False confessions are a rare phenomena, but they have occurred. One of the interrogation techniques that the United States Supreme Court has sanctioned is the verbal misrepresentation of evidence to a suspect during an interrogation. It has been the Reid position that misrepresenting evidence, in and of itself, was not going to make a "normal" person falsely confess (obvious care must be exercised with juveniles and mentally impaired individuals), but that it was always some other element that was the triggering mechanism for the false confession, such as illegal interrogation tactics (physical abuse, threats, promises of leniency, denial of physical needs, denial of rights, etc) and/or excessively long interrogations. A study published in the Criminal Law Bulletin, "A Test of the Unusual False Confession Perspective: Using Cases of Proven False Confessions" confirms this position.

After reviewing numerous false confession cases the author, J.P. Blair, states that "This study failed to find a single false confession of a cognitively normal individual that did not also include the use of coercive tactics by the interrogator." Earlier in the article the author defined coercive tactics as "the use of physical force; denial of food, sleep or the bathroom; explicit threats of punishment; explicit promises of leniency; and extremely lengthy interrogations." In other words, if these illegal tactics are not employed then the likelihood of obtaining a false confession is almost nil.