The Science Behind False Confessions

It took 30 years for a US court to realise the false conviction of Huwe Burton, who was convicted of murder of his own mother in 1989. On January 24, 2019, Judge Stephen L. Barrett at Bronx, New York, finally vacated his conviction. Burton was convicted on the basis of the confession he made in front of the detectives who were handling the case. Now, the Bronx Judge believed that Burton’s confession was an outcome of the psychologically coercive interrogation techniques used by the detectives. Pronouncing the verdict, Justice Barrett expressed remorse—“Certainly it is a tragedy that Mr. Burton spent some 20 years in jail for a crime he did not commit. For this, I apologise on behalf of a system that failed him.”

The acquittal comes thanks to the Innocence Project and the Bronx district attorney’s conviction integrity unit, who collaboratively pursued Burton’s case since 2016. But the journey was a thorny one; they produced facts that were enough to prove that his confession was contradictory and also evidenced a prosecutorial misconduct. But it was Burton’s confession that outweighed all other evidences; after all, could there be anyone who would admit to a crime they didn’t do? Then came Saul Kassin, a psychologist at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and one of the world’s leading experts on interrogation to join the team fighting for Burton. From his 30 years of research, Kassin explained the legal team how standard interrogation techniques put psychological pressure that could lead an innocent person to confess a crime that he didn’t commit. Kassin’s presentation helped the prosecutors realise the psychological underpinnings and emerging science of interrogation and false confession.

Two Aspects of Burton’s Acquittal

Burton’s acquittal opens up two important aspects. One, it becomes the first case in the US where exoneration has taken place based upon the scientific analysis of interrogation. However, scores of people have been acquitted of false confessions since DNA evidence entered US courts.

The second one is the scientific investigations of police and investigating agency’s interrogation procedure. This is an emerging science that questions the idea where confessions are considered as a solid foundation of proof about someone’s crime. It marks the beginning of research affecting the justice system in a profound manner.

Kassin is among the cadre of scientists who have flipped the conventional notion about confessions and also about the perception of truth. His innovative experiments probe the psychology that leads to false confessions. His more recent works also showed how a confession could exert pressure on witnesses and even forensic examiners thus shaping the entire trial.

The Psychological Game of Confession

In 1891, a man who had confessed to have committed a murder, narrowly escaped hanging after his supposed victim was found alive in New Jersey. Scores of such examples of convictions based on false confessions can be traced back in history. Confessions have been considered as a benchmark indicator of guilt even after it has been proved spectacularly misleading in many cases.

The first ever scientific counter came from a renowned Harvard psychologist Hugo Munsterberg, who warned about false confessions made under overpowering psychological influence. Hugo raised the concern back in 1908, but it took several shocking false confession cases and the introduction of DNA evidence into the justice system for the emergence of wrongful convictions and how often false confessions influenced the trials.

Following that legacy, Kassin pursued to study the interrogation procedures and the trial process that the juries undertake. Kassin studied the Reid interrogation technique, the universal method of interrogation adopted by police. The technique was developed by John Reid, a former Chicago detective and lie detector expert in 1962.

To his utter shock, Kassin found that the Reid technique is equivalent to Milgram’s famous obedience studies, if not worse. Stanley Milgram’s famous obedience studies looked into the psychology of obedience to the authority that people inculcate. In his 1960’s experiment, subjects were told to give electric shocks to others who don’t learn their lessons quickly. The volunteers in the experiment did not know that the electric shocks they are applying on others are fakes, but they showed disturbing willingness to inflict pain on others by giving the electric shock when someone in authority told them to do.

Reid interrogation looks a bit different at first. It starts with the interrogator asking some irrelevant and some provocative questions to the suspect. If the suspect is thought to be lying then the investigator moves on to the next step which consists of repeatedly accusing the suspect, insisting on hearing details and ignoring all denials. At the same time, the investigator shows sympathy and tries to minimise the moral aspect of the crime and thus ease the path to confession. (Example: "This never would have happened if she didn't dress so provocatively.")

Kassin was intrigued that psychological pressure could lead to false confessions. To find out, he carried out an experiment in his lab with student volunteers. Known as the computer crash paradigm, Kassin’s experiment had students that took rapid fire dictations on computers. The student volunteers were told that the computer has some glitch and a single pressing of the Alt key would crash the computer. The computers were designed in such a fashion that regardless of the key pressed it would crash. The experimenter would then accuse the students of hitting the Alt key.

At first, no one would admit about their mistakes. But then some other variables were added like they were told that the experimenter has a witness who had seen him pressing the Alt key. This is equivalent to the tactics adopted by police, where they pressurise the suspect by saying that they have witnesses who saw the accused committing the crime. Kassin’s experiment, after the additions of the variables showed remarkable confessions by the student volunteers of having committed the mistake of pressing Alt key. Kassin’s computer crash paradigm has been experimented worldwide by numerous social scientists with similar results.

Apart from the computer crash paradigm, there have been other experiments to study how psychological pressure could lead to false confessions, as in the Reid technique. Gísli Guðjónsson, an eminent psychologist at King’s College, London, found that factors such as mental impairment, youth, and substance addiction make people susceptible to doubt their own memory and under pressure, confess of having committed a crime falsely. A person in trauma, as possibly Burton was after he saw his mother murdered, can also easily fall prey to such false confessions.
 

A plethora of studies is fortifying this emerging science of interrogation and false confessions. But the justice system still waits to have this science included into it. Kassin and many others are putting their relentless efforts in this direction.