Explain the possibility of false confessions in criminal investigation. How do judges treat confessors?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers may vary.The first source of error involving confession evidence stems from what happens in the interrogation room. A second source of error occurs when prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and especially juries fail to understand why the suspect might have confessed and uncritically accept a false confession as valid. The false confession sets in motion a chain of events with adverse consequences for the suspect because attorneys, juries, and judges make decisions-about plea-bargaining, convicting, and sentencing-assuming that what the suspect said was true. Many prosecutors assume that only guilty suspects confess. So when they secure a confession, they tend to treat suspects harshly, charging them with the highest number and types of offenses possible, requesting higher bail, and being reluctant to accept a plea bargain to a reduced charge. The confession becomes, in essence, the crux of the prosecution's case. Even defense attorneys assume that people who confess are guilty, and urge them to accept plea bargains rather than risk their chances in a trial with confession evidence.Judges are also likely to treat confessors harshly. In cases of disputed confessions, they almost always decide that confessions are voluntary and thus admissible as evidence in a trial. In some cases, defendants who confessed will nevertheless enter a plea of not guilty and go to trial. If the jury convicts, judges' sentences are likely to be harsh because they tend to punish offenders who claim innocence, waste resources in a trial, and fail to show remorse or apologize. Confessions are an especially potent form of evidence to jurors, even more influential than eyewitness and character testimony. Juries are quite likely to convict defendants who confessed, even when confession are false. Archival analyses of actual cases in which false confessors pled not guilty and proceeded to trial show that conviction rates ranged from 73% to 81%.For several reasons, jurors tend to accept confession evidence. They assume that suspects would not act against their own self-interests and confess to something they had not done and that interrogators are adept at identifying liars. They are persuaded by secondary confessions in which suspects confess to another person who provides information to the police, even when those informants are motivated to lie. Jurors are impressed by contextual details in confessions, particularly if the details include nonpublic information, but they fail to account for the fact that police could have scripted the confession in a manner consistent with their theory of the case. But jurors' awareness may be changing in subtle ways. One recent study showed that jurors can be made aware that situational pressures, rather than guilt, may have motivated defendants to confess.