In 1992 Barry Scheck and Peter Neufield started the Innocence Project, a non-profit legal organization that through the use of DNA testing, has worked to exonerate more than 300 people who were wrongly convicted. Of those exonerated cases, false admissions and confessions were present in approximately 15 to 25 percent of them.
The exact incidence of false confession is not known. There is no formal record kept of false confessions that were disproved prior to trial. Nor is there any way of knowing the incidence rate of false confessions in cases where there is no DNA evidence was available. False confessions to minor crimes, where there is no post-conviction scrutiny, or in juvenile cases that may have contained certain confidentiality provisions are not included in that 15 to 25 percent figure from the Innocence Project.
Therefore, it is entirely possible that the 15 to 25 percent incidence rate of false confession discovered by the Innocence Project may just represent the tip of an iceberg.
Types of False Confession
There are basically three different kinds of false confessions.
Voluntary false confessions happen when innocent people confess to crimes they did not commit without any coercion or police pressure. Sometimes this happens in high profile cases that receive heightened media attention, such as John Mark Karr, who voluntarily confessed to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey.
Other times people voluntarily falsely confess when they are trying to protect the real perpetrator of the crime, such as the case of Mayra Rosales, the “Half Ton Killer.” Rosales confessed to killing her nephew by accidentally rolling on top of him in order to protect her sister, who had actually beaten the boy to death.
An Internalized false confession is a false confession given knowingly by an innocent suspect who comes to doubt the reliability of their memory, and thus comes to believe that he or she may have committed the crime despite no actual memory of having done so.
A Compliant false confession happens when a suspect is induced to confess to a crime they did not commit as a result of the interrogation process itself. The suspect gives in to the demand for a confession to escape a stressful situation, avoid punishment, or to gain an implied reward, such as being allowed to eat, sleep, make a phone call, go home, or to alleviate the symptoms of substance withdrawal.
This type of false confession is an act of social compliance by a suspect who knows they are innocent, but has submitted to the pressure of police questioning after coming to believe that the short-term benefits of confession outweigh the long-term costs of continued denials.
The desire to bring the interrogation to an end and avoid further confinement can be particularly pressing for people who are young, socially dependent, anxious, desperate, or phobic of being confined to a small space.
Psychology and Conventional Interrogation Practices
Police are trained to interrogate only those suspects whose culpability they can establish on the basis of their initial investigation. For a person who is under suspicion, this initial impression is critical because it determines whether police proceed with an interrogation with a strong presumption of guilt.
There is a virtual warehouse of psychology research that shows that once people form an impression about someone, they unwittingly seek, interpret, and create behavioral data to verify it. This is called a behavioral confirmation bias.
The way it works is like this. A person forms a belief about another person. The person then behaves toward that other person in a manner that conforms to their belief, and that other person responds in turn, often behaving in ways that support the perceiver’s belief.
Therefore, when an interrogator enters the interview with the impression that the person who sits before them is guilty, he or she is vulnerable to perceiving the suspect’s anxiety, anger, and repeated denials as proof of a guilty person’s resistance, and they may increase their efforts to elicit a confession.
Despite, or perhaps because of their vigorous denials, suspects can trigger frustration and exasperation in their interrogators, which can in turn cause the suspect to become more anxious and hopeless, thereby causing them to exhibit more of the behaviors police officers are taught to associate with guilt and deception.
The Reid Technique
Although there are many interrogation manuals, the one most commonly used and written about is known as the Reid Technique. This is a nine-step interrogation method that is broadly based on two processes: breaking down a suspect’s resistance and increasing their desire to confess.
During the first step of the process the suspect is told that there is direct and irrefutable evidence that he or she committed a crime. Next, the interrogator offers various themes intended to offer the suspect the opportunity to accept moral or face-saving reasons for the commission of the crime.
The suspect is repeatedly blocked from denial during this process, and the interrogators reject any objections that the suspect may give to show their innocence. Interrogators are careful to maintain the suspect’s attention by sitting closely to him or her, touching them, maintaining strong eye contact, and using the suspect’s first name.
The purpose here is to maintain pressure, and to implicitly communicate that continued resistance is futile. At some point during the questioning interrogators will present the suspect with two incriminating alternatives explaining the commission of the crime, when it is possible that neither alternative is accurate; one of these alternatives is face-saving, while the other implies some devious or callous motive.
If the suspect accepts one of the two alternatives, he or she is instructed to orally relate various details of the offense. The process is complete when the interrogator is able to convert the suspect’s oral statement to a written confession.
Although this process may work very well to break down a guilty person’s resistance, a significant number of innocent people may also be susceptible to this method.
Who Would Confess To A Crime They Did Not Commit?
The truth is that anyone can make a false confession; however, certain factors have been shown to be more common in cases of known false confession.
Youth, intellectual disability, mental illness, and certain personality traits can make a person more vulnerable to the tactics of excessive interrogation time, presentation of false evidence, and minimization. In cases of proven false confession, juveniles, people with cognitive deficits, and people with mental illness are grossly overrepresented.
Lengthy Interrogations
Interrogations are supposed to be brief, lasting no longer than four hours in a single session. Interrogations exceeding six hours are deemed to be coercive.
Observational studied in the United States and Great Britain indicate that most interrogations last from 30 minutes to upwards of two hours. In a study of 125 proven false confessions, it was found that in cases where the interrogation was recorded, 34% lasted 6 to 12 hours, 39% lasted 12-24 hours, and the mean was 16.3 hours.
It is therefore not surprising that false confessions tend to occur after long periods of time, suggesting that the suspect must have been persistent with their denials.
However, humans are inherently social creatures, and the human need for affiliation, belonging, and social support, especially during times of stress can be a motivation to comply with the social pressure to confess. Therefore, the prolonged isolation from significant others during a lengthy and stressful interrogation can constitute a form of deprivation that can increase the suspect’s distress, and incentivize him to remove himself from the situation.
Depending on the number of hours, the time of day, and the conditions of the interrogation, sleep deprivation can also be a cause for concern. Sleep deprivation can heighten susceptibility to influence and impair decision-making abilities. Studies have shown that sleep deprivation markedly impairs the ability to sustain attention, it diminishes flexibility in thinking, and it increases suggestibility in response to leading questions.
False Evidence
Although not permitted in Great Britain and most other European nations, presentations of false evidence can influence people to confess to crimes they did not commit, and this has been found in numerous wrongful convictions in the United States. The fact that this tactic appears in cases of proven false confession makes sense.
Actual suspects who have been studied in such cases report that the reason they confessed was due to their perception of the weight of the evidence against them. The tactic of giving false feedback that a polygraph has been failed has been used to pressure suspects, and this has been known to cause false confessions.
To illustrate this point, researchers were able to elicit false confessions to the theft of an experimenter’s pencil from 17% of subjects who were told they failed a polygraph on that question. Another study accused college students of pressing a key on a keyboard causing the computer to crash. Subjects were asked to sign a written confession despite their innocence and denials. In some sessions but not others, the subject was told that a confederate observed the subject press the forbidden key. When presented with this false evidence, the number of subjects who signed the written confession jumped from 48% to 94%.
The Technique of Minimization
Minimization, a technique in which the interrogator mitigates the crime and plays down the seriousness of the offense (e.g., suggesting a morally acceptable reason for the offense, suggesting that the victim was in some way responsible for the offense, suggesting there was a non-criminal intent behind the act, or telling the suspect that the court will look favorably upon them if they admit the offense) can also be a very powerful tactic to elicit a confession.
Being provided a moral justification or face-saving excuse for committing a crime, and making confession seem like an expedient means of escape may well lead innocent people who feel trapped to confess.
One reason for this is due to the principles of reinforcement: animals and humans alike prefer delayed punishment to immediate aversive stimulation. People are inclined to make choices they think will maximize their well-being given the constraints they face, trying to make the best of a situation.
In general, people tend to be impulsive, preferring outcomes that are immediate rather than delayed. These impulsive tendencies are even more prevalent among juveniles, cigarette smokers, alcoholics, and substance abusers.
Another reason why minimization is powerful is based on cognitive psychology. Researchers have also found that when people hear speech or read text, they “read between the lines” so to speak; they do not recall what was stated, but instead what was implied. For example, people who read “The burglar goes to the house” often mistakenly recall that the burglar actually broke into the house. Those who hear “The flimsy shelf weakened under the weight of the books” mistakenly recall that the shelf actually broke.
Therefore, pragmatic inferences can change the meaning of a communication, leading the listener to infer something that was not explicitly stated nor implied. A suspect might therefore infer leniency from minimizing remarks that depict the crime as spontaneous, accidental, pressured by others, caused by the victim, or otherwise excusable, even in the absence of an explicit promise.
Youth
Teenagers find negative feedback and interrogative pressure more difficult to resist than adults because they are not as psychologically equipped to deal with the demand characteristics the situation. Teenagers have a greater propensity to use inappropriate “escape” strategies when interviewed by police.
Young people tend to be higher in suggestibility, heightened in obedience to authority, and immature in their decision-making abilities. Research in the field of developmental psychology shows that adolescents are less cognitively and psychologically mature than adults, and this immaturity manifests itself in impulsive decision-making, decreased ability to consider long-term consequences, engagement in risky behaviors, and increased susceptibility to negative influences. This is due to the fact that the frontal lobes of the brain, which are responsible for judgment, self-control, and executive functioning, do not fully mature until late adolescence.
Intellectual Disability
Much of what is true for juveniles is similarly true for persons with intellectual disabilities. People with lower intelligence tend to be more susceptible to influence from others, they tend to rely more on authority figures, feign competence, have a short attention span, experience memory gaps, lack impulse control, and are more likely to accept blame for negative outcomes.
People with lower intelligence can also be easily overwhelmed by the interrogation technique of lying about evidence. Lacking in the ability to fluently express themselves verbally, and assuming that the police officer, who is an authority figure, is being honest, this kind of suspect is more likely to feel pressured to conform their statement to fit the “truth” told to them by the interrogator.
Studies on Miranda comprehension have also shown that persons with an intellectual disability have significant deficits in their understanding and appreciation of the Miranda warnings. Research on suggestibility has shown that persons with low IQ are more likely to yield to leading questions and change their answers in response to negative feedback.
Mental Illness
Psychopathology is also linked to false confessions, and people with mental illness are overrepresented in these cases. In the United States, research has consistently shown that rates of serious mental illness in the criminal justice system are at least two to five times higher than rates in the general population.
Recent evidence has shown that depressed mood is linked to a susceptibility to provide a false confession to police. Additionally, multiple exposures to trauma are also significantly associated with self-reported false confessions during interrogation.
Mentally disordered suspects often have insufficient understanding of Miranda, especially when the warnings require higher levels of reading comprehension.
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is also associated with false confession. Commonly found among younger offenders, research shows that people with ADHD tend to answer more questions with replies of “I don’t know,” which may lead police to be suspicious of their answers, thereby triggering frustration and a stronger presumption of guilt from the interrogator.
The three main symptoms of ADHD, inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity, are all associated with false confession. Therefore, people who are symptomatic for ADHD may be especially vulnerable during police questioning.
Innocence
The phenomenology of innocence also influences whether a suspect confesses. People who are innocent are more likely to waive their rights. In research, 81% of innocent subjects waived their rights compared to only 36% of guilty ones, and 72% of innocents waived their rights precisely because they were innocent.
People have a naïve faith in the power of their innocence to set them free. This is due to our tendency to overestimate the extent to which our true thoughts, emotions, and inner states can be seen by others. People who stand falsely accused tend to believe that truth and justice will prevail, and that their innocence will become apparent to police, juries, and the public.
As a result, they cooperate with police, failing to appreciate that they are suspects, not witnesses, when they waive their rights to silence and counsel. They agree to take a lie detector tests and vehemently deny their guilt, unwittingly triggering frustration and exasperation in the interrogator, and then they succumb to pressure to confess when isolated, trapped by false evidence, but offered hope via minimization and the leniency it implies.
Once an innocent suspect gives in to the demand for a confession, their hope is that the truth will come out as the police continue their investigation. However, the sad but truthful fact is that once a suspect confesses, police often close their investigation, consider the case solved, and overlook other exculpatory evidence or possible leads, even when the confession does not match the evidence already collected.
Conclusion
Exculpatory DNA evidence has illuminated the surprising reality that some people confess to crimes they did not commit, and this happens not only more often than one would expect, but more often than we truly know. The situational factors of the interrogation procedure interacting with the psychology of the interrogators and the psychology of the suspects play an important role in the phenomenon of false confession.
Juveniles, people who are cognitively impaired, or psychologically disordered need to be protected in the interrogation room. Law enforcement personnel should also receive special training in the area of false confession and confirmation biases, as well as the risks of using conventional interrogation tactics on individuals who are young, cognitively impaired, and/or mentally disordered.
