FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY
WHAT ARE FALSE CONFESSIONS?
Confessions are the most incriminating and persuasive evidence of guilt that the state can bring against a defendant. It exerts a strong biasing effect on the perceptions and decision-making of criminal justice officials and lay jurors alike because most people assume that a confession, especially a detailed confession, is, by its very nature, true. A false confession is an admission of guilt for a crime which the individual did not commit. Although such confessions seem counterintuitive, they can be made voluntarily, perhaps to protect a third party, or induced through coercive interrogation techniques.
TYPES OF FALSE CONFESSIONS
Saul Kassin: False Confessions
In 1985 social psychologists Saul Kassin and Lawrence Wrightsman drawing on case studies and social psychological theories of attitude change, first identified three distinct types of false confession, which they called voluntary (in the absence of elicitation), coerced-compliant (the suspect publically professes guilt in response to extreme methods of interrogation, despite knowing privately that they are truly innocent), and coerced-internalized (the suspect actually comes to believe that he or she committed the offense). Ofshe and Leo extended and modified the initial typology of Kassin and Wrightsman to include five distinct types of false confession: voluntary, stress-compliant, coerced compliant, coerced-persuaded, and non coerced-persuaded.
Voluntary False Confessions
Kassin and Wrightsman initially defined a voluntary false confession as one that is offered in the absence of police interrogation. Voluntary false confessions are thus explained by the internal psychological states or needs of the confessor or by external pressure brought to bear on the confessor by someone other than the police. Individuals volunteer false confessions in the absence of police questioning for a variety of reasons: a desire for notoriety or fame, the need to expiate guilt over imagined or real acts, an inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality, or a pathological need for acceptance or self-punishment. A person could also provide a voluntary false confession out of a desire to aid and protect the real criminal, to provide an alibi for a different crime or norm violation or to get revenge on another person.
Coerced Compliant False Confessions
A compliant false confession is one given in response to police coercion, stress, or pressure to achieve some instrumental benefit—typically either to terminate and thus escape from an aversive interrogation process, to take advantage of a perceived suggestion or promise of leniency, or to avoid an anticipated harsh punishment. The suspect admits guilt with the knowledge that he is innocent and that what he says is false. Compliant false confessions are typically recanted shortly after the interrogation is over.
Compliant false confessions occur as a result of the sequenced influence process through which detectives seek to persuade a suspect that he is indisputably caught and that the most viable way to mitigate his punishment and escape his otherwise hopeless situation is by confessing.
The most potent psychological inducement is the suggestion that the suspect will be treated more leniently if he confesses and more punitively if he does not. Put simply, the suspect comes to perceive that the benefits of confessing (e.g., release from custody, mitigated punishment) outweigh the costs of denial (e.g., arrest, aggravated punishment).
Stress and police pressure are also causes of compliant false confessions. Interrogation is inherently stressful, anxiety-provoking, and unpleasant. The interrogator's interpersonal style may also be a source of distress: he may be confrontational, insistent, demanding, overbearing, deceptive, hostile, and manipulative. The interrogation may span hours, as often occurs with compliant false confessions, weakening a suspect's resistance, inducing fatigue, and heightening suggestibility.
The combined effect of these multiple stressors may overwhelm the suspect's cognitive capacities such that he confesses simply to terminate what has become an intolerably stressful experience.
First, the interrogator causes the suspect to doubt his innocence. This is typically a by-product of an intense, lengthy, and deceptive accusatorial interrogation in which the interrogator repeatedly accuses the suspect of committing the crime, relentlessly attacks the suspect's denials and repeatedly confronts the suspect with fabricated (but allegedly irrefutable) evidence of his guilt.
When first accused, the innocent suspect attempts to reason with them and persuade them of his innocence. At some point, however, the suspect realizes that they are not going to credit his assertions of innocence. The suspect offers up the remaining basis for his belief in his innocence: that he has no memory of committing the crime.
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To convince the suspect that it is plausible, and likely, that he committed the crime, the interrogators must supply him with a reason that satisfactorily explains how he could have done it without remembering it. This is the second step in the psychological process that leads to a persuaded false confession.
Typically, the interrogator suggests one version or another of a “repressed” memory theory. He or she may suggest, for example, that the suspect experienced an alcohol- or drug-induced blackout, a “dry” blackout, a multiple personality disorder, a momentary lapse in consciousness, or posttraumatic stress disorder, or, perhaps most commonly, that the suspect simply repressed his memory of committing the crime because it was a traumatic experience for him.
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The suspect can only be persuaded to accept responsibility for the crime if he regards one of the interrogators’ explanations for his alleged amnesia as plausible. Once the suspect is convinced, he comes to believe that it is more likely than not that he committed the crime. Despite his lack of memory, once the suspect is over the line, he is ready for the third and final step in the making of a persuaded false confession: the construction of the postadmission narrative.
Once the suspect has accepted responsibility for the crime, the interrogator pushes him to supply the details of how and why he did it. The suspect does not know the facts; he is in the paradoxical situation of believing he committed an act that he wants to confess to but cannot remember. So the suspect either guesses or confabulates about how the crime could have occurred, repeats the details that the police have suggested to him, knowingly makes up the details, or tries to infer them from the interrogators’ suggestions.
Persuaded False Confessions
Persuaded false confessions occur when police interrogation tactics cause an innocent suspect to doubt his memory and he becomes temporarily persuaded that it is more likely than not that he committed the crime, despite having no memory of committing it. Persuaded false confessions typically unfold in three sequential steps.
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Usually, the persuaded false confessor's postadmission narrative is replete with errors. Reasoning from inference rather than actual knowledge, his confession is given in hypothetical, tentative, and speculative language. His use of equivocal language reflects his uncertain belief state, confusion, and lack of memory. Assuming that the suspect is lying, however, the interrogators sometimes reject his speculations and pressure him to use declarative rather than conditional language and to provide the details of the crime that they continue to believe he knows. Usually, the persuaded false confessor recants either during the interrogation or shortly after being removed from the interrogation environment.
They tend to occur primarily in high-profile murder cases and to be the product of unusually lengthy and psychologically intense interrogations. Once he is removed from the interrogation environment and its attendant influences and pressures, the persuaded false confessor typically recants his confession. Ordinary police interrogation is not strong enough to produce a permanent change in the suspect's beliefs.
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