On the Psychology of Confessions Does Innocence Put Innocents at Risk Saul M Kassin Williams College The Central Park jogger case and other recent exonerations highlight the problem of wrongful convictions 15 to 25 of which have contained confessions in evidence Recent research suggests that actual innocence does not protect people across a sequence of pivotal decisions a In preinterrogation interviews investigators commit falsepositive errors presuming innocent suspects guilty b naively believing in the transparency of their innocence innocent suspects waive their rights c despite or because of their denials innocent suspects elicit highly confrontational interrogations d certain commonly used techniques lead suspects to confess to crimes they did not commit and e police and others cannot distinguish between uncorroborated true and false confessions It appears that innocence puts innocents at risk that consideration should be given to reforming current practices and that a policy of videotaping interrogations is a necessary means of protection I n 1989 a female jogger was beaten senseless raped and left for dead in New York City s Central Park Her skull had multiple fractures her eye socket was crushed and she lost three quarters of her blood She managed to survive but she was and still is completely amnesic regarding the incident Meili 2003 Soon thereafter on the basis of police induced confessions taken within 48 hours five African and Hispanic American boys 14 to 16 years old were convicted of the attack and sentenced to prison The crime scene betrayed a bloody horrific act for which there were no physical traces of the defendants Yet it was easy to understand why detectives aggressively interrogated the boys at least some of whom were wilding in the park that night It was also easy to understand why the boys were prosecuted and convicted Four of the confessions were videotaped and presented at trial The tapes were compelling as every one of the defendants described in vivid though often erroneous detail how the jogger was attacked when where and by whom and the role that he played One boy stood up and reenacted the way he allegedly pulled off the jogger s running pants A second said he felt pressured by peers to take part in his first rape expressing remorse and promising that it would not happen again Together the taped confessions persuaded police prosecutors two trial juries a city and a nation for details see Sullivan 1992 April 2005 American Psychologist Copyright 2005 by the American Psychological Association 0003 066X 05 12 00 Vol 60 No 3 215 228 DOI 10 1037 0003 066X 60 3 215 Thirteen years later Matias Reyes in prison for three rapes and a murder committed subsequent to the jogger attack stepped forward with a voluntary confession He claimed that he was the Central Park jogger rapist and that he had acted alone Reinvestigating the case the Manhattan district attorney s office questioned Reyes and discovered that he had accurate privileged and independently corroborated knowledge of the crime and crime scene DNA testing further revealed that the semen samples originally recovered from the victim s body and socks which had conclusively excluded the boys as donors belonged to Reyes prosecutors had argued that just because police did not capture all the perpetrators in the alleged gang rape did not mean they did not get some of them In December 2002 the defendants convictions were vacated The Central Park jogger case now stands as a shocking tale of five false confessions resulting from a single investigation Kassin 2002 New York v Wise et al 2002 Saulny 2002 Despite its historic symbolic value and notoriety the jogger case is not unique Notwithstanding debates and disputes over prevalence numbers e g Bedau Radelet 1987 Cassell 1999 Leo Ofshe 2001 Markman Cassell 1988 the incidence of false confessions is unknown Still there are a disturbing number of known cases in which defendants confess and retract the confessions but are convicted at trial and sometimes sentenced to death only later to be exonerated Drizin Leo 2004 Gross Jacoby Matheson Montgomery Patel 2004 Gudjonsson 1992 2003 Kassin 1997 Kassin Wrightsman 1985 Leo Ofshe 1998 Scheck Neufeld Dwyer 2000 As the number of exonerations accumulates revealing the mere tip of an iceberg in miscarriages of justice Gross et al 2004 the Innocence Project www innocenceproject org and other researchers have come to realize the valuable role that psychological science can play in the study and prevention of wrongful convictions First and foremost it is clear that eyewitness misidentifications found in nearly three quarters of these cases are the most common source of error and that eyewitness psychologists have had an enormous impact identifying the problems and proposing reforms to minimize error see Loftus 1979 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Saul M Kassin Department of Psychology Bronfman Science Center Williams College Williamstown MA 01267 E mail Saul M Kassin williams edu 215 Saul M Kassin Copyright by Jennifer Mardus Wells et al 2000 Although other problems involve limitations and flaws in various forensic sciences see Faigman Kaye Saks Sanders 2002 the focus of this article is on a second psychologically based problem that has reared its ugly head that 15 to 25 of DNA exonerated innocent defendants had confessed prior to their trials see www innocenceproject org The problem of false confessions is complex and multifaceted and it indicates that there may be holes in the various safety nets built into the criminal justice system This article is designed with three objectives in mind In light of the high profile wrongful convictions many discovered via newly available DNA tests a wealth of new empirical research post 9 11 interest in military and terrorist interrogations and developments in law on the admissibility of scientific and psychological forensic testimony the first objective is to update an earlier review in this journal on the psychology of confession evidence Kassin 1997 Inspired by the tragic tales from prison told in Scheck Neufeld and Dwyer s 2000 Actual Innocence the second objective is to isolate and amplify a surprising signal that has emerged in several recent empirical studies that innocence may put innocent people at risk during a criminal investigation often to their own detriment The third objective is to propose that policies for the reform of interrogation practices
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