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Summary Of Why Confessions Trump Innocence

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Why Confessions Trump Innocence written by Saul M. Kassin is a comprehensive article to help people understand why innocent people actually commit to crimes that they did not do. There are many example stories explaining different scenarios and how they went wrong with someone confessing to a crime that they did not commit.

A known fact is that 25% of confessions are false, but there could very well be more. Some basic reasons for people committing crimes that they did not commit are to end the pain. If an interrogator uses torture to make them confess, even an innocent person would want to confess to end the torture. Also, interrogators might talk about false evidence that the suspect will believe that they have. Interrogators can twist the …show more content…

Unfortunately, police and interrogators can twist the whole case around and convict an innocent person and may never even find the actual person who committed the crime.

DNA testing is a powerful way to see who committed the crime. However, fingerprints are never the same, even for the same person, and like the example in the article told, there could be a twisting of the story. They might say oh the blood does not match you five, there must have been a sixth person and you five did not bleed on the victim. Even DNA testing can make innocent people commit to being guilty.

If confessions, whether true or false, or such things as a failed polygraph test are used in court, the jurors will most likely say that the defendant is guilty. People tend to believe what they see and assume what they see is true and thus, must be the correct result. Interrogations are usually not completely recorded, if recorded at all, so jurors and judges cannot see if the interrogator twisted evidence around or used torture to make the suspect confess. In reality, it is easier to take the suspect and make them guilty, thus case closed, than it is to set them free and possibly have to start the whole case over just to try to find another, hopefully correct suspect. People would rather see a finished case than a mystery that never got

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