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Association for Psychological Science
Witness for the prosecution? the effect of confessions on eyewitness testimony
February 28th, 2009
What is it with false confession' It seems crazy on the face of it, to take the blame for a crime you didn't commit. Yet experts have found that while some innocent confessors are mentally disturbed attention seekers, or taking the fall for someone else, most innocents who confess do so under stress, as an act of surrender, during a high stakes, high-pressure police interrogation. According to one estimate, fully a quarter of convictions later overturned by DNA evidence involved a false confession. Confessions are powerful evidence in court. But in our legal system, confessions are supposed to be just one more piece of evidence, weighed along with fingerprints and...
Source: Law & Health Weekly (2009-02-28)
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