False Confessions Argumentative Analysis

It can be said that it is better for ten guilty people to go free, than for one innocent person to suffer. In the cases of wrongly convicted individuals, one in four people are declared guilty and sentenced as a result of false confessions (Kopelman, M., 2013). As Brendan Dassey, from the documentary 'Making a Murderer' found out the hard way, convictions can be made just with a confession alone, even if that confession is false. Juries and the courts view confessions as the greatest form of evidence on the basis that an innocent person would not confess to a crime they did not commit. In the eyes of the law, as long as the individual in question agrees to the charges in front of them, they have given their confession of committing the crime(s)

T., 1998), however, as it will be shown, it can be extremely beneficial and would lower the number of false convictions, and false confessions. As beneficial as it would be, there are some possible problems associated with this. Firstly, guilty criminals may try to use this to their advantage to delay their trial or be excused from their previous confession all together. This would ultimately fail as, this technique to expose false confessions related to false memories, would be similar to the not criminally responsible on account of a mental disorder (NCRMD) act. It would be used in extremely rare circumstances and require some sort of proof to enact it (e.g. taped confession showing unusual behaviour, previous official record of a mental disorder or memory problems, recent official medical record showing brain trauma, etc.). Secondly, this type of testing by a psychologist would require resources and time, that could result in delaying a trial, or becoming costly. This could also be addressed by the fact that it would only be used in rare circumstances, and would be used in order to avoid convicting an innocent person because of a false memory, which, could be agreed, is worth the extra time and resources. Finally, a potential problem would be that psychologists follow a different code of ethics as police and interrogators do, which could pose difficulty in what the

the self, motivations, etc.) and external sources (e.g. society, environment, etc.), and can create a false picture, they can be recalled in a similar manner as true memories. False memories feel real to the individual, and are experienced in a similar way as true memories. A false picture of what actually occurred is developed, which makes individuals believe that they are remembering, rather than imagining (Shaw, J., & Porter, S., 2015). It is similar to when a person views a past situation as hostile, when it may not actually have be. The person's false memory is a result of their internal thoughts and feelings, leading them to believe what they perceived to be hostile is reality, and so, they remember it that way, rather than just perceiving it that way. The evidence that indicates this also suggests that brain activity and emotional content is similar between true and false memories. Cognitive-operations details, along with sensory components (visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactical) are indistinguishable between true and false memories to an individual, unless they are recorded by equipment and evaluated (Shaw, J., & Porter, S., 2015; Jou, J., & Flores., 2013). Moreover, in a study by Shaw, J., and Porter, S., (2015), it was confirmed that false memories are rich in details and create similar patterns in brain activity. Therefore, false memories affect what a person perceives, and may lead them to believe an