Law Commons^™

The Three Errors: Pathways To False Confession And Wrongful Conviction, Richard A. Leo, Steven A. Drizin

Richard A. Leo

Research has demonstrated that false confessors whose cases are not dismissed before trial are often convicted despite their innocence. In order to prevent such wrongful convictions, criminal justice officials must better understand the role that false confessions play in creating and perpetuating miscarriages of justice. This chapter examines police-induced false confessions and analyzes three sequential errors that occur in the social production of every false confession: investigators first misclassify an innocent person as guilty; they next subject him to a guilt-presumptive, accusatory interrogation that invariably involves lies about evidence and often the repeated use of implicit and/or explicit promises and …