Dr. Bruce Frumkin joins the NACDL Engage & Exchange Discussion Series with host Mark Satawa for Competency to Waive Miranda Rights and False/Coerced Confessions: The Use and Misuse of Expert Testimony. 

Presented by: Detective James Trainum (ret.), Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department; and Deja Vishny, Homicide Practice Group Coordinator and Deputy Training Director, Wisconsin State Public Defender

Wrongful convictions stemming from false confessions and a growing field of false confession research have paved the way for greater public understanding of factors that lead to false confessions. The authors explore the underlying causes of false confessions and the importance of state-level reform.

Researchers instructed college students to type on a computer keyboard, but students were warned that hitting the ALT key would cause the computer to crash. Later the researchers falsely accused the students of hitting the forbidden key. What percentage of students, presented with bogus evidence, confessed and supplied details about an act they did not commit? Some courts have ruled that the ALT key experiment has no merit, but in appropriate false confession cases defense counsel must educate courts about the experiment’s value.

NACDL's statement to the Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice regarding the need for more accountability and transparency in policing to effect meaningful, much-needed reforms.

In the latest editions of its interrogation manual, Reid and Associates adopted several positions that align with the views of its critics. In a nutshell, Reid and Associates directly or indirectly endorsed many measures that could help prevent false confessions. Defense attorneys seeking to suppress confessions can strengthen their arguments by noting when law enforcement officers ignore any of the recommendations in the Reid manual.

The mere act of recording an interrogation does not prevent someone from confessing to a crime he did not commit. To truly protect against false confessions, it is necessary to transform police interrogation methods so that they keep up with science and best-known practices. This article presents a framework to reduce police-induced false confessions.

When contesting a confession as false, it behooves the defense lawyer to understand the psychological principles that got the defendant into his predicament. The authors provide an overview of three different expert witnesses that may be able to assist the defense: false confession experts, clinical forensic experts, and polygraph experts.

Some prospective jurors simply cannot accept the idea that a client’s confession was false. Finding these jurors and striking them, preferably for cause, is the goal in jury selection when a false confession is involved.

Police interrogation, with its connotations of coercion and a confession-oriented approach, is a controversial part of policing in the United States. In the United Kingdom, however, coerced false confessions have become consigned to history. How did the UK do it?

Wrongful convictions stemming from false confessions and a growing field of false confession research have paved the way for greater public understanding of factors that lead to false confessions. The authors explore the underlying causes of false confessions and the importance of state-level reform.

A PowerPoint presentation by the Center on Wrongful Convictions providing great detail on false confessions with case examples. 

According to the Innocence Project, many of the wrongful convictions overturned by DNA evidence in the United States have involved some sort of false confession. It is important to understand why someone would falsely confess in order to defend a client in that situation. Find resources on false confessions here.

The problem of unreliable confessions from juveniles still exists. For example, police officers used misguided techniques to elicit a confession from mentally limited teenager Brendan Dassey: they told him that everything would be “OK” as long as he told them what they already believed he had done; they fed him crucial nonpublic details, including that the deceased had been shot in the head; and they falsely led him to believe that he would be returned to school in time to finish a project – even after he confessed to rape and murder.

A paper in the University of Chicago Law Review on cases of false confessions and potential solutions.