False Confessions Richard Leo Summary

While people find it hard to believe that anyone would confess to a crime he or she did not commit, there are people who end up making a false confession. In the Central Park Five case, the police managed to get the young boys to admit to the crime with the false promise that they would be allowed to go home if they confessed (Kassin, 2002). For Martin Tankleff, while in an

It may seem implausible that someone would confess to a crime they did not commit, but it does happen, and the prevalence of such confessions occurs at a much higher rate in juvenile populations. Aggressive interrogation methods, like those used in the Reid Technique, lead to a greater probability of false confessions among juvenile subjects than if those techniques had not been used. In a study completed by University of San Francisco law professor and renowned false confession researcher, Richard Leo, 35% of the 125 proven false confession cases he sampled included confessors who were under the age of 18 (2004). Before we examine what it is about this technique that prompts false confessions, we must first outline the systematic, nine-step process developed by John E. Reid & Associates nearly forty years ago.

Cassell, Paul G. "Protecting The Innocent From False Confessions And Lost Confessions - And From Miranda." Journal Of Criminal Law & Criminology 88.2 (1998): 497-556. Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Nov. 2014.

False confessions are a major problem in the Criminal Justice system, since 1989, a total of two thousand people have been convicted for serious crimes that they did not commit. There are many causes of false confessions, some including a low IQ and mental illness. Today, people are often targeted by detectives when being interrogated for committing a crime. As the causes of false confessions include mental illness and low intelligence quote, therefore leading to false convictions, there has to be solutions to these issues.

False confessions has been the centered stone in the legal system for quite some time. The law enforcement are the biggest advocate for wrongly conducting in false confessions. There are many different tactics and behavioral issues that contribute to the false confessions. The main streamline techniques that are used by law enforcement are the Reid Technique that consist of four areas; lost of control, social isolation, certainty of guilt, and exculpatory. In addition, there is also four types of false confessions; instrumental confessions, authentic confessions, voluntary confessions, and coerced confessions.

In the field of Psychology and Law, the undercover investigative technique of Mr. Big is very controversial. Psychologist Tim Moore, observes that, “In light of the invasiveness of the technique, it is coherent coercive nature and the strong inducements held out to elicit confessions, there is a real concern that the technique may cause innocent people to falsely confess, giving rise to a risk of wrongful convictions” (Moore et al., 2009, p.350). The article, Using The “Mr. Big” Technique to Elicit Confessions: Successful Innovation or Dangerous Development in the Canadian Legal System, assesses the Mr. Big operation and shows its concerns with the risk of false confessions for the innocent. This article shows that police officers use minimization

Brutal behavior of the police officers when asking question from suspect cause to make a kind of mental disorganization and defendant thinks that confession could be more helpful than arguing with police. Recent decades for preventing this kind of wrongful convictions, interrogation should be recorded by camera from starting to end. In the innocence project article the author stated that “more than 200

“Police throughout the United States have been caught fabricating, planting, and manipulating evidence to obtain convictions where cases would otherwise be very weak. Some authorities regard police perjury as so rampant that it can be considered a "subcultural norm rather than an individual aberration" of police officers. Large-scale investigations of police units in almost every major American city have documented massive evidence of tampering, abuse of the arresting power, and discriminatory enforcement of laws. There also appears to be widespread police perjury in the preparation of reports because police know these reports will be used in plea bargaining. Officers often justify false and embellished reports on the grounds that it metes

A false confession is when an innocent person is forced to admit to a crime they did not commit. False confessions were responsible for nearly a quarter of convictions reversed by DNA evidence. People are forced into false confessions by authorities, like police interrogators, who trick them into believing that it would be more beneficial if they confessed, regardless of their innocence. A major factor in false confessions is stress, those who are innocent actually feel less stress during an interrogation and they may drop their guard and not think about their words carefully.

Chapman’s article explains the truth behind coerced false confessions, which involves suspects admitting to a crime they did not commit. With true examples and specific explanations and descriptions, Chapman shows just how suspects feel their only option is a fabricated confession. Through interrogations, police can involve threats, manipulation, persuasion, and several other methods to make a person confess. Factors such as stress and fear can also cause suspects to confess. In some cases, innocent suspects even come to believe they are guilty due to incorrect interrogation methods. This article is not all about police forcing people to confess though, it also explains how police are put under a tremendous amount of pressure to get a confession out of someone, any person who will confess. Therefore, they do anything they can to get the confession they so

In the article “On the Psychology of Confessions: Does Innocent Put Innocents at Risk?” by Saul Kassin, many suspects and offenders had use false confession in their lives. Despite the fact that many will end up in jail or prison because of their false confession. A good example of this is mention in the article in the case of Tom Sawyer which he was accused for sexual assault and murder, but when going trial the judge dropped the case because they found out that he was a recover alcoholic and social anxiety disorder that causes his face to flush and embarrassed. Because of this reason the detective think it was a sign of deception during his interview. I think this phenomenon of false confession so widely spread that we don’t realize that

The Reid technique, developed by John E. Reid, has been a widely used technique in acquiring confessions from suspected criminals. While many users of the Reid technique have praised it, calling it "the best interrogation procedure" (Rodgers, 2015), the Reid technique has come under fire from several critics, claiming that it risks "obtaining inherently unreliable confessions" (Gallini 2009). The purpose of this essay will be to critically discuss the impact of the Reid technique, and its use by police officers to obtain confessions. It is important to discuss the Reid technique as it has recently received criticism for its use in obtaining false confessions from suspects, especially children or those with a lower IQ. Firstly, this essay will focus on the positive impacts of the Reid technique, and how it can be used as an effective method of interrogation in order to get a confession from a suspect. Furthermore, this essay will then state the negative impacts of using the Reid technique, and how it use has been involved in several false confessions. Finally, this essay will then state a possible alternative to the Reid technique in the PEACE interrogation technique, which has been used with great success in many countries. Overall, this essay will argue that while the Reid technique does have positive impacts, there are more suitable alternatives to interrogating suspects.

Deception and coercion are permissible tools that are often used to gain information or confessions. Misrepresenting facts, exploiting suspects emotions and beliefs, and failure to inform suspects of pennant information that could possible make them less likely to confess, are all tactics used in the interrogation process (Fulero & Wrightsman, p. 262). Many argue that these strategies create an unfair atmosphere for suspects, however, I disagree. I feel that if a person is telling the truth, either the truth as they remember it to be or the truth as it really occurred, they can’t be tricked into believing or admitting something opposite. Often time people won’t confess unless they feel they have too. The purpose of interrogation is to gain information. While suspects don’t need to be abused, they don’t need to be mollycoddle either. While some tactics may challenge certain aspects of morals and ethics, the overall goal is to obtain information, thus allowing room for some forms of unethical tactics such as

Numerous studies have been done on the effects of various interrogation tactics on an individual’s probability of signing a false confession. Approximately 80 percent of criminal cases are resolved by less than a full confession. A recent study by Blair (2005) on the success rate of present police interrogation techniques indicates “that police interrogations produce at least some incriminating information in between 45% and 64% of cases. In about a quarter of the cases, the suspect offers a full confession; however, we know very little about which tactics are likely to produce confessions. It also appears that confessions have a moderate impact on case processing. Specifically, those who give at least some incriminating information are

According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights article 11, “Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defense” (Claiming Human Rights). This right to the presumption of innocence is a basic human right, which everyone is entitled to because a human right is a right one has because one is human. However, in some cases people do not presume ‘innocent until proven guilty’ perspective, rather their thinking is the opposite, ‘guilty until proven innocent’. This is illustrated in the case of Denice Haraway, who one day disappeared from her job at a convenience store in Ada, Oklahoma. The police took off on a relentless mission to capture the person(s) responsible for this heinous act and, they did everything in their power to bring someone or anyone to justice, which they did when they arrested Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot. Even though they repeatedly said they were innocent, but everyone including the police believed them to be responsible because they ‘confessed’ to committing the crime, a confession based on a dream. This paper will illustrate the reasons that are relevant to the innocence of these two men. The one factor that is persisted throughout this case is the incompetent efforts of the law enforcement such as inadequate efforts on the crimes scenes leading to lost of evidence, not following proper protocol in