mathematical probability the majority of the time. Yet jurors cannot simultaneously believe everything both sides in a court case are telling them, and Kassin does not adequately address this apparent paradox in his logic. People do not accept all statements at face value — they cannot, in a trial where directly conflicting information is presented — and so his premise about blanket credulity carries limited merit.

Kassin also speculates about other factors that explain why allegedly innocent confessors knew non-public details about crimes, theorizing that police must have inadvertently dropped contextual clues during interrogations. He offers no supporting evidence for this claim. Given what Kassin says elsewhere about the nature of many police interrogations, he is not necessarily wrong, but on this critical detail his otherwise intensive use of citations noticeably dries up.