You Can’t Handle the Truth: A Primer on False Confessions

Abstract

This article will introduce the reader to false confessions and their impact on the criminal justice system. False confessions impact the life of the individual who by means of psychological tactics widely employed by police and investigators, has a confession extracted from him for a crime he did not commit. Police have long used the so-called Reid technique in the process of extracting confessions. False confessions pose various problems for the criminal justice system including the convicting the innocent and truncating the investigatory process because a “confession” exists. Additionally, when the wrong person is convicted because of a false confession there is lack justice for crimes victim and the public when the actual perpetrator remains free to commit more crime and injure others. This article exposes the reader to the causes of false confessions, the power those confessions have in the eyes of juries, judges, lawyers and the public, and the known policies that will help prevent false confessions from occurring.

Keywords: false confessions, wrongful conviction, criminal procedure