False Confessions Lead to Additional Evidence Flaws, New Study Shows

A new study that will be published in an upcoming issue of the Association for Psychological Science’s journal reveals false confessions often impact the reliability of other evidence in cases.

The report, “Confessions that Corrupt: Evidence from the DNA Exoneration Case Files,” is the results of extensive research conducted by Saul Kassin of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Daniel Bogart of the University of California- Irvine and Jacqueline Kerner of Nova Southeastern University.

The psychologists reviewed trial records of the first 241 DNA exonerations, 59 of which involved false confessions. The research revealed that multiple errors occur more often in false confession cases than in eyewitness identification cases. In more than half of the cases, the confession was followed by other errors such as invalid forensic science and government informants.

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Read more about the research for the study,

“Confessions that Corrupt: Evidence from the DNA Exoneration Case Files.”

Learn about the causes of false confessions

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Read more about false confessions and mandatory recording of interrogations

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