Do Police Interrogations Cause False Confessions?

What exactly goes on behind the closed doors of law enforcement interrogation rooms remains an object of mystery, especially to the public. The object that remains an even larger mystery, perhaps, is how these interrogations can possibly lead to innocent people giving a false confession. Through many factors and methods, some interrogations take a turn for the worse. Police interrogations can occasionally lead to false confessions due to misclassification of charges, coercion of the accused, and contamination of evidence. The phrase “innocent until proven guilty” is popular among law enforcement and government employees but is not always upheld, as various errors, such as misclassification, are a major cause of false confessions. Misclassified

This error occurs when interrogators provide detainees important non-public details of the crime, whether knowingly or unknowingly. In his article, Garrett explains how the complexity of interrogations make them difficult to maneuver when he writes, “Police may do so intentionally, to “feed facts” in violation of their training, but it may also happen completely unintentionally, since interrogations can be such complex affairs in which police offer suspects a set of complicated and increasingly inculpatory accounts of the crime in an effort to secure a confession.” (Garrett 1066). With the complexity of interrogations, some officers accidentally reveal key elements of the case; furthermore, some are so desperate for a confession they reveal classified evidence on purpose. While this may not seem to be a big deal, it can have a massive impact on detainees. Additionally, the suspect can give an extremely convincing false confession if any other methods, such as misclassification or coercion, along with contamination occur. Therefore, if a suspect decides to escape the interview by giving a false confession, he/she has non-public information. Personal or firsthand knowledge of the private details of the case makes one appear guilty, especially considering there was not only a confession, but confidential details of the crime were known. The Stanford Law Review carried out a study that analyzed forty false confession cases; there were transcripts provided for thirty-eight. Thirty-six of those thirty-eight cases included confessions that held specific details of how the crime occurred. In each of those cases, every suspect provided details that only the culprit could know. Particularly as more extensive investigations occurred on each case, it became apparent that contamination played a major role in the confessions (Garrett 1066).