FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY
REAL LIFE CASES OF FALSE CONFESSIONS
Over the years, false confession has become a frequent occurence in a police procedure. The police, in order to get a conviction as soon as possible, have been known to coerce or persuade suspects into confessing to crimes they have not committed. On the other hand, there are also some innocent people who voluntarily confess to a particular crime in order to gain infamy. Here are such some cases
TRIGGER WARNING: mentions of murder and rape, please read at your own discretion.
VOLUNTARY FALSE CONFESSIONS
Henry Lee Lucas
convicted 1960
Henry Lee Lucas was convicted of murdering his mother in 1960 and the murder of two others in 1983. He rose to infamy as a serial killer after he confessed to around 600 other murders after his conviction while in prison to the Texas Rangers and other law enforcement officials. Many unsolved cases were closed based on the confessions and officially attributed the murders to Lucas; he was considered the most prolific serial killer in history. An investigation by the Dallas Times-Herald newspaper showed that many of the murders Lucas confessed to were flatly impossible for him to have committed; a follow-up investigation by the Attorney General of Texas concluded Lucas was a fabulist who had falsely confessed. Lucas himself recanted the confessions as a hoax, except that of his mother.
John Mark Karr
confessed in 2006
John Mark Karr confessed to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey in 2006. Karr had become obsessed with the Ramsey murder and ultimately made statements implicating his involvement in her death. Ultimately, DNA evidence from the Ramsey murder failed to match Karr’s samples and testimony from relatives was provided to conclude that he was elsewhere when the incident occurred.
COERCED COMPLIANT CONFESSIONS
Stefan Kiszko
convicted 1976, exonerated 1992
For the Murder of Lesley Molseed, Stefan Kiszko was convicted of in 1976. One of the main pieces of prosecution evidence was a confession Kiszko made after three days of police questioning. After almost 16 years in prison, Kiszko was exonerated in 1992. When asked why he had confessed to a crime he did not commit, Kiszko replied, "I started to tell these lies and they seemed to please them and the pressure was off as far as I was concerned. I thought if I admitted what I did to the police they would check out what I had said, find it untrue and would then let me go".
Michael Crowe
convicted 1998, exonerated 2013
Michael Crowe confessed to the murder of his younger sister Stephanie Crowe in 1998. Michael, 14 at the time, was targeted by the police when he seemed "distant and preoccupied" after Stephanie's body was discovered. After two days of intense questioning, Michael admitted to killing Stephanie. His confession was vague and lacked detail; he said he could not remember committing the crime but believed he must have done so based on what the police were telling him. His admission has been cited as a classic example of a coerced false confession during police interrogation.
Jeff Deskovic
convicted 1990, exonerated 2006
Deskovic was 16 years of age when he falsely confessed to the rape and murder of a 15-year-old classmate. He confessed to this crime following an intense interrogation that was conducted by multiple police investigators lasting more than six hours. Police first suspected Deskovic because he was late to school the day after the girl had disappeared, and because he appeared overly emotional and distraught when asked about her death. During his interrogation, investigators lied to Deskovic, accused him of failing a series of polygraph examinations, stated that they were convinced of his guilt, and offered him rationalizations for his apparent violent behavior. The pressures of the interrogation finally led Deskovic to confess to the brutal murder as he sobbed inconsolably and lay in the fetal position underneath a table. Although the DNA evidence excluded him as the donor of the semen, Deskovic was prosecuted for murder and rape based upon the statement he had provided to investigators. A jury convicted Deskovic and he spent over 15 years in prison until he was finally exonerated in 2006 through the use of more sophisticated DNA technology.
Christopher Ochoa
convicted 1989, exonerated 2002
Nancy DePriest was raped and murdered in her work place in Austin, Texas in 1988. Chris Ochoa pled guilty to the murder of DePriest and his friend, Richard Danziger, was convicted of rape. Ochoa had confessed to the crime and had implicated Danziger. It would be discovered, however, that his confession was coerced and that neither man had anything to do with the slaying or raping of DePriest.
Watch this video to hear Chris's retelling of the events of his case.
PERSUADED FALSE CONFESSIONS
Peter Reilly
convicted 1973, exonerated 1976
In 1973, 18-year-old Peter Reilly of Litchfield County, Connecticut, was convicted of murdering his mother. He had signed a detailed confession after first discovering and informing of the crime, and then being detained and interrogated for many hours with little sleep. During this interrogation, with no lawyer present, he agreed to undergo a polygraph, which he was wrongly told he had failed, and was persuaded that only he could have committed the crime. He was sentenced to six to sixteen years for manslaughter but freed on appeal in 1976.
Paul Ingram
convicted 1988, completed sentence in 2003
The Thurston County ritual abuse case was a 1988 case in which Paul Ingram, county Republican Party Chairman of Thurston County, Washington and the Chief Civil Deputy of the Sheriff's department, was accused by his daughters of sexual abuse, by at least one daughter of satanic ritual abuse and later accused by his son in 1996 of abusing him. Ingram pled guilty and his confession grew increasingly elaborate and detailed . Ofshe set forth a narrative of the case, and concluded that the inadvertent use of hypnosis during Ingram's interrogation resulted in the creation of pseudomemories that convinced Ingram of his guilt. She further claimed that the confessions were the result of false memories being implanted with suggestion. Ingram was never charged with "satanic ritual abuse" but with six counts of rape in the third degree, and was sentenced to twenty years.