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The public defender was worried. If I show you my client s confession, would you be able to tell me if what he is saying is correct?
This is not an unusual request. Suspects frequently make damaging statements, whether they committed a crime or not. The police rely on videotaped interrogation and Miranda warnings to get confessions admitted as evidence at trial because of the simple, widely held, false belief that people don t confess to crimes against their own interest.
But is that belief supportable by facts? Innocence Project data show that over a quarter of those exonerated through DNA evidence i.e., people who were convicted of crimes that later scientific evidence proved they did not commit had under police interrogation confessed to the crime. Some interrogation tactics (the Reid technique, for example) have been criticized for their propensity to elicit false confessions. Mentally ill and non-neurotypical suspects with low IQ seem to be parti