On the subtle beauty of coerced confessions

Orin Kerr points to an article by Charles Weisselberg entitled “Mourning Miranda.” It describes the ways in which society is protected by getting poor people to confess to things. And believe me, you can make a poor person say anything. Luckily, none of the kind of people that come under police suspicion become judges (or even law clerks) so false confessions probably do more good than they do harm to society, because once someone confesses we all feel safer. And a society that feels safe is safe, right?

For a Military Justice perspective on interrogation see here.

For a description (complete with documents) of how the DOJ takes the position that jurors (who tend to be from the lower classes and are really a waste of time) should not be shown the circumstances in which the poor “person” confessed see our post here.

For the techniques used by government employees to coerce false confessions see here.

Update: A commentator points to this resource: Klaver, J.R., Lee, Z., Rose, V.G., Effects of personality, interrogation techniques and plausibility in an experimental false confession paradigm. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 13(1), 71-88 (2008)

Comments

[Phil Cave]

Klaver, J.R., Lee, Z., Rose, V.G., Effects of personality, interrogation techniques and plausibility in an experimental false confession paradigm. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 13(1), 71-88 (2008).
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