This article from the New York Times newspaper points out one of the most relevant and controversial topics in the field of Psychology in the Justice System: the confessions, their relevance and impact as an important (sometimes taken as irrefutable) proof of evidence in a trial and the questionable reliability that they have under certain circumstances. It shows how the suspect gave the confession after 12 hours of interrogation and later on retracted part of it, alleging ‘so much pressure’ sustained during such a long period of time. How a false confession could have been proved or unproved easily with a proper videotape of the whole interrogation and confession processes, but how only the confession was recorded (which is the standard practice in New York). This fact gave and gives room for doubts about the police techniques and the possible over-pressure and coercion during the unreasonably long interview, and makes difficult to demonstrate the truth of the confession or the suspicions about the irregular techniques. The article also comments how the implementation of videotaping in interrogations is being slow in many departments and how some detectives object this measure saying it is expensive, impractical and risky (as it could be taken as a tool for criminals).
On the one hand, the goal of an interrogation or interpellation is to extract important information aiming to find the culprit of the specific fault, and as it is an anti-natural and un-evolutionary behaviour of human beings to act against their own well-being and survival instinct, it would definitely be really difficult to obtain any evidence without a certain amount of persuasion. Then, it becomes obvious that no police interrogation is completely free of coerc...
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From my point of view, the videotaping of the interrogation and confession processes is an essential and unavoidable measure that should be mandatory and worldwide implemented in all the justice systems. It should not be taken as a waste of money but as an inversion for the sake of justice. In a current high-tech computerized world, we cannot allow a partially recorded interview that could be taken as manipulated or biased. This measure can whether be useful for the police department to avoid the false accusations about coercive and inhumanly inquisitorial techniques during the interrogations and avoid the invalidation of the true confessions based on partial and biased recordings or for the innocent people to evidence the misuse of psychological practice. So, definitely something valuable in the way to the truth and an important progress in psychology and justice.
``In criminal law, confession evidence is a prosecutor’s most potent weapon’’ (Kassin, 1997)—“the ‘queen of proofs’ in the law” (Brooks, 2000). Regardless of when in the legal process they occur, statements of confession often provide the most incriminating form of evidence and have been shown to significantly increase the rate of conviction. Legal scholars even argue that a defendant’s confession may be the sole piece of evidence considered during a trial and often guides jurors’ perception of the case (McCormick, 1972). The admission of a false confession can be the deciding point between a suspect’s freedom and their death sentence. To this end, research and analysis of the false confessions-filled Norfolk Four case reveals the drastic and controversial measures that the prosecuting team will take to provoke a confession, be it true or false.
I wanted to look at the investigative and criminal procedures following the arrest of an alleged criminal and the powerful effects via testimonies and evidence (or lack thereof) it can have on a case.There is an importance of the courts in regards to crime that can’t be over looked. The primary function of the criminal justice system is to uphold the established laws, which define what we understand as deviant in this society.
The conditions of an interrogation room, small and dark, make it easy for the interrogators to get in one’s head. The hostile conditions create a divide and discomfort between the suspect and the interrogator, already losing trust on both parties. “He eventually confessed, but investigators had to ‘spoonfeed’ him the details”(Patrick). The suspects feel uncomfortable and scared of the interrogators therefore, they feel the need to please the police, even if the idea did not come from them. In this case, the suspect Michael Crowe was under an immense amount of trauma, getting rushed in a cop car from the crime scene straight to the police station. After being interrogated for three and a half hours he was taken to a different location to get interviewed, “he was emotionally drained and so tired he could barely walk”(Warden 13). In the second interview one interrogator asked Crowe to write a letter to his dead sister he was accused of killing, “it is almost like I am being convinced of this[more] than really knowing it...I pray to God that you forgive me for what they say I did”(Warden 13). Crowe uses the phrase “what they say I did” proving that the confession was not his idea, but the police’s instead. He was innocent and the police forced him to make up a story and confess to a crime he did not commit, utilizing the mental strain of interrogation against
Depending on what study is read, the incidence of false confession is less than 35 per year, up to 600 per year. That is a significant variance in range, but no matter how it is evaluated or what numbers are calculated, the fact remains that false confessions are a reality. Why would an innocent person confess to a crime that she did not commit? Are personal factors, such as age, education, and mental state, the primary reason for a suspect to confess? Are law enforcement officers and their interrogation techniques to blame for eliciting false confessions? Regardless of the stimuli that lead to false confessions, society and the justice system need to find a solution to prevent the subsequent aftermath.
Garrett, B. L. (n.d.). The Substance of False Confessions. Criminal Justice Collection. Retrieved November 23, 2010, from find.galegroup.com.uproxy.library.dc-uoit.ca/gtx/retrieve.do?contentSet=IAC-Documents&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3AFQE%3D%28su%2CNone%2C28%29%22Wrongful+Convictions+%28Law%29%22%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28RE%2CNone%2C3%29ref%24&sgHitCo
Ofshe, Richard J., and Richard A. Leo. The Social Psychology of Police Interrogation: The Theory and Classification of True and False Confessions (1997). Web. 28 Nov. 2011.
According to “Sleep Deprivation and False Confessions” and “False Confessions to Police and their Relationship with Conduct Disorder, ADHD, and life adversity,” it tackles on the causes of false confessions and who is more prone to such factors. Based on “The Role of Deception” and “How the Police Generate False Confessions: An Inside Look at the Interrogation Room” by Trainum, James L, it focuses on the methods police interrogators use to coerce a false confession. Lastly, ways to prevent false confessions from recurring will be recommended through “Miranda Rights Comprehension in Young Adults with Specific Language Impairment,” “Miranda Rights and Wrongs: Matter of Justice,” and “Police-Induced Confessions: Risk Factors and Recommendations.” Due to these reasons, the modern justice system needs to be updated and enforced to avoid similar cases of coerced false
...expert testimony in assessing the reliability of disputed confessions. The reason people make false confessions is typically due to a combination of factors such as psychological vulnerabilities, nature of the custodial confinement and the police interviewing tactics. Standardized psychological tests have been devised in order to assess personality factors such as suggestibility and compliance that render some people more vulnerable than others but these should never bee looked at in isolation. Studies indicate that reported cases are only the ‘tip of the iceberg’. It appears that young people are particularly vulnerable and often make false confessions in order to protect others. It is not only people with learning disability or major mental illness´ that are susceptible to make false confessions; depending on the context, anybody can.
Since the inception of this niche in psychology, there has been a greater appreciation for the use of police psychological services. Now almost every police department has a separate psychology department with a number of psychologists working with its other employees. This specialized subset of psychology delivers a number of services to its employees, from assessing qualified applicants, counseling, to suspect profiling and providing expertise during hostage situations. The field has grown tremendously, especially over the last 40 years and has developed into its own sub-specialty with its own dedicated research, journals and professional organizations. During that time, there have been great strides made in developing this relationship betwe...
This paper will consider eye witness testimony and its place in convicting accused criminals. Psychology online (2013) defines “eye witness testimony” as a statement from a person who has witnessed a crime, and is capable of communicating what they have seen, to a court of law under oath. Eye witness testimonies are used to convict accused criminals due to the first hand nature of the eye witnesses’ observations. There are however many faults within this system of identification. Characteristics of the crime is the first issue that will be discussed in this paper, and the flaws that have been identified. The second issue to be discussed will be the stress impact and the inability to correctly identify the accused in a violent or weapon focused crime. The third issue to be discussed is inter racial identification and the problems faced when this becomes a prominent issue. The fourth issue will be time lapse, meaning, the time between the crime and the eye witness making a statement and how the memory can be misconstrued in this time frame. To follow this will be the issue of how much trust jurors-who have no legal training-put on to the eye witness testimony, which may be faltered. This paper references the works of primarily Wells and Olsen (2003) and Rodin (1987) and Schmechel et al. (2006) it will be argued that eye witness testimony is not always accurate, due to many features; inter racial identification, characteristics of the crime, response latency, and line up procedures therefore this paper will confirm that eyewitness testimonies should not be utilised in the criminal ju...
Prior to taking this course, I generally believed that people were rightly in prison due to their actions. Now, I have become aware of the discrepancies and flaws within the Criminal Justice system. One of the biggest discrepancies aside from the imprisonment rate between black and white men, is mental illness. Something I wished we covered more in class. The conversation about mental illness is one that we are just recently beginning to have. For quite a while, mental illness was not something people talked about publicly. This conversation has a shorter history in American prisons. Throughout the semester I have read articles regarding the Criminal Justice system and mental illness in the United States. Below I will attempt to describe how the Criminal Justice system fails when they are encountered by people with mental illnesses.
Forensic Psychology, which is occasionally referred to as Legal Psychology, originally made its debut in the late 1800’s. A Harvard Professor, Professor Munsterberg, introduced the idea of psychology and law with his book, On the Witness Stand in 1908. Since the inception of the idea of psychology and law there have been proponents, as well as though that have spoken against the theories proposed by Munsterberg’s, along with other scientists, theorists, and psychologists that believed that Forensic Psychology had no standing to be linked to topics of law. This literature review will attempt to identify scholarly articles that trace the origins and the movement that led to Forensics Psychology becoming a specialty within the field of psychology. I will also attempt to explain What is Forensic Psychology as well as the part it plays within the legal system.
Without accepting confessions as legitimate form of evidence to be used in the court of law, the justice system would be in complete disarray what with most suspects making confessions to the police, also having a high likelihood of going on to be convicted. Confessional evidence is of great importance seeing as it is one of the exceptions to the hearsay rule. Although it is of high regard in evidential law, it would be naïve to say that the law on confessions is down to perfection, especially with such high-profile cases such as the Guildford four or Birmingham six which brought to the surface the potential possibility of fabrication by police and perversion of the use of confessional evidence to bring about a certain result in a case. While known as the most powerful form of evidence to be adduced, it is also known as the “best and worst form of evidence” to deal with. Whether the implementations of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act has succeeded to remedy the dilemmas in respect to confession is up for discussion.
Many of today’s interrogation models being utilized in police investigations have an impact on false confessions. The model that has been in the public eye recently is the social psychological process model of interrogation known as the “The Reid Technique.” There are two alternatives used by the police today to replace the Reid Technique, one is the PEACE Model and the other is Cognitive Interviewing. These methods are not interrogation techniques like Reid but interview processes.
Leo, R and Ofshe R. The Social Psychology of Police Interrogation: The Theory and Classification of True and False Confessions. 16 Studies in Law, Politics and Society 189,