Confessing When Innocent

I am a huge fan of Law & Order and I am always consumed by the idea that the episode's perpetrator (or "perp" as they say in Law & Order) should be locked away and the key thrown away. Of course, this make-believe world is just that, fake. Nevertheless, I would assume some of the methods depicted in the show are relatively close to the real world, of course with added dramatic nature.

That is why I found it quite interesting to read a story in the Economist that wrote about a study published in Law and Human Behavior by Saul Kassin and Jennifer Perillo of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York that suggests many innocent people simply confess to crimes they never in fact committed. This goes back to an example of the Innocence Project who since 1992 has used DNA evidence to exonerate 271 people who were wrongly convicted, in which a quarter of those 271 people actually confessed or plead guilty to the crime they were accused of.

This is bit of a mystery. Why would one confess to a crime, even more plead guilty in the court of law to a crime they knowingly did not commit? While the answers are not entirely conclusive as to why this happens, through laboratory tests, it seems many innocent confessors do so when interrogation techniques are added to the means of finding the truth. Some of these techniques include bluffing, such as the police suggesting a camera is present or that evidence exists that is not really in existence, or in some cases made up evidence intended to trick the person to confess.

The research suggests that confessions are a means to end the unpleasant experience of interrogation. I also wonder if some people simply don't want the shame and also confess to protect their psyche or family/loved ones.

Its an interesting pattern, and while some of these people may have mental disabilities or ulterior motives, it further gives the need to have concrete evidence of criminal behavior and further that uses of extreme interrogation methods may just not be all that effective.

For more: http://www.economist.com/node/21525840

For some added humor, you can watch this Star Wars Parody of an integration droid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV9_3R1NHnE&feature=player_embedded#!