The Truth About False Confessions: A Legal History of the Wrongly Convicted

On September 2,1666, the Great Fire of London started in a small bakery before spreading through the ancient City of London, destroying 13,000 homes and churches, including St. Paul's Cathedral. Frenchman Robert Hubert, claiming to be an agent of the Pope, confessed to staring the fire by throwing a firebomb in through a bakery window. He was found guilty of the crime and was promptly hanged on September 28. During his trial, there were questions about the validity of Hubert's confession, namely that he had been out of the country until September 4, that there were no windows in the bakery and that Hubert was crippled and could not have thrown the bomb. Hubert was convicted based on one of the first known cases of false confession.

In a legal system that prides itself on being fair and impartial, false confessions are more common than most people know or law enforcement cares to admit. In the 1989 Central Park Jogger case, five young men confessed to raping a jogger before recanting their confession. All five teens were found guilty. In 2002, DNA evidence implicated Matias Reyes, a convicted rapist, in the crime.

While the false confession phenomena has been well documented, many people can't understand why an innocent person would confess to a crime. There are several factors that influence false confessions, one of which is mental retardation or subnormal intelligence. One of the five original defendants in the Central Park Jogger case has an IQ of 87, well below normal.

Feigned sympathy for the accused to exaggerating or lying about evidence that would implicate the accused. Non-existent witnesses, fingerprints and failed polygraphs have all been used to extract false confessions.

Another tactic in securing false confessions is extensive interrogation. False confessions typically occur after many hours or days of intense questioning. In 1998, 14 year old Michael Crowell confessed after tow days of questioning to raping and murdering his younger sister. Josh Treadway and Aaron Hausen, Crowell's friends, were questioned for many hours and also confessed. It was only after DNA testing implicated a local transient that charges were dropped.

It would be easy to dismiss false confessions as rare, but a Chicago Tribune investigation found that in one Illinois County alone, 247 confessions were thrown out as being unconvincing. Two hundred people confessed to kidnapping Baby Lindbergh, and the Black Dahlia murder has drawn over 500 confessions. The most famous recent example of false confessions is the confession of John Mark Karr, who confessed to the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey. There was no evidence to tie Karr to the murder, and his family maintains that he had never been to Colorado at the time of the murder.

Many jurisdictions now require audio or videotaping of all confessions, but interrogations are not recorded. By allowing law enforcement to use coercive techniques, especially against the young or mentally handicapped, false confessions will continue to plague our legal system.