I wanted to elaborate more from my issue brief, because the topic would be considered a civic issue as well. Through my research for my issue brief, I found one source that stated that over half of police manuals do not include information about false confessions. This leads to unawareness of interrogation errors that cause these false confessions, especially in juveniles. In the questioning process for a crime, police use intense strategies in order to try to coerce a confession from the suspect, however, since juveniles are immature and less emotionally developed, these police tactics will cause more pressure on the juvenile suspect and a false confession is very possible.
Researchers have also warned of the common perception among police interrogators that they themselves are “human lie-detectors” despite the scientific evidence showing how poor interrogators’ lie-detection skills actually are, and this fact is very dangerous because the human error in detecting lies in such serious situations is high. These errors will lead to false convictions as the police will attempt to build a case against someone who they believe is guilty, but is innocent.
While it is important that the confession given by the suspect holds the truth, sometimes, police will take any confession instead of confirming the truth. Researcher Leo states that “the goal of police interrogation is not necessarily to determine the truth” and that they would rather get any confession than a truthful one. This is an inherent problem in the American justice system, as we must prioritize thoroughly examining the interrogation to figure out the real truth and not believe the first confession they hear. Police believe they have reached their goal once they elicit a confession, and then proceed to convict the suspect by taking their first confession as truth.
This is a large root cause of false confessions, especially evident in the Central Park Jogger case where five young teenage boys were accused of raping a Central Park jogger. In the interrogations, the boys were questioned very harshly by police, which inevitably elicited false confessions out of all five boys. Supposedly, “Raymond Santana, one of the defendants in the Central Park Jogger case said that he confessed because he was “scared” and so he “came up with a story.” While their confessions conflicted and there was no DNA evidence, they were all convicted because the police felt accomplished that they got any confession.
Unfortunately, they served their entire sentences before the actual culprit was confirmed. The Central Park Five case is by far the most infamous study regarding false confessions and the police errors that led to their false convictions. The power of authority that the police interrogators have on impressionable juveniles is enough for them to come to admit to a serious crime, like rape.
Another famous case of false confession elicited by police interrogation is a fourteen-year-old suspect named Michael Crowe, who had been accused of stabbing his sister to death. He was accused of stabbing his sister to death, and police had used deception to make him believe that they found convincing evidence against him, including reliable DNA evidence and false-positive lie detector results. He inevitably created a false confession because he started to internalize that he may have blocked the memory out and the police should be right.
Dangerous strategies such as deception and intimidation are harmful to minors in interrogation, and these errors will increase the chance of false confessions in minors. I hope to raise awareness to these interrogation strategies, such as deception, that can cause juveniles to elicit false confessions through pressure or internalization. Many minors in interrogations are unaware that police can use deception, and also lack comprehension of their rights. I wrote my issue brief to combat this issue and I hope to raise awareness of these police interrogation errors that cause juveniles to elicit false confessions.