Explore: False Confessions

A false confession is an admission of guilt for a crime which the individual did not commit. Although such confessions seem counterintuitive, they can

of false confession to be 12.2% and 24.4%, respectively. These figures provide a proxy for miscarriages of justice because erroneous confessions are

fabulist who had falsely confessed. Lucas' death sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1998. Lucas later recanted his confessions as a hoax with the

the interrogations, Hector Polanco, had been accused of coercing false confessions in a previous, notorious case involving exonerated defendants Christopher

widespread but actually reduced crime-solving by causing false confessions. Involuntary alleged confessions had already been inadmissible in federal criminal

police into making false confessions. While the confessions were videotaped, the hours of interrogation that preceded the confessions were not. When taken

of papers on false confessions. One of Kassin's articles was instrumental in overturning the convictions of five boys who had been falsely convicted of

Toole's confession to the Walsh murder, claiming that he had been in possession of the victim's severed head, though Lucas had a reputation for false confessions

their innocence and insisted police had coerced them into signing false confessions through severe physical and psychological abuse. After 16 years in

systematically used false confessions extracted by torture. They have been used on a much larger scale than in Stalin's Soviet Union because the confessions could be