Welcome to our false confession wiki

Research in psychology and law has examined false confessions generally and false confessions in specific populations. Importantly, it has now been clearly demonstrated by both experimental research and legal cases in which formal exonerations have taken place that people do confess to crimes that they have not committed. False confessions may differ from true confessions, for example containing more inconsistencies (either within themselves or with other evidence about a crime) and / or taking longer to elicit from defendants.

False confessions can occur for a variety of reasons, but are most likely to occur as a result of custodial and interrogative pressure, psychological vulnerabilities of a defendant, or a lack of transparency concerning evidence. Thus, we can pinpoint certain red flags that can provide evidence that a confession may be false (although false confessions may occur even in the absence of these red flags).

Please feel free to add any relevant papers to our reference of case lists using the wiki functionality!

Overviews of false confession literature

Saul Kassin and Gísli Guðjónsson, ‘The Psychology of Confessions: A Review of the Literature and Issues’ (2004) Psychological Science in the Public Interest 33.

Gísli Guðjónsson, The Psychology of False Confessions: Forty Years of Science and Practice (Wiley, 2018).

Brandon Garrett, ‘The Substance of False Confessions’ (2010) 62 Stanford law Review 1051.

False confessions are much more likely to occur when defendants have been subject to custodial and interrogative pressure. This pressure can be relatively subtle and can occur even when Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 regulations have been followed.

Sara Appleby, Lisa Hasel and Saul Kassin, ‘Police-induced confessions: An empirical analysis of their content and impact’ (2013) 19 Psychology, Crime & Law 111.

Mark Blagrove, ‘Effects of length of sleep deprivation on interrogative suggestibility’ (1996) 2 Journal of Experimental Psychology Applied 48.

Fadia Narchet, Christian Meissner and Melissa Russano, ‘Modeling the influence of investigator bias on the elicitation of true and false confessions’ (2011) 35(6) Law and Human Behavior 452. 

Saul Kassin, Steven Drizin, Thomas Grisso, Gísli Guðjónsson, Richard Leo, and Allison Redlich, ‘Police-Induced Confessions: Risk Factors and Recommendations’ (2010) 34(3) Law and Human Behavior, 38.

Robert Nash and Kimberley Wade, ‘Innocent but proven guilty: Eliciting internalised false confessions using doctored-video evidence’ (2009) 23(5) Applied Cognitive Psychology 624.

Allison Redlich, Richard Kulish, and Henry Steadman, ‘Comparing true and false confessions among persons with serious mental illness’ (2011) 17(3) Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 394.

Illustrative successful appeals: Winston Silcott, Raymond Gilmour, Stephen Miller, Patrick Molloy, Thomas Green, William Gorman, Jack Allan.

Defendant under 18 

False confessions are more likely in juvenile defendants. Children are particularly susceptible due to immature cognitive, social, emotional, and neurological systems. This immaturity can lead to increased suggestibility, increased susceptibility to pressure, and a short-term orientation that may all contribute to false confessions. Research suggests that children with a history of victimization or substance misuse are particularly susceptible.

Allison Redlich, ‘The susceptibility of juveniles to false confessions and false guilty pleas’ (2009) 62 Rutgers Law Review 943.

Barry Field, ‘Police interrogation of juveniles: An empirical study of policy and practice’ (2006) Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 219

Megan Crane, Laura Nirider and Steven Drizin, ‘The truth about juvenile false confessions’ (2015) 16 Insights on Law & Society 10.

Gísli Guðjónsson, Jon Sigurdsson, and Inga Sigfusdottir, ‘Interrogation and false confessions among adolescents in seven European countries. What background and psychological variables best discriminate between false confessors and non-false confessors?’ (2009) 15(8) Psychology, Crime, and Law 711.

Illustrative successful appeals: Stephen Downing, Paul Blackburn, Terrence Shiels, Robert Hindes, Paschal Mulholand, Hugh Hanna.

Defendant likely to be more suggestible and compliant (susceptible to pressure)

A range of characteristics have been shown to make people more suggestible and / or compliant and therefore more likely to falsely confess. These include a low mental age, low intelligence or learning disabilities, symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a history of life adversity, and experiencing alcohol withdrawal.

William Finlay and Evanthia Lyons, ‘Acquiescence in interviews with people who have mental retardation’ (2002) 40 Mental Retardation 14.

Gísli Guðjónsson, ‘The effects of intelligence and memory on group differences in suggestibility and compliance’ (1991) 12(5) Personality and Individual Differences 503.

Gísli Guðjónsson and James MacKeith, ‘Learning disability and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. Protection during investigative interviewing: A video-recorded false confession to double murder’ (1994) 5(1) Journal of Forensic Psychiatry 35.

Gísli Guðjónsson et al., ‘Interrogative suggestibility, compliance and false confessions among prisoners and their relationship with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms’ (2008) 38(7) Psychological Medicine 1037.

Gísli Guðjónsson, Jon Fridrik Sigurdsson, Inga Dora Sigfusdottir and Susan Young, ‘False confessions to police and their relationship with conduct disorder, ADHD, and life adversity’ (2012) 52(6) Personality and Individual Differences 696.

Gísli Guðjónsson, Kristin Hannesdottir, Hannes Petursson, and Gudbjorn Bjornsson, ‘The effects of alcohol withdrawal on mental state, interrogative suggestibility and compliance: An experimental study’ (2002) 13 The Journal of Forensic Psychology 53.

Illustrative successful appeals: Jacqueline Fletcher, Patrick Nolan, Donald Pendleton, John Roberts, Ashley King, John McLoughlin, Stefan Kiszko.

Defendant with a disregard for telling the truth, a need for attention, or a history of delinquent lifestyle.

Defendants with a tendency to lie and / or with a history of a delinquent lifestyle are more likely to confess. This group is likely to include defendants with conduct disorder or antisocial behaviour disorder.

Gísli Guðjónsson, Jon Fridrik Sigurdsson, Inga Dora Sigfusdottir and Susan Young, ‘False confessions to police and their relationship with conduct disorder, ADHD, and life adversity’ (2012) 52(6) Personality and Individual Differences 696.

Illustrative successful appeals: Sean Hodgson, Ian Lawless, Judith Ward, Peter Fell, Darren Hall.

Finally, defendants may be compelled to confess where they think that evidence against them is overwhelming. In such cases, particularly where defendants are also vulnerable or subjected to pressure, defendants can even come to believe that they committed crimes that they did not in fact commit. It is therefore important to ensure the evidence against them and the strength of this evidence is clear to defendants.