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Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Law
Police-Induced Confessions: Risk Factors And Recommendations, Saul M. Kassin, Steven A. Drizin, Thomas Grisso, Gisli H. Gudjonsson, Richard A. Leo, Allison D. Redlich
Police-Induced Confessions: Risk Factors And Recommendations, Saul M. Kassin, Steven A. Drizin, Thomas Grisso, Gisli H. Gudjonsson, Richard A. Leo, Allison D. Redlich
Richard A. Leo
Recent DNA exonerations have shed light on the problem that people sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit. Drawing on police practices, laws concerning the admissibility of confession evidence, core principles of psychology, and forensic studies involving multiple methodologies, this White Paper summarizes what is known about police-induced confessions. In this review, we identify suspect characteristics (e.g., adolescence; intellectual disability; mental illness; and certain personality traits), interrogation tactics (e.g., excessive interrogation time; presentations of false evidence; and minimization), and the phenomenology of innocence (e.g., the tendency to waive Miranda rights) that influence confessions as well as their effects on …
What Do Potential Jurors Know About Police Interrogation Techniques And False Confessions?, Richard Leo, Brittany Liu
What Do Potential Jurors Know About Police Interrogation Techniques And False Confessions?, Richard Leo, Brittany Liu
Richard A. Leo
Psychological police interrogation methods in America inevitably involve some level of pressure and persuasion to achieve their goal of eliciting confessions of guilt from custodial suspects. In this article, we surveyed potential jurors about their perceptions of a range of psychological interrogation techniques, the likelihood that such techniques would elicit a true confession from guilty suspects and the likelihood that such techniques could elicit a false confession from innocent suspects. Participants recognized that these interrogation techniques may be psychologically coercive and may elicit true confessions, but that psychologically coercive interrogation techniques are not likely to elicit false confessions. The findings …
Jurors Believe Interrogation Tactics Are Not Likely To Elicit False Confessions: Will Expert Witness Testimony Inform Them Otherwise?, Iris Blandon-Gitlin, Kathryn Sperry, Richard Leo
Jurors Believe Interrogation Tactics Are Not Likely To Elicit False Confessions: Will Expert Witness Testimony Inform Them Otherwise?, Iris Blandon-Gitlin, Kathryn Sperry, Richard Leo
Richard A. Leo
Situational factors – in the form of interrogation tactics – have been reported to unduly influence innocent suspects to confess. This study assessed jurors’ perceptions of these factors and tested whether expert witness testimony on confessions informs jury decision-making. In Study 1, jurors rated interrogation tactics on their level of coerciveness and likelihood that each would elicit true and false confessions. Most jurors perceived interrogation tactics to be coercive and likely to elicit confessions from guilty, but not from innocent suspects. This result motivated Study 2 in which an actual case involving a disputed confession was used to assess the …
False Confessions: Causes, Consequences And Implications, Richard A. Leo
False Confessions: Causes, Consequences And Implications, Richard A. Leo
Richard A. Leo
In the last two decades, hundred of convicted prisoners have been exonerated by DNA and non-DNA evidence, revealing that police-induced false confessions are a leading cause of the wrongful conviction of the innocent. This article reviews the empirical research on the causes and correlates of false confessions. After looking at the three sequential processes that are responsible for the elicitation of false confessions - misclassification, coercion and contamination - this article reviews the three psychologically distinct types of false confession (voluntary, compliant and persuaded) and then discusses the consequences of introducing false confession evidence in the criminal justice system. The …
Psychological And Cultural Aspects Of Interrogations And False Confessions: Using Research To Inform Legal Decision-Making, Richard A. Leo, Mark Costanzo, Netta Shaked-Schroer
Psychological And Cultural Aspects Of Interrogations And False Confessions: Using Research To Inform Legal Decision-Making, Richard A. Leo, Mark Costanzo, Netta Shaked-Schroer
Richard A. Leo
False confessions are a major cause of wrongful convictions. In many countries, physical abuse and torture are still used to extract confessions from criminal suspects. Cultural orientations such as collectivism and power distance may influence the tendency to confess, and a suspect's past experience in a country that uses physical abuse during interrogations may render suspects fearful and more prone to falsely confess. After looking at interrogations outside the United States, we examine the issue of why false confessions sometime occur in the U.S. legal system. We prove an overview of the stages of a typical interrogation and provide a …
Studying Wrongful Convictions: Learning From Social Science, Richard A. Leo, Jon B. Gould
Studying Wrongful Convictions: Learning From Social Science, Richard A. Leo, Jon B. Gould
Richard A. Leo
There has been an explosion of legal scholarship on wrongful convictions in the last decade, reflecting a growing concern about the problem of actual innocence in the criminal justice system. Yet criminal law and procedure scholars have engaged in relatively little dialogue or collaboration on this topic with criminologists. In this article, we use the empirical study of wrongful convictions to illustrate what criminological approaches—or, more broadly, social science methods—can teach legal scholars. After briefly examining the history of wrongful conviction scholarship, we discuss the limits of the (primarily) narrative methodology of legal scholarship on wrongful convictions. We argue that …
From False Confession To Wrongful Conviction: Seven Psychological Processes, Richard A. Leo, Deborah Davis
From False Confession To Wrongful Conviction: Seven Psychological Processes, Richard A. Leo, Deborah Davis
Richard A. Leo
A steadily increasing tide of literature has documented the existence and causes of false confession as well as the link between false confession and wrongful conviction of the innocent. This literature has primarily addressed three issues: the manner in which false confessions are generated by police interrogation, individual differences in susceptibility to interrogative influence, and the role false confessions have played in documented wrongful convictions of the innocent. Although the specific mechanisms through which interrogation tactics can induce false confessions, and through which they can exert enhanced influence on vulnerable individuals have been widely addressed in this literature, the processes …