False Confessions

According to Aldrich Ames “Because interrogations are intended to coerce confessions, interrogators feel themselves justified in using their coercive means. Consistency regarding the technique is not important; inducing anxiety and fear is the point.” Although Ames was incarcerated for life for committing espionage against the United States, his 31 years as a CIA operative and analyst grants him great knowledge about Interrogation techniques and false confessions. Knowledge most jurors would never know about or even cause other jurors to get suspicious of the confessions Police receive in general. Granted potential jurors rarely are informed of much, like their right to jury nullification, which comes in handy when you aren’t sure of the confession
Leo, PH.D., J.D. and Brittany Liu, B.A, two hundred and sixty-four jury-eligible students from a large university in southern California completed a study. Some categories of interrogation tactics were Accusation/re-accusation, challenging denials, Confrontation with true evidence of guilt, Confrontation with false evidence of guilt, promises of leniency and Threats/use of harm. With a mean age of 19.78 years, 64% male and all from different backgrounds who were either victims of a crime or been on a jury themselves agreed that “For false confessions, threats of harm were believed to be more likely to elicit a false confession than all other tactics.”. (What do potential jurors know about police interrogation techniques and false confessions? Page 388 Lines 15-17) Participations in the study acknowledged that interrogation techniques can be psychosocially coercive, but believed that the techniques are not likely to cause a false confession. When a confession is supported with information from expert witnesses, jurors are able to put emotions aside and use their intuition to come up with an idea of whether the confession was coercive or