His confession was an instrumental coerced confession. The police stated that they had evidence that would convict him, and that he would get a lighter sentence if he willingly confessed. List any extenuating circumstances that might have contributed to this false confession (other than those covered within the definitions of the various types of confessions).
Research provided by the Innocence Project shows that Hundreds of people are accused of crimes they have never committed just because of eyewitness testimony and factors which distorted memory. Can we even trust our memory after knowing so many innocent people have been convicted? Coming back to the question: How does crime affect memory? Looking at the studies of Ronald Cotton and Bennett Barbour, they tell us that crime distorts the memory of a victim. In both cases, the victim identified the wrong person as their assailant.
P alleges false arrest for 3 different incident. First incident (2/2/2007) – P allege that he was inside his friend, Mel Herman’s apartment when MOS entered the apartment and arrested everyone. P alleges that MOS threaten to have a German Shepherd bite P, pushed and stepped on P. P alleges that P was strip searched at the apartment. MOS Sgt. Urena stated that MOS were executing at search warrant which was obtained by Det.
“A 2003 study found that teenagers were far more likely than young adults to falsely confess. And in an analysis of hundreds of cases going back to 1989, false confessions were found to be one of the leading causes of wrongful conviction, according to the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal clinic. Overall, about 31 percent of wrongful conviction cases examined by the Innocence Project included a false confession. Among homicide cases, that number ballooned to 63 percent.” According to the study, Dassey would have more likely than not falsely confessed to the homicide.
It is unlikely that social consequences of false memories can be avoided. Elizabeth Loftus was intrigued to study false memories, and is perhaps personally responsible for subsequent developments throughout the history of false memories. Some of this history addresses various theories aimed at isolating how or why false memories occur. These include Source Monitoring Framework, Activation Monitoring Theory, Fuzzy Trace Theory, and strategies for persuasion which can lead to the development of false memory. Such persuasion leads to the present discussion concerning how persuasion in the judicial system has created false confessions and wrongful eyewitness testimonies, due to the Misinformation Effect.
This means that, technically, hiding the truth could be considered lying and can cause the verdict to take a drastic turn allowing guilty people, who have confessed to their crimes, to maneuver their way out of the criminal justice
The police then determine if the suspect is guilty and continuously interrogate, accuse, and even threaten the suspect for hours until they confess, whether they are guilty or not. On many occasions the people who are coerced into false confessions are have severe mental impairments that prevent them from functioning as a normal person with out the impairments would.
False Confessions One of the biggest problems that our criminal justice system is facing is false confessions, whether they are coerced or done for attention. In an article written by the Innocence Project, it states "More than 1 out of every 4 people wrongfully convicted but later exonerated by DNA evidence made a false confession or incriminating statement. "(1). What would lead someone to open their lives to judgment and persecution, by confessing to a crime that they didn 't commit? There are many possible reasons, ranging from duress, ignorance when it comes to community laws, and mental impairment.
Research by Larmour, Bergstrom, Gillen, and Forth (2014) claims, “In twenty-two percent of trials with a false confession present, individuals were sentenced to death” (94). This number is not a joke, twenty-two percent of cases with false confessions actually had people that were put to death before they could be found innocent. Many cases call for reforms, but many of them are too little too late. According to Alan Hirsh (2014), “Juries may convict the false confessor even if they see the interrogation and hear the expert testimony, and too late because, even if the jury acquits, great harm will already have occurred”
The principle in law that one is innocent until proven guilty has created much discourse. There are those who feel that the moment that one is arrested, there is reasonable belief that they committed the crime. However, there are those who feel that just as the principle states, one is, and should be taken as a victim and the outcome could be either way: guilty or not guilty. In fact, this argument is supported by the many cases of malicious prosecutions and mistaken identities.
Are You Sure? Why have more than two-thousand people exonerated for crimes they didn’t commit? Eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions in the U.S. Memory can be influenced by anxiety, stress, reconstructive memory and other factors possibly affecting the testimony of the eyewitness and in turn, misleading the jury. I think that when subjects witness a crime they will struggle to remember important details of the event, and their recollection could be easily altered. This is because the reconstructive memory can be influenced by factors such as stress, anxiety, and verbal cues.
Over the years people have confessed to crimes they have not committed. People have went to jail and sent to jail for crimes they did not commit, because of the intimation they endured during their interrogation. For instance, some people are physically, mentally, and emotionally threatened during interrogations. People are afraid so they often give false confessions or someone else name in an attempt to remove themselves from the situation. However, if psychologist were present during interrogations they would most likely be able to prevent false confessions.
Furthermore, there can be several factors at play when a wrongful conviction occurs and each case is unique. Three of the more common and detrimental factors that will be explored in this essay are eyewitness error, the use of jailhouse informants and professional and institutional misconduct. Firstly, eyewitness testimony can be a major contributor to a conviction and is an important factor in wrongful conviction (Campbell & Denov, 2016, p. 227). Witness recall and, frankly, the human emory are not as reliable as previously thought. In fact there has been much research showing the problems with eyewitness testimony such as suggestive police interviewing, unconscious transference, and malleability of confidence (Campbell & Denov, 2016, p.227).
There are ethical issues that need to be recognized in interrogation which are, the use of false evidence, the use of torture, and deceptive promises. Starting off an interrogation, police will usually comfort a suspect by giving evidence that is not true, with the intention to make the suspect end up voluntarily confessing. Giving false evidence has a number of planning’s. One with the officer telling the suspect that he or
This clearly sows that the memory is an active process and is expected to alter an opinion based on understanding society (Simple Psychology, 2014) . Eyewitness testimony is unethical as the evidence that is supplied can be provided by someone with stress or anxiety issues this can assist by distraught the image of the suspect. Wrongfully sending an innocent individual to prison. Bloods worth’s case displays it is unethical as there was no psychical evidence nor appearance matched that supported Bloodsworth was responsible for the murder and rape of the victim. Three eyewitnesses were able to identify the perpetrator out of the five and this was based from evidence that he was spotted with the young girl hours earlier before the crime was
