Consequences of False Confessions: Deprivations of Liberty and Miscarriages of Justice in the Age of Psychological Interrogation
![handle is hein.journals/jclc88 and id is 443 raw text is: 0091-4169/98/8802-0429
THE JOURNA L OF CRIMINAL LAW & CRIMINOLOGY VoL 88, No. 2
Copyright 0 1998 by Northwestern University, School of Law Pridnk i U.S.A.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF FALSE
CONFESSIONS: DEPRIVATIONS OF
LIBERTY AND M[SCARRIAGES OF JUSTICE
IN THE AGE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL
INTERROGATION*
RICHARD A. LEO AND RICHARD J. OFSHE
I. INTRODUCTION
A. DEFINING THE PROBLEM
Because a confession is universally treated as damning and
compelling evidence of guilt,1, it is likely to dominate all other
case evidence and lead a trier of fact to convict the defendant.2
A false confession is therefore an exceptionally dangerous piece
of evidence to put before anyone adjudicating a case. In a
criminal justice system whose formal rules are designed to
minimize the frequency of unwarranted arrest, unjustified
prosecution, and wrongful conviction, police-induced false con-
fessions rank amongst the most fateful of all official errors.
. We thank Robert Perske and Michael L. Radelet for providing case materials, and
we thank David T.Johnson, Gary Marx and Welsh White for helpful comments.
.Assistant Professor of Criminology, Law and Society, University. of California, Ir-
vine; Assistant Professor of Sociology and Adjoint Professor of Law, University of
Colorado, Boulder;, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley; J.D., University of Cali-
fornia, Berkeley.
Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley; Ph.D., Stanford Uni-
versity.
I See Saul M. Kassin & Lawrence S. Wrightsman, Confession Evidence, in TIE
PSYCHOLOGY OF CONFESSION EVIDENCE & TRIAL PROCEDURE 67, 67-68 (SAUL M. KAssiN &
LAWRENCE S. WRIGHTSMAN eds., 1985) [hereinafter Kassin & Wrightsman, Confession
Evidence]; 3 JOHN HENRYWIGMORE, WIGMORE ON EVIDENCE § 815 (1972); DAvID SIMON,
HOMICIDE: AYEAR ONTHE KIJING STEETS (1991); Richard A. Leo, Inside the Interroga-
tion Room, 86J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY 266, 298 (1996) [hereinafter Leo, Inside the
Interrogation Room].
'See Kassin & Wrightsman, Confession Evidence, supra note 1, at 67; Saul M. Kassin &
Lawrence S. Wrightsman, Coerced Confessions, Judicial Instructions, and Mock Juror Ver-
dicts, 11 J. OF APPLIED SOCAL PSYCHOLOGY 489, 489 (1981) [hereinafter Kassin &
Wrightsman, Coerced Confessions]; Saul M. Kassin & Lawrence S. Wrightsman, Prior
Confessions and Mock Juror Verdicts, 10J. OFAPPLED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 133, 133 (1980)
[hereinafter Kassin & Wrightsman, Prior Confessions].](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/jclc88&div=20&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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