False Confessions and Coercion

     You may not have heard of the names “Kevin Bailey” and “Cory Batchelor”, or the thousands of people like them who have been wrongfully convicted and failed by the criminal justice system. Kevin and Cory served 16 years in prison for a crime they did not commit after being physically coerced to confess to the murder of Lula Mae Woods when they were 19 years old. Batchelor was in the interrogation room for over 24 hours where he was physically beaten, choked, and kicked by detectives until he made a confession. Bailey was interrogated for more than 12 hours and confessed after being threatened and grabbed by his neck by the detectives. Picture yourself in Kevin and Cory’s position; arrested for a crime you did not commit then locked in an interrogation room for hours where you are beaten and the only way to stop it is by confessing. It seems like an inescapable neverending situation and the only way to escape it is by confessing to a crime that you did not commit. 

     How did a coerced false confession lead a jury to convict these two men? In the textbook it states, “Because the idea of a false confession is so counterintuitive (i.e., it is difficult for most of us to imagine why any innocent person would admit to committing a serious and violent crime),confession evidence is very persuasive to investigators, jurors, and judges.” (Gruman 2017). The jury did not know about the physical coercion the two men faced in the interrogation room so they did not doubt the legitimacy of the confession but who would? They were presented a case where a woman was murdered and two men had confessed to killing her so the result of the trial was Batchelor was sentenced to 30 years and Bailey was sentenced to 80 years. A normal person thinks that confessing to a crime means the person did it because who would say they committed a crime when they didn’t?

     Bailey and Batchelor maintained their innocence during and after the trial and eventually sought post- conviction relief. In the text it states, “In addition to the influence that confession evidence has on police officers and courtroom decision-makers, the damaging effect of a false confession is compounded by the corruptive effect it can have on other pieces of evidence.” (Gruman 2017). In this case we saw exactly that, the false and coerced confessions given by these two men led to the DNA found on the scene to not be tested or presented at the trial. With the representation by the Innocence Project, The Exoneration Project, and other organizations, the DNA evidence from the crime scene was tested and concluded to not be a match to either man. The two men were exonerated after serving 16 years. 16 years of birthdays, friendships, relationships, love, joy, and life were stripped away from these men due to a coerced confession. 

     The detectives who beat and coerced the confessions out of Batchelor and Bailey led to two men losing 16 years of their life and for a murder of a woman to go unsolved. What can be done to prevent this injustice from happening again to innocent people? The Innocence Project which is a project that was created to bring justice to people who were wrongfully convicted and prevent future injustice, suggests that every interrogation should be recorded. This would prevent coercive tactics that lead to false confessions and provide transparency to the judge and jury. Hopefully this intervention strategy is implemented so it could decrease the number of false confessions and wrongful convictions. If the interrogation between the detectives and the men was recorded then maybe Lula Mae Woods’ murderer would have been caught and Bailey and Batchelor would have never been in prison. The criminal justice system is flawed and there needs to be more interventions to fix it. 

 

References:

Gruman, J.A.,Schneider, F.W., & Coutts, L.A. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

“Kevin Bailey and Corey Batchelor Exonerated Based on DNA and Coerced False Confession During Burge Era.” Innocence Project, 11 Apr. 2019, www.innocenceproject.org/cases/kevin-bailey/. 

1 comment

  1. False confessions and imprisonment seems to be all to common these days, and sadly so. We always see stories on the news about how new technology or evidence exonerates an innocent individual that had been in prison for years. These truly innocent people have been failed miserably by the judicial system, and are only offered financial compensation for the years of their lives spent serving someone else’s sentence. I read an interesting article that details another case of police coercing a 16 year old boy into confessing a crime he didn’t commit. Coercion is something that the judicial system exploits all too often because no matter the evidence that points to the contrary, they rely on the old notion that no one confesses to a crime unless they’re guilty. Similarly the article states that “confessions have always been the “gold standard” indicator of guilt, even though some proved spectacularly misleading.” (Starr, 2019). The article goes on to explain that in psychological terms, when you give someone a position of power, they often tend to act in a way that reinforces their role. Although using coercion to procure a confession is despicable, it seems like some positive change is on the horizon. A group of leading psychologists from the U.S. and U.K. “wrote an American Psychological Association white paper warning about the risk of coercion. They suggested several reforms, such as prohibiting lying by police, limiting interrogation time, recording all interrogations from start to finish, and eliminating the use of minimization. They also said the practice of seeking confessions was so inherently damaging that it might be necessary to “completely reconceptualize” the tactic and come up with something new.” (Starr, 2019). I think that people are finally starting to shine light onto the use of coercion and persuasive interrogation. Hopefully, we will see real change to the judicial system that will allow all cases to receive fair trials and see no more innocent people be sent to prison.

    Reference:
    Starr, D. (2019, June 13). This psychologist explains why people confess to crimes they didn’t commit. ScienceMag. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/06/psychologist-explains-why-people-confess-crimes-they-didn-t-commit.

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