Wrongful Conviction and False Confessions
Wrongful Conviction and False Confessions
Introduction
The study of wrongful convictions has a long time history in America. For more than eight decades, writers-mostly lawyers, journalists, and activists- have documented numerous convictions of the innocent and described their cause and consequences (Borchard, 1932: Radin, 1964: Scheck, Neaufeld & Dwyer, 2000).
When dealing with wrongful conviction (with results of false confessions) there are several areas to consider. Some of the areas to consider would be: the Miranda rights read to the accused, the police interrogation of the accused, and the emotional/mental condition of the accused. The United State Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case Miranda v. Arizona that because of the inherent coercion present in the police interrogation all suspects must be made aware of their rights against self-incrimination and the right to counsel. When the case reached the Supreme Courts in 1966, Ernesto Miranda had confessed to the rape and kidnapping after about two hours of interrogation. The appeal to the Supreme Court alleged that Miranda was not aware of his rights to remain silent (Fifth Amendment) and to counsel (Sixth Amendment).
The Courts rule in the favor of Miranda and the decision instituted what we have come to know as the “Miranda Rights.” To safe guard a suspect falling into an involuntary confession, because he thinks he has no choice to speak, the police must expressly, clearly and completely advise any suspect of their rights to silent and counsel before beginning interrogation or any other attempt to get a statement from a suspect. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present now and during any future questions. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you free of charge if you wish.’ (Longly, Robert).
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At this point the accused have the right to remain silent and the right to have an attorney present before the interrogation begins. If the accused do waive their rights the detective will then begin the interrogation.
Once the interrogation begins, the detective can unconsciously ignore any evidence of innocence in pursuit of a confession. Interrogation is a guilt-presumptive process. The goal is to get the suspect to confess to the crime. For the past 50 years in the United States, based on the police interrogations, have changed from the use of physical intimidation to a more sophisticated use of psychological manipulation. R. A Leo, (1996) sociologist, wrote that “contemporary interrogation strategies are based on the manipulation and betrayal of trust,” A man named John Reid, polygraph analysts, began noticing that subject exhibited certain outward, consistent physical signs that coincided with polygraph’s determinations of untruthfulness.
This observation caused him to develop a system of interrogation, to save cost on doing a polygraph test, which uncovered weaknesses the interrogator can use against a suspect to obtain a confession. As a result of his method, it is now the most widely used set of interrogation tactics. The training manual, which is considered to be the “bible” of police interrogation, was developed in 1947 and is now in its fourth edition (Reid 4th ed. 2001).
Police interrogators who are trained in these methods are taught to assume guilt, to manipulate the suspect’s emotions and expectations, and to take into account nonverbal behavioral cues, such as hesitant speech, sweating, or dry mouth, as indicators of deception. However these cues, in addition to being general indicators of stress, may appear more frequently among persons with mental illness because of their illness or the medications they are taken. Police interrogation approached can be characterized as involving either minimization technique or maximization technique (Kassin 1997).
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In interrogation today you find a combination of the two.
Minimization technique which is best known as the “good cop bad cop” routine, in which one detective browbeat the suspect and the other pretend to looking out for the suspects best interest. With maximization technique the police try to scare the suspect into talking by telling them all the horrible things they will face if they are convicted of the crime. With very little knowledge of dealing with the mental ill, there have been numerous false confessions of suspects with mental illnesses (Innocent Project).
The most popular Innocent Project, administrated through the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, has helped to free about 138 people who has been wrongfully incarcerated. Approximately 25% of these cases involved false confessions. Among these confessions cased person with mental impairment appeared to be disproportionately represented. “Truly startling is the number of false confession cases involving mentally impaired and the mentally ill.
Police interrogation in the [false confession] cases reveals a lack of training and a disregard for the mental disability” (Innocent Project).
An example of where this situation can lead, is the case of Eddie Joe Lloyd, who spent 17 years in prison before being exculpated by DNA analysis (Wilgoren J: New York Times, 2002).
The number of persons with mental illness who encounter the police as suspects is not inconsequential. Indeed, one study found that the pprobability of arrest was 67 times greater for person that demonstrated sysmptoms of mental illness compared with those without mental symtoms (Teplin LA: National Institute of Justice Journal 2000).
Although mentally ill person are most commonly cited for misdemeanors, there is a sub group of these persons who are suspected of having committed violent crimes, sometimes correctly (Monohan J Steadman HJ, 1994) and are thus subject to formal police interrogations. A conservative estimate that 10% of inmates in the U.S, state and federal prisoners, suffer from mental illness (Lamb HR, Weinberger LE: 1998) yield a total of about 140,000 mentally ill prisoners.
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... protection for disabled citizens such as mentally ill persons." The police must take into consideration the ... the dangers of false confessions, and it tends to make police and prosecutors less zealous ... third-degree methods of interrogating a captured suspect. According to Delattre, who quotes August Vollmer, ... social service resources, like de-tox and mental health facilities, allow officers to use ...
Mentally ill defendants, particularly defendants with psychotic disorders, are significantly less likely to understand their interrogation rights than defendants who are not mentally ill (Viljoen JL., Roesch R. and Zapf PA: 2002).
In Colorado v. Connelly, a case involving a mental ill defendant, the U.D Supreme Court ruled that a suspect’s mental condition alone is insufficient for a finding that a confession was coerced. Rather it must be demonstrated that the police used coercive techniques. Although Connelly confessed because the voices in his head told him to do so, because the police did not overstep their bounds, the confession was considered to be the product of free will and rational intellect. Therefore, the confession could be used against him in the court of law. It has never been established empirically that the boundaries on police behavior that were put in place for suspects who are not mentally ill are sufficient to protect mentally ill suspects.
Prevention is almost always preferable to intervention, and in the case of false confessions, prevention means not to having an innocent person languish in prison, not allowing the true perpetrator to go free to potentially commit more crimes, and not creating embarrassing and costly situation for the criminal justice system. With increasing awareness that people can do and admit to criminal acts that they did not commit, the impairment appear to be disproportionately represented among these false confession case, a greater understanding of the relationship between mental illness, interrogation, and confession is needed.
References
Borchard, 1932; Radin, 1964; Scheck, Neufeld & Dwyer, 2000
Colorado v. Connelly, 449 US 157 (1986)
Inbau FE, Reid JE, Buckeley JP, et al: Criminal Interrogations, 4th ed. Gaitherburg, MD. Aspen
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Publishers, 2001
Innocence Project : False Confessions. Retrieved November 15, 2010 Available at www.innocenceproject.org/causes/falseconfession.php
Kassin SM: The Psychology Evidence. American Psychologist 52:221-223, 1997 Lamber HR, Weinberger LE: Persons with Several Mental Illnesses in Jail and Prison :a review. Psychiatric Services 49:483-492, 1998
Lamber HR, Weinberger LE, Decuir WJ: The Police and Mental Health. Psychiatric Services
53:1266-1271, 2002
Leo RA: Miranda’s revenge: Police Interrogation as Confidence Game. Law & Society Review 30:259-
288, 1996
Longly, Robert: Miranda Rights of Silence. Retrieved November 21, 2010, available at
http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/mirandarights/a/miranda.htm
Miranda v. Arizona, 384 US 436 (1966)
Monohan J, Steadman HJ (eds): Violence and Mental Disorder Developments in Risk Assessment.
Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1994
Teplin LA: Keeping the Peace: Police Discretion and Mentally Ill Person. National Institute of Justice
Journal 244:8-15, 2000
Wilgornen J: Confession Had His Signature: DNA Did Not. New York Times, Aug 26, 2002, p A1
