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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Effects Of Variations In Confession Evidence And Need For Cognition On Jurors' Decisions, Kelsey S. Henderson, Lora M. Levett
The Effects Of Variations In Confession Evidence And Need For Cognition On Jurors' Decisions, Kelsey S. Henderson, Lora M. Levett
Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations
The reliability of a confession partially depends on the interrogation methods used and the confession’s content. Confronting suspects with evidence gives a suspect knowledge of nonpublic details, increasing the likelihood of a false confession (Gudjonsson & Pearse, 2011; Leo, 2009), and makes the confession harder to judge as more or less reliable. That is, if a confession is consistent with case facts but details of the crime were communicated to the suspect during interrogation, it is difficult to judge whether the confession is a product of the suspect’s knowledge of the crime or the details that were communicated during the …
Can Expert Testimony Sensitize Jurors To Variations In Confession Evidence, Kelsey S. Henderson, Lora M. Levett
Can Expert Testimony Sensitize Jurors To Variations In Confession Evidence, Kelsey S. Henderson, Lora M. Levett
Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations
Confession evidence can be extremely damaging in the courtroom; jurors are more willing to convict based on the presence of a confession than eyewitness evidence and character testimony (Kassin & Neumann, 1997). To date, no research has examined whether jurors notice variations in confession evidence based on whether the confession is consistent or inconsistent with the crime evidence (a likely low quality confession). In Study 1, mock jurors read a trial summary in which a suspect’s confession was consistent or inconsistent with other case facts. Jurors were marginally more likely to convict if the confession and case facts were consistent …