Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law

in which five teenage boys confessed to brutally beat-

ing and raping a female jogger in New York’s Central

Park. Even though the boys were subjected to lengthy

and harsh interrogations, gave confessions that were

filled with factual errors, retracted their confessions

shortly thereafter, and were excluded as donors of the

semen by DNA tests, each was convicted at trial—

solely on the basis that they had confessed. It was not

until 13 years later that they were exonerated when a

serial rapist stepped forward from prison to confess.

His confession betrayed firsthand knowledge of the

crime and was supported by a match to the original

DNA sample.

Questions of Prevalence

The jogger case is notorious but not unique. Beginning

with the Salem witch trials of 1692, numerous false

confessions surfaced when it was later discovered that

the confessed crime had not been committed (e.g., the

alleged victim turned up alive) or that it was physically

impossible (e.g., the confessor was demonstrably else-

where) or when the real perpetrator was apprehended

(e.g., by ballistics evidence). Indeed, as more and more

wrongful convictions are discovered, often as a result of

newly available DNA tests on old evidence, it is appar-

ent that 15% to 25% of those wrongfully convicted had

confessed. Moreover, many false confessions are dis-

covered before there is a trial, are not reported by the

police, are not publicized by the media, or result in plea

bargains and are never contested—suggesting that the

known cases represent the tip of an iceberg. In short,

although it is not possible to know the prevalence rate

of false confessions, it is clear that they occur with

some regularity, making it important to understand how

they come about and how they can be prevented.

Types of False Confessions

Both criminals and innocent suspects may confess,

providing true and false confessions, respectively.

Based on a taxonomy introduced by Saul Kassin and

Lawrence Wrightsman, it is now common to further

divide the latter into three types: voluntary, compliant,

and internalized.

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In the absence of pressure from the police, volun-

tary false confessions occur when people freely admit

to crimes for which they were not responsible.

Sometimes innocent people have volunteered confes-

sions in this way to protect the actual perpetrator, often

a parent or a child. At other times, however, voluntary

false confessions have resulted from a pathological

desire for attention, especially in high-profile cases

reported in the news media; a conscious or uncon-

scious need for self-punishment to alleviate feelings of

guilt over other transgressions; or an inability to distin-

guish fact from fantasy, a common feature of certain

psychological disorders. As revealed in actual known

cases, the motives underlying voluntary false confes-

sions are as diverse as the people who make them.

A number of high-profile cases illustrate the

point. In 1932, the aviator Charles Lindbergh’s baby

was kidnapped, prompting some 200 people to vol-

unteer confessions. In 1947, Elizabeth Short, a

young, aspiring actress, later called “Black Dahlia”

for her black hair and attire, was brutally murdered

in Los Angeles and her nude body cut in half,

prompting more than 60 people, mostly men, to con-

fess. In the 1980s, Henry Lee Lucas falsely con-

fessed to hundreds of unsolved murders, mostly in

Texas, making him the most prolific serial confessor

in history. More recently, John Mark Karr was

arrested in Thailand in the summer of 2006, after it

appeared that he had voluntarily confessed to the

unsolved 1996 murder of JonBenét Ramsey, a 6-

year-old beauty pageant contestant in Boulder,

Colorado. Karr was intimately familiar with the facts

of the crime. Ultimately, he was not charged, how-

ever, after his ex-wife placed him in a different state

and after DNA tests from the crime scene implicated

another, still unidentified, man.

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In contrast to cases in which innocent people con-

fess without external pressure are the numerous false

confessions that are elicited through pressure from

family, friends, and most notably, the processes of

police interrogation.

In many of these cases, the suspect surrenders to

the demand for a confession to escape from the stress

and discomfort of the situation, avoid a threat of harm

or punishment, or gain a promised or implied reward.

This type of confession is a mere act of public compli-

ance by a suspect who comes to believe that the

short-term benefits of confession relative to denial

outweigh the long-term costs. American history

False Confessions——— 307

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