False confessions: causes, consequences, and implications.
In the past two decades, hundreds of convicted prisoners have been exonerated by DNA and non-DNA evidence, revealing that police-induced false confessions are a leading cause of wrongful conviction of the innocent. In this article, empirical research on the causes and correlates of false confessions is reviewed. After a description of the three sequential processes that are responsible for the elicitation of false confessions--misclassification, coercion, and contamination--the three psychologically distinct types of false confession (voluntary, compliant, and persuaded) are discussed along with the consequences of introducing false-confession evidence in the criminal justice system. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of empirical research for reducing the number of false confessions and improving the accuracy of confession evidence that is introduced against a defendant at trial.
Leo
Richard A
RA
University of San Francisco School of Law, 2130 Fulton Street, San Francisco, CA 94117, USA. rleo@usfca.edu
D003068:Coercion; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D008192:Deception; D006167:Guilt; D006801:Humans; D010565:Persuasive Communication; D016495:Police; D011329:Prisoners / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000523:psychology; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013404:Suggestion