2.1 A look at real criminal cases: The Innocence Project
To answer the question of whether confessions are always ‘true’ in reality, you will look at the work of The Innocence Project, an organisation that (among other things) represents people who believe they were wrongfully convicted, usually by using post-conviction DNA testing. At the time of writing, the Project has assisted in the exoneration of 375 people in the USA. These wrongfully convicted people had served an average of 14 years in prison and 21 had been on death row.
As well as helping to free the innocent (and convict the guilty), the work of The Innocence Project has also been very helpful in determining the factors that tend to lead to a miscarriage of justice. This is achieved by determining which elements the investigations had in common. West and Meterko (2015) analysed cases from the first 25 years of The Innocence Project and found that the most common factor by far was that of mistaken eyewitness identification, which was a feature present in 72% of the 325 cases examined. You may be surprised that the second-most common factor, present in 47% of cases, was the misapplication of forensic science. The third most prevalent contributing factor was that of false confessions, which featured in 27% of the cases.
Activity 2
The Innocence Project website contains details of very moving, and very revealing, cases of miscarriages of justice. The site allows you to explore cases containing specific contributing causes. Visit the site and explore cases that involved false confessions:
- Access The Innocence Project [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] website
- Click on ‘The Cases’ at the top right of the window
- Click on ‘Filter’
- Click on ‘Contributing Causes of Conviction’
- Select the cause(s) you are interested in
- From the search results, explore at least three cases.
One case you may have looked at is that of Damon Thibodeaux, who spent 15 years on death row, in solitary confinement, before being exonerated. Damon was convicted of the murder and aggravated rape of 14-year-old Crystal Champagne (a distant cousin). His confession followed 9 hours of interrogation, in which he was told by law enforcement officers that he had failed a polygraph. The same officers told him they would seek the death penalty unless he confessed (which they did anyway).
As well as the interrogative techniques that led to the confession, this case demonstrates just how important a confession is in an investigation and trial. The confession led to Damon being convicted despite there being no forensic evidence linking him to the crime and even despite there being key differences between his (false) account and the evidence recovered.