Many people have been riveted by the Netflix series Making a Murderer. Why would someone confess to a serious crime unless they are guilty? Innocent people do confess to crimes they did not commit. To date, the Innocence Project has worked to exonerate people in the US. But what leads innocent suspects to falsely confess to very serious crimes?
Physical coercion is the most obvious factor that could lead to a false confession, but it is unlikely to be used in a modern criminal interrogation. Psychological coercion, however, is a prevalent and powerful tool. It can include telling the suspect lies about the evidence or implying to suspects that they will receive lenient treatment if they confess. In North America, the most common interrogation method taught to police is the Reid technique , which leverages these psychological tactics to obtain confessions from suspects.
This technique has two key stages: the pre-interrogation interview and the interrogation. In the pre-interrogation interview, the interrogator must determine whether a suspect is being truthful when they deny their involvement in a crime. Reid technique interrogators are instructed that truthful and deceptive suspects differ noticeably in their behaviour. For instance, truthful suspects sit comfortably upright; deceptive suspects maintain a rigid or avoidant posture. But such simple distinctions do not exist between liars and truth-tellers.
People, including police, are very poor at determining whether someone is lying or telling the truth. Police also display a bias towards deciding that a person is lying. If the interrogator decides that the suspect is deceptive and guilty of the crime , the suspect is moved on to the interrogation phase. The interrogator should also empathise with the suspect, thus implying that confession will be met with understanding.
This interaction places great pressure on the suspect, regardless of their guilt or innocence, to confess. Once someone has admitted to a crime in rich detail, nearly everyone believes it, including forensic scientists. Once a confession is made, it sets in motion a forensic confirmation bias, a study in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition suggested. Like with any confirmation bias, once forensic scientists have heard about a confession, they are more likely to seek, perceive and interpret evidence that confirms what they think they already know, according to the study.
This is critical because the confession alone isn't enough to get a conviction — it must be corroborated with additional proof. So, almost every false confession is backed by erroneous evidence, Kassin said. Like in the case of Rober Miller, an Oklahoma man charged with murder, robbery and rape.
After Miller falsely confessed, forensics only considered blood and saliva samples that could have matched Miller and disregarded other samples saying they could have been from the victim, according to a case report from the Innocence Project. This misinterpretation of evidence led to Millers conviction, and also got the actual perpetrator off the hook. The unexpected number of false confessions since the early s, however, has ushered some safeguards into place.
Maybe we will even see fewer exonerations in the next decade, Kassin said. Even so, the system isn't very effective at evaluating the merits of a confession once it happens. We need to change the way people think about confessions, he said.
Originally published on Live Science. Live Science. See all comments 4. Gaslighting - you are manipulated to believe something is true because someone else says so. I give up- it's an easy way to end the pressure and just go home.
Some people do this for the same reason that they eat tide pods on you tube. Some people tango, others waltz, but most just shuffle once or twice and fall over. Other people are legitimately tortured into false confessions by physical or psychological means or both. Others still are just mentally ill and either believe that they deserve to be punished for something or occasionally they believe they really did the thing they're confessing to.
And possibly worst of all, some people make false confessions so that they'll be arrested and get some of Maslow's basic needs met because it's the only avenue available to them to do so. Why would anybody cause unnecessary complications in their life?
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