Phenomenon Of False Confession

People often make a confession to crimes they did not commit. This can be attributed to a number of reasons. Psychologists believe because people are responsive to reinforcements and thus are subject to principles of conditioning. In addition, people are by nature social beings and vulnerable to influences from other people. Modern day police interrogations use these biological responses to their advantage to elicit conformity, compliance, obedience, and persuasion in suspects. Furthermore, the use of trickery and deceit is not uncommon. With the widespread use of DNA evidence, many once guilty victims have been exonerated of their crimes and set free. If psychology has proven that certain practices can influence ideas and behaviors,

Anyone who can ascribe their misfortune to a “sorcerer” would help with the conviction. Fourth, puritans believed that Satan cannot take the form of an unwilling person. This is spectral evidence. Thus, of a person saw a ghost in the form of the accused, then the accused must be a witch. Finally, this fifth type of evidence is confessing.

First, false witnesses are bad in many different ways and can do things to change people's lives. A false witness is a witness that gives a false statement willingly or because he is bribed or blackmailed in a way (O’Grady). This means that anyone can become a false witness and play with the judicial system in a way that usually is not justified or fair. False witnesses are not good to the

It is a very important responsibility that everyone should take seriously because the fate of another person is on his or her shoulders. Juries are there to decide “guilty” or “not guilty” based on the facts and evidence presented. This paper will

Over the past few decades, hundreds of people have been falsely imprisoned. Many of their cases were founded on the account of one or more eyewitnesses. The criminal justice system often relies on eyewitness accounts to piece together a crime and identify the perpetrator. But studies showing the faultiness of our memories, particularly in stressful events, suggest that witnesses may not be as reliable of a source as we think. An often-cited example of when the memory of an eyewitness has failed to serve justice is the case of Ronald Cotton.

Adnan was found guilty for the murder of Hae Min Lee but never once confessed or confirmed his involvement. It was Adnan’s friend Jay who connected the dots throughout the investigation by providing the police with important details of Hae’s murder. If police had conducted a Guilty Knowledge test with Adnan during his interrogation, the police would have had the opportunity to ask him those specific questions pertaining to the murder and monitor his reactions. With The Guilty Knowledge Test, only Adnan would know the answers to important questions such as the whereabouts of Hae’s vehicle and how she was murdered. The Guilty Knowledge test is very effective at identifying innocent participants and has a 98% accuracy rate (Dahl, 2016).

It was seen how easy it was to be accused of something and court, and the punishment of being hung was extremely scary. “To sustain the integrity of their own names, the accused were invited to offer the names of others, even though to do so would be to make them complicit in procedures

When a person does something they shouldn’t be doing, they’re definitely going to be scared of the consequences behind it. Due to this, people will lie or do whatever it takes to save themselves. Furthermore, acting innocent and putting on an act that they didn’t do anything. Abigail Williams was in that situation and it lead her to no good. It lead her to being held responsible of the Salem Witch Trials.

The police then determine if the suspect is guilty and continuously interrogate, accuse, and even threaten the suspect for hours until they confess, whether they are guilty or not. On many occasions the people who are coerced into false confessions are have severe mental impairments that prevent them from functioning as a normal person with out the impairments would.

Some people use lies to cover up or solve problems. Abigail feared being accused of witchcraft, so she accused others of witchcraft. She tried to use lies to solve her problems, but ended up creating a worse situation. Abigail’s lies had affected many of the characters.

It is unlikely that social consequences of false memories can be avoided. Elizabeth Loftus was intrigued to study false memories, and is perhaps personally responsible for subsequent developments throughout the history of false memories. Some of this history addresses various theories aimed at isolating how or why false memories occur. These include Source Monitoring Framework, Activation Monitoring Theory, Fuzzy Trace Theory, and strategies for persuasion which can lead to the development of false memory. Such persuasion leads to the present discussion concerning how persuasion in the judicial system has created false confessions and wrongful eyewitness testimonies, due to the Misinformation Effect.

In the courts, the judges only believed the witnesses, which sometimes are the accusers, and insubstantial evidence brought from the witnesses. As a matter of fact, this is very dangerous because the authorities could abuse the victims until they confessed. For instance, if the accused one recited the Bible or the Lord’s Prayer to the judges in the court, then they were not a witch. In other words, the court judges were biased because they only trust the confession the accused ones make, which is unfairly prejudiced for the innocent people. “Rather than try people in the order they were arrested, the court started with the accused with the strongest cases against them” (“The Salem Witch Trials, scholarly articles).

Consequently, when interrogators go into interviews believing the suspect is guilty, it brings on intense amounts of stress, putting suspects at a higher risk to crack under pressure. E. This increased pressure brought on by misclassified interrogations cause innocent suspects to feel so much stress they confess to a crime they did not commit. F. Misclassified errors are just one way suspects feel their only option is to give a false confession in order escape the pressure in the interrogation room. II.

As the conspiracy trials of 1741 continued, it became evident that the promise of a pardon ultimately led to false testimonies. Residents who had been accused of arson or as participants in the conspiracy of 1741, would often utter lies as a means to save themselves from being publicly beaten or from being hanged. The fear that those of lower class and rank became evident as soon false testimonies became mundane during the proceedings of the New York conspiracy trails of 1741. This was depicted as a colored slave named Cambridge, confessed that his testimony against Cajoe, another slave, was false and begged for forgiveness as he was overpowered by fear to accuse (133). The fear that soon inhabited the hearts of both slaves and poor whites

Furthermore, there can be several factors at play when a wrongful conviction occurs and each case is unique. Three of the more common and detrimental factors that will be explored in this essay are eyewitness error, the use of jailhouse informants and professional and institutional misconduct. Firstly, eyewitness testimony can be a major contributor to a conviction and is an important factor in wrongful conviction (Campbell & Denov, 2016, p. 227). Witness recall and, frankly, the human emory are not as reliable as previously thought. In fact there has been much research showing the problems with eyewitness testimony such as suggestive police interviewing, unconscious transference, and malleability of confidence (Campbell & Denov, 2016, p.227).