Essay about Perfect Evidence

A confession is one of the strongest forms of evidence that can be brought into a court of law. In the United States criminal justice system, prosecutors quickly and swiftly seek confessions as they are the most persuasive evidence to win cases. Interrogations are conducted by law enforcement officials in an effort to seek confessions and develop details about crimes.Communication is key to the art of interrogation. Detectives sometimes end up with false confessions from innocent suspects by using their expertise in psychological manipulation. One major technique of interrogation is known as the Reid Technique. The Reid method is a system of interviewing and interrogation that is widely used by police departments in the United States. The Reid Technique involves three components which include factual analysis, interviewing, and interrogation. Whether this verbal technique is effective or ineffective is a subjective and controversial matter. However, many people who oppose the Reid Technique would agree that this method can cause an innocent person to confess to wrong counts made against them. Is the Reid Technique the best solution? With concrete evidence, one can explore and come to an overall result of whether or not this questioning method has a major impact on the outcome of the confession, as well as searching for weaknesses in human nature and if these have any effect on the results of the interrogation and courtroom process.

Inspired by tales of innocents wrongfully convicted, recent research has focused on three sets of questions: (a) Why are innocent people often misidentified for interrogation, (b) what factors put innocent suspects at risk to confess, and (c) how accurate are police, juries, and others at judging confession evidence?

In January 1988 Michael Crow, a caucasian boy who is fourteen years old, confessed to murdering his older sister in their childhood home. Crow was interrogated for ten hours when he eventually admitted to a crime he did not commit. Through his interrogation, Crow showed signs of distress. When Crow would say that he had a feeling he killed his sister the interrogator went along with what Crow said and tried to get an even greater confession out of him by being coercive and confrontational.

Using deductive reasoning to go over this case I found it difficult to come to just one logical conclusion with so many general statements by these suspects. I first took notes about the case; including and highlighting the differences in each suspect’s story which I then used to formulate my theory.

For a society that is greatly influenced by Crime Scene Investigation, Criminal Minds and Bones, a confession of the offender is seen as an ultimate checkmate of a case. A confession, especially the ones with detailed account and perfect representation of emotions (Leo, 2008), implies the guilt of the confessor, outweighs the evidences of innocence and stirs the case against the accused (Kassin & Wrightsman, 1985). However, not all confessions are true. The public, law enforcers and justice officials believe that they are open-minded about the possibility of false confession but in reality, everyone have biases that infers guilt to the suspect which often leads to wrongful conviction. According to Drizin and Leo (2004), false confession is the primary cause of law miscarriage (Drizin & Leo, 2004). False confessors lived many years in jail before being discharge while others remain imprisoned (Drizin & Leo, 2004).

How many times have you turned on the television to hear some heart-breaking news about judges, police officers, security guards, and lawyers abusing their power to justify an outcome? Sometimes these outcomes result in ridiculous sentences, injury, and even death. Excessive force by a corrections officer has become an on-going problem within our country lately. The problem has been going on for years, but now it seems like the issue has been generating more attention. Just to name a few Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, and Michael Brown are all stepping stones in today’s fight for justice against ethics violations in the criminal justice system. The national attention that these cases are receiving has thrown some light on comparative cases from the previous years, some prompting charges against the cops included, others not.

False confessions that fall under coerced-internalized correlate most with memory distrust (Gudjonsson et al., 2014). Memory distrust on some instances is internally caused, but is most commonly a result induced by police over the course of a lengthy and forcefully influential interrogation. These interrogations break down the suspect’s denial and opposition, using drawn out, cunning and repetitive interviewing that could potentially make the suspect distrust their memory and falsely confess to a crime they did not commit (Gudjonsson et al., 2014). It concerns me that police are so eager and set on a particular person being guilty, that they would rather force the potentially innocent person into falsely confessing instead of listening to their alibi and reconsidering a new suspect. This research is immensely important to both psychology and law because no man should be imprisoned for a crime he or she did not commit, and no man should be manipulated into confessing to a crime to escape a strenuous situation. It is also rather unsettling to know that some men or women who committed crimes, no matter the degree, are walking free because the law failed in catching the actual

Chapter 2 explains in detail the factors that could lead a person to do one of the most unbelievable things a person could do: to admit guilt for a crime that he/she did not commit, known as a false confession. Police officers are trained to make criminals confess, however, the techniques used by them, such as bluff, excessively long interrogatories, the Reid technique, and the use of false incriminating evidence could make anyone confess, even innocent people. As incredible as this sounds, this is an ongoing issue in the history of criminal law. People who are more at risk to break under this kind of pressure are young, mentally or intellectually impaired, or possess personality traits such as compliance and suggestibility (Perillo, J. T.,

The majority of people find it hard to believe that an individual who is innocent would confess to a serious crime that they did not commit. However, empirical data has now revealed that many innocent defendants have been convicted on the basis of their false confessions (White, 2003). The following section will analyze false confessions and how they happen. This section will examine the characteristics of a defendant that may alter a confession, and then go on to looking at the circumstances of the interrogation.

Unlike Television shows where attention is mostly concentrated on confessions, Carter's data highlights the fact that less than 5% of her 150 samples (taken over three years) include any form of a confession showing that despite the police officer's emphasis that the interview is source of confession it is rare to actually obtain one. Thus, rather than treating confession as the primary goal of the interview whuch puts the rights of the suspect at risk, it should be an open-ended session where the goal is to acquire evidence to bolster the case and not to presume guilt.

There are several reasons to why people falsely confess to crimes. This will include different analysis from studies carried out by criminal psychologist in order to understand why certain people are prone to falsely confessing to crimes. There are different characteristics to understanding why people confess falsely confess to crimes such as; individual differences, personal and situational factors, and Ethnicity. This essay also aims to identify what leads certain individuals to confess to crimes they did not commit even when the crime can lead to long term prison sentence. Experts within this field suggest that blind eye of justice greatly adds to the reasons to which people still falsely confess to crimes whether it be the law enforcement investigator who continues to pressure a suspect or often times an overzealous prosecutor who refuses to accept that the confession does not march the facts of the case and many reasons.

Imagine Sergeant John Hopkins of the Ontario Provincial Police has just called you in for an interrogation. Knowing that you did not commit a crime, you enter the isolated and boring interrogation room. Now stuck in a room being completely bombarded by questions and accusations, thinking that hopefully someone could see what was happening to you inside this room. They keep you their for six hours, tired both physically and mentally exhausted. All you can think of, to get out of this situation, is to confess to them what they want to hear. Suddenly, you confess to a murder charge. This scenario has happened several times in police interrogation rooms, to many innocent individuals. Thankfully, with the introduction of psychology working with law many changes have occurred to protect people from this type of confession. By comparing multiple psychological journals to a current article about a murder trial. The focus will be on the tactics being used in to combat false confessions in an interrogation.

There are several reasons to why people falsely confess to crimes. This will include different analysis from studies carried out by criminal psychologist in order to understand why certain people are prone to falsely confessing to crimes. There are different characteristics to understanding why people confess falsely confess to crimes such as; individual differences, personal and situational factors, and Ethnicity. This essay also aims to identify what leads certain individuals to confess to crimes they did not commit even when the crime can lead to long term prison sentence. Experts within this field suggest that blind eye of justice greatly adds to the reasons to which people still falsely confess to crimes whether it be the law

Almost any person would at first assume that if another person admitted to a crime, that reasonable doubt is gone, and that person is guilty. They think, “Why would anybody innocent admit to a crime they did not commit?” Statistically, according to the Innocence Project, a foundation that stands to exonerate the wrongfully convicted, says 23% of people who have been exonerated were in prison for false confessions. It has also been proven that even individuals free of psychological issues and of average intelligence are susceptible to making a false confession under the right interrogation technique. False confessions are an important ethical dilemma and any person serving on a jury or being accused of a crime, should be aware of the possibility.

Interrogation is common activity for police officers. Interrogations are used with suspects to gain information on a case and hopefully get a confession. Recently, the issue of false confessions and poor interrogation tactics have come to light in the media. With T.V. movies, such as Netflix’s “Making a Murderer”, or the podcast “Serial”, potential issues with the process of interrogation become a public concern. These concerns need to be researched to determine what issues do exist in the system and how many of these cases are just random, rather than normal occurrences.