Several years ago we posted on our YouTube channel, The Reid Technique Tips, a two part presentation on False Confessions - the issues to be considered.

The following is a document that reflects the information that we provided in those video presentations:

False Confessions – The Issues to be Considered

In this document we discuss the primary causes of and contributing factors to false confessions, and the Best Practices to follow to minimize the possibility of obtaining a false confession.

Historical View:

Over 55 years ago in the 1967 edition of their book, Criminal Interrogation and Confessions, John Reid and Fred Inbau expressed concern about the possibility of a false confession from individuals with a “mental illness” and suggested that there were two ways to test the veracity of their incriminating statements:

1) determine if they could offer details about the crime that had been concealed from the public, and/or

2) refer to some fictious aspects of the crime and test whether the subject will accept them as actual facts relating to the occurrence

They also detailed cases in which the courts ruled that confessions were inadmissible that were the result of

• physical abuse of the subject

• threats of harm

• threats that if the subject did not confess he would be sent to the penitentiary for more serious crimes

• threats that his family members would be arrested

They also detailed cases in which the subject’s incriminating statements were found to be inadmissible because of a promise of leniency

• specifically, that if he confessed he would be released from custody

• that he would not be prosecuted

• that he will be granted a pardon

• that he will receive a lighter sentence that the law prescribed

The knowledge that potentially false confessions may occur as the result of coercive behavior, such as threats and promises, has been known to investigators for many decades, but undoubtedly the awareness heightened with the development of DNA exonerations

According to the Innocence Project between 1989 and 2020 there have been 367 DNA exonerations, approximately 100 cases (28 %) involved false confessions. In almost half of these cases the subjects were under 18 years old or mentally impaired at the time of their arrest

According to The National Registry of Exonerations, of the exonerees with reported mental illness or intellectual disability, 72 percent had confessed. Forty percent of the exonerees who were under 18 years old at the time of the crime falsely confessed

Clearly, individuals who are mentally impaired and juveniles should be considered more suspectable to false confessions than the population at large

While the overwhelming majority of confessions are true and accurate, certainly false confessions do occur.