Confessions By Saul M. Kassin

In the US, police often use the Reid Technique during interrogations. This technique was designed to elicit confessions from suspects. However, this technique can also lead to false confessions. One such case was the case of Michael Crowe, who was accused of murdering his sister. Michael, who was 14 at the time, was questioned by investigators until he eventually confessed to the murder, which he did not commit.

This paper explores deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) collection and its relationship to solving crimes. The collection of DNA is one of the most important steps in identifying a suspect in a crime. DNA evidence can either convict or exonerate an individual of a crime. Furthermore, the accuracy of forensic identification of evidence has the possibility of leaving biased effects on a juror (Carrell, Krauss, Liberman, Miethe, 2008). This paper examines Carrells et al’s research along with three other research articles to review how DNA is collected, the effects that is has on a juror and the pros and cons of DNA collection in the Forensic Science and Criminal Justice community.

“It is difficult to prove a causal relationship between permissible investigative and interrogatory deception and testimonial deception.  Police freely admit to deceiving suspects and defendants.  They do not admit to perjury, much less to the rationalization of perjury.  There is evidence, however of the acceptability of perjury as a means to the end of conviction.  The evidence is limited and fragmentary and is certainly not dispositive” (Skolnick, 1982).

The Reid Technique is an interrogation process that consists of two parts, the interview and a nine-step interrogation. The interview, which is non-accusatory in nature, gives the interviewer a chance to gather information related to the case. The interview

Wrongful convictions are common in the court-system. In fact, wrongful convictions are not the rare events that you see or hear on televisions shows, but are very common. They stem from some sort of systematic defect that lead to wrongful convictions such as, eyewitness misidentification testimony, unvalidated or improper forensic science, false confessions and incriminating statements, DNA lab errors, false confessions, and informants (2014). Bringing awareness to all these systematic defects, which result in wrongful, is important because it will better adjust the system to avoid making the same mistakes with future cases. However, false confession is not a systematic defect. It does not occur because files were misplaced or a lab technician put one too many drops. False confessions occur because of some of psychological attempt to protect oneself and their family. Thus, the courts responsibility should be to reduce these false confessions.

I. Before the 1980’s, courts relied on testimony and eyewitness accounts as a main source of evidence. Notoriously unreliable, these techniques have since faded away to the stunning reliability of DNA forensics.

Determining a false confession proves difficult due to the multitude of dimensions involved. According to Kassin and Wrightsman’s (1985) survey of the literature, there are three main types of false confessions—voluntary, coerced-compliant, and coerced-internalized. Unlike coerced false confessions, voluntary false confessions arise as a result of someone willingly turning themselves into the police with an account of their crime (McCann, 1998). Voluntary false confessions can result from multiple motives, including an internalized need for punishment or to save someone else’s face. In contrast, coerced false confessions directly result from police interrogations. While coerced-compliant confessions are made to avoid interrogation, escape the stressful situation, or achieve some other reward, coerced-internalized confessions emerge when a suspects begins to

To develop an experimental paradigm to study the influence of psychologically based interrogation techniques on true and false confessions.

In 1962, Criminal Interrogation and Confessions was written by John E. Reid and Fred Inbau. According to Robert Kolker he wrote, the book breaks down the

In recent years, there have been multiple high-profile cases of people being exonerated, often by DNA testing, after giving a false confession to a crime they did not commit. People who often fall into this trap are juveniles or those with a diminished mental capacity (Redlich, 2009). DNA testing has helped many innocent people that gave false confessions be free again. This trend brings up the question of how were they able to give a false confession.

False confessions have been a leading factor in destroying the lives of many innocent people. Since the advances of technology, victims of false confessions have been exonerated from the charges previously placed on them while others are still fighting for innocence or died a criminal. One technological advance that has exonerated many individuals is DNA testing. According to Randy James, DNA testing was discovered in 1985 and was first used in court to convict Tommie Lee Andrews (Time, 2009). Today many Americans are convicted because of false confessions that have not yet been overturned with new evidence (Kassin, 2014). Although DNA testing has led to freedom for many innocent Americans, there are still many innocent people who are locked

With the number of DNA exonerations growing in the recent years, wrongful convictions reveal disturbing trends and fissures in the justice system. It shows how broken the system is, and why it needs urgent fixing. According to Huff (1996), over ten thousand people are convicted wrongfully for serious crimes each year. This study established that factors leading to wrongful convictions are false eyewitnesses, a prejudiced jury, incompetent prosecutors, and suspects’ ignorance. Where DNA evidence clears a suspect, array of reasons emerge; misconduct, mistakes, to race and class factors. It is important to make DNA data available to attorneys in order to enable them mount a strong

One of the most debated subjects in all of these courses was false confessions. The reason I liked the Reid interview and interrogation course is because they offered different techniques on how to avoid false confessions. The article starts out discussing all the emotions associated with false confessions and how the news media and television shows have popularized false confessions. People undoubtedly have made false confessions for years. The article discusses how the media and tv shows have

* Suggest themes to minimise moral implications (e.g. understanding how the offender had to do what he did)

One of the best training programs to implement into the police department is the Reid interrogation techniques. Interrogation and interviewing techniques became popular in 1947 by John E. Reid and Associates. Joseph P. Buckley stated that “The Reid Technique of Interviewing and Interrogation is now the most widely used approach to question subjects in the world (Buckley P. J., 2000).” There three- parts to the Reid process for solving a crime. The first stage that should be taking is to collect and analyze relative information from the crime scene thing that offers insight to the possible suspect and determine the direction an investigation should take. The second stage of the process interviewing people of interest using Behavior Analysis Interview (BAI) (Buckley P. J., 2000). The Behavior Analysis Interview is a non-accusatory process that allows detectives to interview a suspect using a question and answer procedure to provoke a suspect to show non- verbal truthfulness or deception. The third stage, if the offender has not admitted to the crime an accusatory interrogation is administered (Leave no marks, 2007). The Reid interrogation technique is believed to be a fail proof technique ,however, there are some reservations against using this technique on juvenile offenders (Constitutional Law(n.d). Implementing the Reid technique into the police departments learning curriculum will truly