False Confession And Justice Miscarriage : Perspectives And The Truth

During the processes, there are some key people that will contribute to clarify what happened. Among them, the police, the forensic service, the expert witnesses or witnesses testimony. Sadly, while sometimes those are the ones who elucidate the crime, at times, their confessions may be critical for the innocent person who is finally convicted because of their lies and corruption.

The first reason is that people trust confession is because of self-serving behavior and taking people at their face value (Kassin, 2005). The second reason is that detecting deception is a learned skill not a normal one that most people have. The third and final reason that people trust confession is that will being interrogated people can be coached what to say that aligns with the crime or they may overhear parts about the crime. Because of the amount of false confessions and the trust people put in believing them there needs to be some reform made in interrogation procedures. Three areas in particular need to be looked at and the first is the length of time for the interrogation. Many factors play a role in a person

“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).

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.

Confessions have become one of the most valued pieces of evidence in the criminal justice system. What many people, including jurors, may not know is that the process to obtain a confession can vary greatly. Many confessions can be coerced by very abnormal and dangerous situations. A prime example of a suggestive interrogation with a false confession comes from the documentary titled Murder on a Sunday Morning. Alongside, the analysis of the confession given in this documentary will be the critical analysis of three separate academic articles with findings that could have better served the defendant of this case.

``In criminal law, confession evidence is a prosecutor’s most potent weapon’’ (Kassin, 1997)—“the ‘queen of proofs’ in the law” (Brooks, 2000). Regardless of when in the legal process they occur, statements of confession often provide the most incriminating form of evidence and have been shown to significantly increase the rate of conviction. Legal scholars even argue that a defendant’s confession may be the sole piece of evidence considered during a trial and often guides jurors’ perception of the case (McCormick, 1972). The admission of a false confession can be the deciding point between a suspect’s freedom and their death sentence. To this end, research and analysis of the false confessions-filled Norfolk Four case reveals the

Our criminal justice system has over time implemented and changed the means of sentencing and punishment for crimes. In the United States plea deals are accountable for 90% of criminal cases. A plea deal is an agreement between prosecutor and defendant in whom the defendant accepts a guilty plea to a charge and in return receives some type of concession from the prosecution. As we have moved forward in the judicial system and now have the ability to look back on previous cases, plea deals have become more controversial. The majority of awareness in this area has been used to look deeper into false confessions, grazing right over the fact that false confessions are a large part plea deals. A controversy arose when many refused to believe that situational factors during interrogations and dispositional factors inherent to the suspects could result in false confessions. (Redlich, 2010)

When questioning witnesses of a crime, detectives may choose a specific technique; one technique is the Reid Technique. The Reid Technique is a multi-step questioning method that pressures the witnesses or the accused to admit to the crime. It is used in North America. According to Professor Brent Snook, a psychologist at the Memorial University in Newfoundland, the Reid Technique is “Starsky and Hutch”, where two hot head detectives “beat up” their suspects to encourage them confess (http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/11/25/youre-guilty-now-confess-false-admissions-put-polices-favourite-interrogation-tactic-under-scrutiny/). This paper will examine the steps of the Reid Technique, as well as reveal substantial evidence that this technique should be banned. This technique has led to false confessions. Not only does this mean that someone has been punished that isn’t guilty, but it also means the real criminal has not been found and punished. The arguments against the use of this technique are the following:

Police interrogate suspects on a daily basis, but how can they tell if the confession is real? We have all heard, at one time or another of someone confessing to a crime they didn’t commit. Then your next thought is “I would never confess to something I didn’t do”. The only way you can be a 100% sure of that is if you have been through an interrogation before. This paper is going to define “confession” and tell how an innocent person will confesses to a crime they didn’t commit. This paper will also show the history of interrogations.

This paper contains expert information snitching, evidence on eye witness testimony, and proven study on false confessions. Appendix 1 shows the leading causes of wrongful convictions in United States. The first credited study and research analysis on wrongful convictions will demonstrate the seriousness of this problem and the need for a resolution. Various other authors and reports have been reviewed for the purpose of this research paper.

“The wall street Journal noted in Sept. 8, 2013 report, National Registry of Exonerations statistics suggest that young people in particular are more prone to admitting guilt for crimes they did not commit. Thirty-eight percent of exonerations for crimes allegedly committed by youth under 18 in the quarter century involved false confessions.” (John Wihbey and Margaret Weigel,2015,Para.3) False confession is the admission of being guilty for a crime that they did not commit. In the interrogation, Police officers may question witness or victims who may have information on a specific crime. The officers may lead a group of questions about the event or evidence of the crime scene. The suspects or victims may know information about it, however,

Being accused of a crime is one thing, but being wrongfully convicted of the crime is another. In fact, according to a research done by a National Geographic journalist, Virginia Hughes, about 4.1 percent prisoners convicted were wrongfully imprisoned. The justice system in modern society has its own flaws that can impact the outcome of whether a defendant is guilty or not guilty. It is a reality that the legal system faces and that we draw our attention to details why it failed on some people. Wrongful conviction is the occurrence of an innocent defendant who goes to a trial and is found guilty due to different circumstances. The people of the jury and the people behind the investigation of a case can lead to such convictions. In

Duhaime defined Wrongful Conviction as “A conviction of a person accused of a crime which, in the result of subsequent investigation, proves erroneous. Persons who are in fact innocent but who have been wrongly convicted by a jury or other court of law” (Duhaime, 2017). But even establishing an acceptable definition of “wrongful conviction” is difficult. Wrongful convictions are happening nationwide, however the more frequent it becomes makes it seem like it isn’t an accident anymore. In 2015, researchers found that 149 people were cleared for crimes they didn’t commit. So, we must ask ourselves what is the cause of wrongful convictions? In 2010, a young man by the name of Kalief Browder was wrongfully convicted of a crime he did not commit and in 2008, Adrian Thomas was convicted of killing his son by threatening him to confess or else they would arrest his wife. But where is the justice for these two men?

Persuaded false confessions is when a suspect during a police interview begins to doubt or second guess themselves and falsely confesses to a criminal act, despite having no memory of it. Interrogators have to be careful not to use suggestive interview techniques because they can cause or can generate false memories of committing crimes (Shaw & Porter, 2015). Over the course of my career, I’ve had numerous people make false confessions. That’s why interview schools are so

The causes of wrongful convictions are easy to identify: irregularities and incompetence at the investigatory, pre-trial, trial and appellate stages of the criminal justice system. More particularly, Kaiser identifies the following contributory factors, among others: false accusations, misleading police investigative work, inept defense counsel, misperceptions by Crown prosecutors of their role, factual assumption of an accuser’s guilt by actors in the criminal justice system, community pressure for a conviction, inadequate identification evidence, perjury, false confessions, inadequate or misinterpreted forensic evidence, judicial bias, poor presentation of an appellate case, and difficulty in having fresh evidence admitted at the appellate stage. Each instance of determined wrongful conviction illustrates a different combination of failures in the criminal justice system that has