The Bloomberg View: Why innocent people confess to crimes

The Bloomberg View: Why innocent people confess to crimes

Faye Flam of The Bloomberg View reports that as a result of shows like Netflix’s Making a Murderer and other videotaped interrogations, some experts are questioning police interrogation practices. Flam claims that there is a growing scientific case that psychological manipulation of suspects may cause them to falsely confess.

Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, a memory expert known for demonstrating the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, set out to research the psychological pressure, deception, and exhausting repetition of interrogations (Bloomberg View). Since many interrogations take place between midnight and 8 a.m., she decided to construct a study focused on sleep deprivation as it relates to false confessions.

She and colleagues at the Michigan State University sleep laboratory set up an experiment to see if sleep deprivation might make subjects more prone to making false confessions, the results of which were published Monday (Feb. 8) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Bloomberg View). The study was comprised of 88 student volunteers who were asked to complete questionnaires on a computer, and were warned that pressing the escape key would destroy the researcher’s data (Bloomberg View). They were asked to report back a week later and spend the night in the lab, where half of them were allowed to sleep and the other required to stay up all night.

The next morning, all subjects were told someone had observed them press the escape key the week before (Bloomberg View). Of the sleep-deprived, over half of the participants confessed to pressing the key. Fewer of the participants who slept, much less than half, confessed. Although there was no built-in measure to determine how many participants actually did press the escape key, researchers speculate that it’s unlikely that anyone would press the key on accident and few would press it on purpose.

False confessions are thought to account for 15 to 25 percent of wrongful convictions (Bloomberg View). According to The Bloomberg View, in some cases, confessions are considered so reliable that not even DNA can reverse a conviction. Adam Benforado, professor of law at Drexel University, says that he didn’t realize how much deception police are allowed to use until entering law school (Bloomberg View). Benforado offers a scenario he often presents to his law students:

Imagine you’re a suspect and you’re told there is evidence against you. If you confess, you’ll get a two-year sentence, but if you fight it, you might end up with 25. What would you do?

Benforado says that when faced with this choice, many of his law students would confess (Bloomberg View). This situation illustrates how innocent people can sometimes be faced with overwhelming situations which make a false confessional seem like a logical choice.

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