False Confessions, Essay Example

People falsely confess to crimes that they have not committed for several reasons.

They may be protecting someone or they may actually think that they carried out the crime. The latter reason for a false confession may be due to a hazy recollection of the crime due to having consumed far too much alcohol. Also, a false confessor may have, for example, hit someone and believed at the time that while the person was hurt, the situation was far from a fatality; but, then, the attacked is, subsequently, found dead. Campbell (2011) wrote an article about the many high-profile criminals who have confessed, some because they were guilty and others for the notereity. False confessions can leave the guilty person go free and able to commit more crimes. The false confessor may also be falsely imprisoned. To lessen these occurrences, they should be told that they’re not being smart and the media should cease giving them a sort of popularity.

There are numerous Interrogation techniques, one notable one being Light Torture (Urban Dictionary), which uses triggers and/or objects that are known to be particularly bothersome to the person(s) being interrogated but do not leave physical marks. These could be spitting in a person’s face, yelling, giving a person a chair to sit on that has one leg shorter than the rest, being seated in a hot room and shining a light in the person’s face.

When Rutledge relates the interrogation of a 13 year old he does not say whether he confessed after only 13 minutes of interrogation because of his youthful age, but he does say that he should have been Mirandized even though he was not officially in custody and that a distinction should be made between a reasonable person and a reasonable juvenile. I believe juveniles would be more likely to confess when interrogated because they do not have the sophistication of dealing with police. Consequently their interrogations should be less harsh.

References

Campbell, D. (2011, July 03). The Guardian/The Observer. Criminal Confessions. Retrieved on February 27, 2013, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/ Jul/03.

Rutledge, J. (2011, August 01). Police Patrol, The Law Enforcement Magazine. Juveniles and Miranda. Retrieved on February 27, 2013, from http://www.policemag.com/channel/patrol.

Urban Dictionary. Coercive Interrogation Techniques. Retrieved on February 27, 2013, from http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term-cor.