Why people confess to crimes they didn’t commit | Hacker News Reader

Why people confess to crimes they didn’t commit

sciencemag.org

334 pointsSiempreViernes208 comments

I've had a polygraph before while interviewing for a security clearance position. The questions they asked were pretty standard such as "are you a terrorist" and things. I could unequivocally answer the questions without a thought. But my polygraph took a couple hours and after a while in that room, being asked the same questions over and over, I honestly started to wonder if I was, somehow, a terrorist and they knew it but I didn't.

I've heard some stories about polygraph exercises being used very aggressively in that way. For example, here's a claim I happened to bookmark (which sounds like it might be an extreme case, if even true): https://antipolygraph.org/statements/statement-038.shtml

(Personally, I avoid any jobs requiring security clearance, despite respect for a lot of those jobs, and respect for the people who take on that extra burden on their freedom out of a sense of duty. One reason I don't think it's for me is that my earlier youthful privacy&security advocacy had me talking on topics that I don't think I could've, were there any perception that I might've been exposed to privileged information. Apparently, I like talking, and occasionally I've managed to randomly think and say something that needed to be said, and I figure that's one way I'm useful.)

Wow, what a disturbing read; that's so messed up. Thanks for sharing.

> But my polygraph took a couple hours and after a while in that room, being asked the same questions over and over, I honestly started to wonder if I was, somehow, a terrorist and they knew it but I didn't.

That's essentially the purpose of polygraph "testing". Its reliability as a test is no better than coin flipping, the only reason it is used is to create pressure and thereby lead to confessions.

I think it's worse than coin flipping. Flipping a coin cannot be interpreted however you want

Really? Perhaps previous run-ins with police have made me immune to “cop logic”, but my polygraph experience was an over-the-top good cop/bad cop routine. You’re being filmed and “the supervisor” supposedly watching kept making demands to review certain items. For some reason we spent half an hour on a tangent of them trying to get me to admit I was having an affair. From what evidence, who the hell knows? Completely ridiculous.

0/10 never again, very happy to be out of that world

(I’m also convinced that the good cop/bad cop routine is WAY more effective than whatever pseudoscience the polygraph machine possesses.)

The polygraph machine is, of course, mostly just a prop. Although I think perhaps some operators believe in it, there's actually no evidence to show that of the things it measures can with any reliability determine whether a person is telling the truth or lying.

It's not a 'test', it's an interrogation. They are trying to convince you that they know more than they actually do to try and stress you and push you into making a confession.

I’ve heard it suggested that the point of the polygraph isn’t to serve as a prop or to discern truth from falsehood, but rather to direct the interrogation toward topics that seem to cause the interviewee the most stress.

Do you think terrorists identify with that word?

No, not unless they're insane. It looks more like they deliberately worded it to appeal to mentally retarded individuals suffering from persecutory delusions and the like. 'Terrorist Foiled' sounds better than 'Delusional Idiot Entrapped', especially when taxpayers are footing the bill.

You got a lot of downvotes, but the themes in your comment are, in fact, eerily close to reality, even though a lot of people wouldn't believe it.

The Intercept has a long-running series documenting the Security State prosecuting people for terrorism, who never were terorrists -- many are mentally ill people given plots and weapons by the FBI: https://theintercept.com/2017/09/03/the-fbi-pressured-a-lone...

See the full series and list of stories here: https://trial-and-terror.theintercept.com/

The legal requirements for entrapment are quite forgiving

When you take a polygraph you sign a document saying not to spread the actual questions asked. Specifically he's talking about the counter intelligence portion which is 4 questions centralized around things terrorists would do.

Hmm, if this is in connection with the US government, that would be a violation of Title 18 US Code 1001.

"identify" is a tricky word, because you might not think of yourself as an X, but you might see how someone might call you an X.

Also, some terrorists likely do, some maybe not.

Sadly, some people believe that the polygraph and other 'lie-detector' tests are infallible. Here's a recent article about the British "Jeremy Kyle Show" (a reality show, I believe) being axed after one of its guest committed suicide after 'failing' a lie-detector test. [1]

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-48279613

What if one answered with "I answered that question already" -- would they be forced to come up with new questions?

One aspect of a polygraph test is to hammer the same questions over and over at staggered intervals and see if the signal response differs.

They tell you that you must answer yes or no only.

Are you allowed to overlay the "yes" or "no" with different intonations? If not, then you can tell the truth and nothing but the truth, but you can't tell the whole truth in your answers.

> If not, then you can tell the truth and nothing but the truth, but you can't tell the whole truth in your answers.

Polygraph "examinations" aren't testimony where you are sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; nor are they actually a mechanism of "detecting lies" (a task at which they are ludicrously useless, per all research); they are psychological ordeals which are employed solely to create stress and cause people to break if they have anything to hide.

Or break even if you have nothing to hide. If you put me under enough physiological stress, I'd probably say anything you want me to say to get me out of it. Different people probably have different tolerance, which is probably what they are actually testing.

So what if you just did yoga or meditate while making huge pauses between the yes/no answers? That way you kill the stress and they can only ask each question once or twice before time is up. Letting them stress you is letting them win.

There are stories of people taking undetectable microdoses of tranquilizers to beat the polygraph. Think of it as the placebo effect countering pseudoscience.

My guess is that they fail you.

If we keep pushing bogus information with enough frequency, slowly it will build up the intended belief and eventually it will be perceived as true. I think your situation was a perfect example of that though it hadn't materialized to the last stage.

It's disgusting that polygraphs are still in use and their results taken seriously, especially in modern and developed countries like Canada and the US ... Call me next time and I'll flip a coin for you instead

The polygraph is a security blanket for spooks. If they fail to notice one of their agents betraying them they can justify their trust with their security blankets and pinky swears.

Years ago, my band was harassed aggressively by border crossing guards while entering Canada. They insisted we had drugs with us and wanted us to confess. We knew we had nothing. Separated from my friends, threatened with what would happen when they found things, being told they were calling the dogs to search the car, seeing them going through our stuff, I had moments where I wondered if I had forgotten anything and if it might be better to confess just in case.

I had a nearly identical experience crossing into Canada back in 2012. It was bizarre. They kept telling me they knew they were going to find someone in my car, which made me think they might actually PUT something in my car to find. Several hours later I was able to continue on into Canada after I repacked everything they had spread out everywhere.

I’m sorry you went through that, too. Were you also traveling with a band?

We had similar tactics applied by Border Agents in Arizona just past the California-Arizona state border last September. This time, I was driving and I knew they were full of shit when they surrounded us, talked about bringing dogs (they always threaten with dogs?), and claimed they smelled drugs in the vehicle. It didn’t go on for as long, they didn’t make us get out or go through our stuff, and copping to something we didn’t do didn’t enter my head, but it felt too familiar.

The stakes in these situations were low, we knew this was par for the course when crossing these borders and it was STILL stressful and frightening. I can so easily see how people in more serious situations break when under more intense pressure.

I wasn't traveling with a band, just my dog! I was moving from Florida to Alaska, trying to catch the ferry out of Prince Rupert. Weather turned me around in Banff and I went to plan B and drove back into the US to Bellingham to catch the ferry there. Had no trouble at all crossing back into the US at the same crossing. My dog ended up with a gastric dilatation-volvulus the night before I got on the ferry and had to be euthanized. Not the best trip but living in Alaska was amazing.

I was “pulled over” by a police officer when I was driving into Chicago from Washington state. He had followed me off the highway where I had pulled over to make a phone call, and he came up to me asking for registration and wanted to know who I was calling. All of this was justified because he suspected drugs in my car because a lot of drugs come from Canada through WA into Chicago. He said he had a dog with him in the car as well. I said I didn’t care because I don’t have any drugs and that I’m just traveling through the state and needed to phone a friend for a place to stay. He never ran my registration after I handed it to him, nor did he go back to his car for any information or dog, then he said I was clear to go. When he pulled away it was clear there was no dog in the back seat. I know to say as little as possible to cops even if I know I’m not guilty of anything but this was outright so stupid I couldn’t invoke “I want a lawyer” either.

Cops and other forms of law enforcement seem to have a history of lying to suspects to try to uncover criminal behaviors and I’m really not sure if this practice is even constitutional let alone effective. I don’t know what’s reasonable anymore in our police state.

It happened to me few times while crossing border to Switzerland.

We usually smoke everything we have a couple of kms before the border, just to be sure we have nothing when they are going to check on us, after all that's their job, they're gonna check anyway.

It also happened on the border to Slovenia, with my girlfriend, they separated us and told me they had a new test that detected every known drug and could charge me on the account of using.

I laughed so hard that they let us go.

> We usually smoke everything we have a couple of kms before the border

So you coming rolling up smelling heavily of weed, and for some reason they insist on searching you for weed? How weird. I feel like there's a way to avoid that.

They search you anyway, the point is that you have to be clean, not that you have to smell good.

Be sure to not bring anything that may cause troubles, but don't worry if they treat you like a troublemaker, it's just their job.

You're on a van, packed with stuff, you dress weird, you look weird, you probably haven't slept properly the night before, they are going to search you, no matter what.

Even more so if you have merch with you, for example in Switzerland they want you to pay taxes on the merch you sell, so they try as hard as they can to get an idea of how much money you're going to make so that they can charge you on the way back, when you leave the country.

That's what crossing borders with bands (mostly american) taught me.

We didn't get hit with the tax thing in Europe when we were last there but we did have Canadian border crossing guards give us grief about it. Luckily/sadly, there's no money in black metal so they laughed at our estimate and told us to get going.

The extra tax in Europe is only for Switzerland, which is actually not EU and that's why you still go through custom controls.

There is no passport check if you are an EU citizen, but the border still exists.

I couldn't read the article in-depth, it's too depressing. What makes it depressing is that it ultimately resolves to income inequality, which in America is only really a problem because of racism. So everywhere you look there's a travesty of justice with no escape other than total upending of society, i.e. telling everyone to not be racist.

False confessions wouldn't be a problem if there were a true presumption of innocence. Our justice system doesn't presume innocence in areas where caseloads are high, it takes shortcuts. When people take shortcuts, the costs of that externalization fall the hardest on those with the fewest resources to defend themselves. You're way less inclined to think charitably about someone who looks like all the other people you lock up every single day.

With these as the table stakes, that this kind of article is even needed, that if you lock an emotionally-vulnerable person in a room and yell at them for hours, eventually they're going to crack, is just more depressing.

If you want a concrete vision of Hell, real Hell, you can't get a more compelling one than that of how America treats its underclass.

>ultimately resolves to income inequality, which in America is only really a problem because of racism.

Income inequality is not restricted to minorities.

There are more white people living in poverty/prison than any other racial group.

Then let's talk privilege. America's underclass is created not just by income inequality, but also by the collective belief by those not in the underclass that the underclass is worthless. If this were not the case, then they wouldn't continually create policies to keep them down.

Indeed, Dr. King realized in his final years that to truly solve racism, we must resolve classism and extreme materialism.

MLK's national "Poor People's Campaign" had tangible goals for this as well:

* $30 billion annual appropriation for a real war on poverty

* Congressional passage of full employment and guaranteed income legislation [a guaranteed annual wage]

* Construction of 500,000 low-cost housing units per year until slums were eliminated

(From here: https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/history/)

Some updated variation on this would still make a big impact if implemented today.

Andrew Yang 2020 has policies that are inspired by what MLK promoted. The $1000 monthly "freedom dividend" will definitely be a game changer for poor minorities.

>will definitely be a game changer for poor minorities.

What about poor people in general, regardless of skin color?

Given that people who know the law, can plead the fifth and avoid being interrogated at all, why doesn't the law just ban interrogation of the accused altogether? It creates a divide between people who have access to good lawyers vs those who don't and fall prey to such coercion.

Swedish criminal law implement something that could be considered a partial application of that idea, but instead of outlawing interrogation, any admission of guilt is only to be considered as part of evidence in a case.

Thus when the courts do their work correctly, it's almost impossible to be convicted on your admissions alone, especially for more serious crimes.

There are however instances where this has still happened, indicating that maybe confeso of guilt should not be admissible as evidence at all, though material evidence found through interrogation probably should.

" any admission of guilt is only to be considered as part of evidence in a case."

This makes sense to me. Someone confessing to a crime is certainly a strong indicator they did it but it's not 100%.

In Sweden any evidence is admissible, and it's up to the judge(s) to decide if and how to weigh it.

Can the police lie in Sweden?

Afaik they aren't allowed to in Denmark... Sure, you can tell a man ready to jump off a ledge anything.

But in an interrogation, the police can't lie, or try to extract a confession.

There are so many differences.

I assume swedish courts use juries?

Regardless of the technical rules about how confessions should be treated, a jury will always overvalue a confession. The same applies to eyewitness testimony, which is basically useless but juries accept it as undeniable truth.

The game of prosecution is not "prove the accused is guilty". The game is "convince these random people that the accused is guilty". The later is a decent approximation of the former but I wish we had something better.

Have there been any cases of someone being exonerated for lack of evidence despite pleading to be arrested for their bloody cannibalistic rape spree?

Since Sweden has already been mentioned in this subthread... The case of Sture Bergwall / Thomas Quick comes quite close.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sture_Bergwall

Optimizing your justice system for bloody cannibalistic rape sprees seems unwise.

That’s true in the US too.

It really should ban interrogation without a lawyer but also if someone waives their rights they should have a mandatory discussion with a lawyer. If they waived their rights before a lawyer even showed up thats a whole lot of sketchiness going on.

How accustomed to (ab-)using the coercieve power of interrogation do you have to be to think arresting a public defender when they insisted on representing their client during questioning was a good idea?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qhzdxYnwhg

Such interrogations can often occur before someone is accused. At that point, they're just a potential witness and may not be in custody and therefore might not even have been 'Mirandized'.

As I understand it anyway, I'm a furriner. We don't have anything like Miranda in the UK, but of course the same ethical issues apply.

In the US, the mantra is "Am I under arrest?" and if not, "May I leave?" If you're not under arrest, I don't believe that you need to answer questions. Politely, of course. And if you are under arrest, you have the right to counsel during interrogation.

Even if you are under arrest, you don't have to answer questions. The fifth amendment gives you the right to stay silent.

The key here is that as soon as you can afford a real attorney the prosecution often won't go forward. If you take public counsel, poor people in the system call them 'public pretenders' because the vast majority of the time they are buddies with the DA and will just press you to take the plea deal. Ive read about a few exceptions where they actually represent the clients but the vast majority of the time they just pressure you to take the deal and threaten you with the full penalty under law if you don't deal.

True. And in theory, that's not evidence of guilt. But juries are human, so it might sway them toward guilt, at least just a little.

Also, once you have an attorney, they tell you what to say, and may even say it themselves. Indeed, they may prepare a statement, which you just read.

However, they can subpoena you, and then you do need to answer questions. With your attorney present of course. And then at trial, on the stand.

Edit: And it's not just "stay silent". You need to actually say that you're exercising your right to counsel during interrogation.

This is wrong on several counts. They can't force you to talk at all. A subpoena can't compel you to talk. They can't compel you to talk because you have a lawyer. And they certainly can't compel you to take the stand.

Huh? In the US?

If you mean that they won't torture you if you refuse to testify at trial, you're correct. But the judge may declare you in contempt, and throw you in jail. And if you continue refusing, there's no limit to jail time. It could be for life, if you're determined enough.

Absolutely not. You cannot be forced to testify against yourself and you cannot be held in contempt for refusing to do so.

If you are testifying against someone else there are instances in which you can be compelled. Even then you can't be compelled to testify about anything that would implicate you in a crime.

Actually, in most if not all US states, you do need to explicitly state that you're invoking 5th Amendment protection. And, as you can see from my GP comment, I already acknowledged 5th Amendment protection.

Once you invoke the 5th you cannot be compelled to talk or testify against yourself. Full stop. In your post above you said "they can subpoena you," which they can't. You said in that case "you do need to answer questions," which you don't. And you also said you'd have to answer questions "at trial, on the stand," which you don't.

IANAL, but I believe that the 5th Amendment applies on a per question basis. You can't just say that you won't answer any questions.

> To sustain the privilege, it need only be evident from the implications of the question, in the setting in which it is asked, that a responsive answer to the question or an explanation of why it cannot be answered might be dangerous because injurious disclosure could result.'' [emphasis added]

https://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment5/annotation07.htm...

You're obviously just going to keep dancing around and not admit your error.

Suffice it to say-- one last time-- you cannot be compelled to testify against yourself. Period. End of story. How many times you may end up invoking your right to not testify against yourself, and in what settings, is entirely beside the point.

I never said that "you cannot be compelled to testify against yourself".

I said:

> ... you do need to answer questions.

Your answer may be "I am exercising my 5th amendment right not to answer." But you do need to answer. Simply being silent is not enough to avoid a contempt judgment.

See https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/when-how-invoke-your...

That is incorrect. You don't have to answer the cops' questions in any way at all. You don't have to say "I'm exercising my 5th amendment right...". Prosecutors also can't force you to say anything, including "I'm exercising my 5th amendment right...", in private or in court. They can't even call criminal defendants to the stand. The thing you linked to doesn't support your assertions, either.

> We don't have anything like Miranda in the UK, but of course the same ethical issues apply.

We definitely do, the wording is just a bit different to the US version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_silence#England_and_W...

You can't plead the fifth and then raise things in court later, though. Which does make it markedly different. And I thought in limited circumstances that there was no right to be silent, that it was an offense not to inform the LEOs:

I'm pretty sure that this, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1987/38/section/2 (Criminal Justice Act 1987), says you can't refuse to answer questions or provide documents but that your answer can't be used alone as evidence against you, it must be corroborated. That is, no right to silence.

And note that within the UK there are some big differences! The wiki link in the parent comment is for the England and Wales version of the police statement made at time of arrest, which points out that:

> You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.

But in Scotland, which has a slightly different (and obviously, of course, much better) legal system, the police statement is:

> You are not obliged to say anything but anything you do say will be noted and may be used in evidence.

The difference is due to the fact that under Scots Law, no adverse inference can be drawn based on a persons silence.

I am not a lawyer, but I would assume that they would recommend getting arrested in Scotland, rather than England, if you absolutely must commit crimes in the UK...

Ooh, I've never thought about it before, how do police chases work at the border. Presumably Scottish police or English police have the right to arrest following a border chase, or do they have to detain and get assistance for the actual arrest.

Reminds me of a trope from old USAmerican movies where criminals are trying to reach the state line because the police aren't allowed to cross it.

As with all things like this, it's complicated.[0]

It used to be the case that the right did not exist, but there are now provisions that allow cross-border arrests under 'urgent' circumstances even if there is no arrest warrant. This is confounded by the fact that some crimes do not exist or have different names or are classified differently. So, if I was North of the border in possession of an air rifle without a license, and was then chased by a Scottish Constable across the border into England, well... I have no idea if they could then detain (that is, arrest) me, since in England air weapons do not require a license. Anyone curious about this should try the experiment and report the results...!

0. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

I'm not sure how police would do their jobs if they could never ask anyone questions without a lawyer present. This would mean for example, that before giving a statement as a witness to a traffic accident resulting in minor injury, that I would need to obtain representation. Of course this is not the kind of interrogation you are talking about, but what would be the bright line rule that separates adversarial interrogation (even for someone not yet arrested or charged) versus just "asking a few questions" ?

You could always go with "Nothing you say can be used against you without declaration of intent (ie 'we are arresting you for ___') and representation"

> plead the fifth and avoid being interrogated at all, why doesn't the law just ban interrogation of the accused altogether?

A lot of these interrogations are of "persons of interest" who haven't (yet) been accused or charged, perhaps having been alarmed by the police telling them that their silence is evidence of guilt?

I'm guessing mental abuse of being accused and repetitively in a room for hours. The constant demand upon a person to confess with no end in sight for the person. The experience being unique by the variables of the alleged crime and with whoever is hired to question play into the equation. I think the best situation for an accused person is refusing to talk and until an attorney tells them what to say. Since, mentally I doubt my health (at my best state) could even take anything else in a situation of such importance.

> I think the best situation for an accused person is refusing to talk [to the police]

Simple advice, and easy to follow. Even if you are innocent, understand the police have a job to do and that is to make a case against you. Do Not Help Them.

IANAL, but in the USA, even if the charge is jaywalking and you are arrested ASK FOR AN ATTORNEY. DO NOT ANSWER QUESTIONS without an attorney present. They may try and delay you from retaining an attorney, but when asked a question the only response should be "I want an attorney".

Anecdotally, I am someone who is prone to feeling claustrophobic when I'm in an enclosed space or feeling pressured by people. I could see how 8-12 hours of intense questioning and not knowing my rights could easily turn into "I will say whatever you want, just get me out of this space."

>IANAL, but in the USA, even if the charge is jaywalking and you are arrested ASK FOR AN ATTORNEY. DO NOT ANSWER QUESTIONS without an attorney present. They may try and delay you from retaining an attorney, but when asked a question the only response should be "I want an attorney".

I want to know (from anyone who is well-informed) how exactly this works out for the poor and middle class. In the movies they say "I want to speak to my attorney", but 90% of the population don't have a "my attorney", so if you just demand an attorney, what happens next? Do they hand you a phone book, and you have to thumb through to the lawyer section of the yellow pages? If you just demand (generic) "an attorney", do they have one on staff they can give you, or fetch one from a nearby court? What's the process like? Do you have a right to a free attorney when you're making a statement to the police, or only in court?

And is it legal for a police officer to pretend to be an attorney? (Seen this in several movies.) Is stuff you say to an officer pretending to be an attorney admissible in court?

Basically, the problem gets more complicated for anyone who doesn't retain an attorney, and much more complicated for anyone who can't afford one. How does it work exactly?

It is completely illegal for a police officer to pretend to be an attorney; it's actually illegal for anyone to pretend to be an attorney (in the situation of a suspect asking for an attorney.) The cops can lie to you about a great many things, but they cannot lie to you about the person you are talking with being an attorney. Any judge would probably immediately declare a mistrial if they found out that had happened, and anything you said to the fake attorney would be deemed inadmissible.

I am not well-informed, but according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_warning :

>If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you before any questioning if you wish.

> If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you before any questioning if you wish.

I've always wondered this - what if I can afford a lawyer, but don't want to burn $500 talking to someone about a traffic citation? Do I then have to pay, and if so, what constitutes "cannot afford"?

>If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you before any questioning if you wish.

Public defenders are notoriously overworked, and are often only allowed a few minutes per case. This is one of many aspects of the justice system that is completely eroded and disproportionately fails the poor.

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/this-public-defender-...

When I worked as a public defender (in CA) we were winning roughly 2/3rds of our cases...the same as the private defense bar managed.. and securing much better plea deals than private counsel could, since the DAs were more inclined to negotiate with people they had to see every day.

The police must stop questioning you. Then they take you to jail until your public defender has time to see you. The courts automatically will assign a public defender to your case if you do not have one or cannot afford one.

> police have a job to do and that is to make a case against you

...in the US.

If you're in England and you didn't do it then it's normally a good idea to clear things up. You can have a solicitor with you. Of course, if you've been arrested then you should make use of the solicitor and follow their advice - which will usually be "explain what happened and where you were at the time", unless you did in fact do it where their advice might be "explain in these terms what happened", or "just say 'no comment' to every question".

Any criminal solicitor worth their salt will help you to prepare a written statement giving your account of events, read it out on your behalf and strongly advise you to say nothing.

The police are still human beings with human biases. If the interviewing officer has a gut instinct that you're guilty, they're highly liable to ask leading questions and try to put words in your mouth, even if they genuinely believe that they're being fair. Any inconsistencies in your account will be taken as indications of guilt and will be used against you if it goes to trial. "Just tell us what happened so we can clear things up" often means "I know you did it, so just hurry up and confess to everything".

Malice is not a prerequisite for a miscarriage of justice; the English system offers far better protection for criminal suspects, but it's by no means infallible.

The lawyer will stop you from going over the top with your defense though, clarifying all statements such as changing the panicked reaction to a serious accusation:"I've never even been to that city!" with "I haven't been to that city recently" which is a huge difference should the police later discover a tiny piece of evidence like a social media posting or receipt showing you did indeed go to that city once upon a time 10+ years ago. If you don't clarify then they can say you are a liar and made a provably false statement to the police during court.

Not great advice. I personally would ask for a solicitor. He or she will advise appropriately.

Police in the UK have the same goals as police in the US, it's just that American police are often more aggressive about it. American lawyers will often give that same advice, tell your story to clear things up so that you can go home.

It's still generally smarter to wait until you have the advice from the lawyer before you start yapping though.

They do retain their principles of policing by consent. They are a citizen in uniform rather than a force in opposition to the citizens. It does generally change the attitude in nearly all dealings.

UK police can't lie to suspects in interview or bring out some false evidence to encourage you to confess, and interviews have to be fully recorded. Yes, of course there have been some that break the rules.

Eye witness testimony is crap too. Even if you could answer pointed questions about your whereabouts in any given evening using Google maps, human recollection of events and their details is not great.

There are questions I am capable of answering with the police but I must accept that most questions I answer could be wrong, or another witness could be wrong and now the police can use my evidence to accuse me off being a liar... Which happens to innocent people in the US because our prison system isn't about Justice, it's about maximizing the slave count in the private prison system.

Private prisons only amount to 8.4% of the prison system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison

Does that take into account all the private contractors who sell services to "not for profit" prison systems and the sale of prison labor by those same prisons?

Can there really be consequences for contradicting the other witness, without other indications pointing to who's right?

Contradictory witness statements have to be really common.

>Can there really be consequences for contradicting the other witness, without other indications pointing to who's right?

Yes. The end-goal is to infer that the suspect is being deceptive and/or lying and that, in turn, would make any statements that give the suspect any "good light" weighted less credible to their own defence.

"You said you didn't shoot the suspect but you also said you wore an off-blue shirt. 'X' said the shirt they say you in was solid blue. Why would you lie about the colour of your shirt!? And, since you're lying about that, how do we know you're not lying about shooting the victim?"

Yes. It's typically then used to attack "your credibility".

There is nuance to that - simply remaining silent is not the same thing as asserting silence, and is not as effective.

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/when-how-invoke-your...

Consider that some states have laws considering silence, or a refusal to deny allegations, as direct evidence of culpability. Texas is one of those states. Laws reflect human nature about as much as fire is similar to ice.

Since Miranda rights are part of a Federal, constitutional right to not require self-incrimination, I was curious about what you mean, and found this: https://harronlaw.com/blog/miranda-rights-texas/

"No discussion of Texas Miranda laws is complete without mentioning the 2013 case Salinas v. Texas. In this case, the Supreme Court said that you must affirmatively invoke your right to remain silent, or it doesn’t count. It’s not enough just to shuffle your feet and look away."

Edit: reading a bit more about it, I don't think this specific case amounts to a law against being silent or one that is specific to Texas. This was a Supreme Court case, and the issue is the defendant wasn't under arrest and wasn't Mirandized and was already talking to police when he went "silent".

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2012/12-246

"Question: Does the Fifth Amendment's Self-Incrimination Clause protects a defendant's refusal to answer questions asked by law enforcement before he has been arrested or read his Miranda rights?"

Conclusion: No, by 5-4 decision.

What this means is, if you haven't been arrested, then you do have to say out loud something like "I'm exercising my right to remain silent." As far as I can tell this is true in all US states. Once arrested you still presumably have the right to literally remain silent, even in Texas, under the Fifth Amendment.

Is this the one you were thinking of, or is there some other law or case you're thinking of?

Wow, how messed up is that? "You have a right to remain silent" can't be interpreted in the most direct manner?

The example person in the article didn't stay silent to the end.

There is a bit of nuance. The executive summary is that you have to actually "plea the fifth" instead of just remaining silent.

The legal system is super complicated. Never assume you know everything you need to know and always have a lawyer present when dealing with police.

http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2897

Obligatory lecture on this topic (must watch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

I recommend this lecture to everyone I know. Absolutely crucial to watch it and be aware.

an important point in that video is that if you say anything, and someone else (for exampe a police officer) says something else, then it becomes your word against the police officer's in court

Simple advice, yes. I would disagree on the 'easy to follow' part - it's very difficult to stand your ground against someone with the authority and powers of a police officer, especially in a tense or confusing situation. Alternatively, perhaps the officer is presenting things as a completely innocuous situation, where only someone like a sociopathic, unhelpful criminal with something to hide would refuse to respond, and so on. It makes it very psychologically demanding and emotionally draining to keep saying 'no comment' and yet still remember that you are doing the right thing and absolutely have the right to keep doing so.

Where do you draw the line on answering questions as a witness, versus refusing to answer as a potential accused person?

After consulting your attorney before answering anything, you answer their questions through your attorney. If they want your testimony live, they can subpoena you.

I was in a real estate investing meetup at Halloween where people were sharing scary stories. The scariest was told by a guy who was, unknown to him, dealing with a corrupt mortgage broker. Two FBI agents knocked on his door and "wanted to ask some questions". He told them he would be happy to talk to them with his lawyer in their office the next morning, but he wasn't saying anything at that time. He figures that stall potentially saved him tens of thousands of dollars by not being dragged into a blanket indictment.

In some cases not speaking to the Police can damage your defence later, though.

Every defense attorney I've talked to says they've had a hundreds of cases where they wished their client hadn't talked to the cops. And they've never mentioned one where they wished their client had talked to the cops.

Oh Chris you're from the UK. I think most people on this thread are assuming you're talking about the u.s. where you should absolutely not talk to the cops until a lawyer is present.

It must work differently in the UK where either the cops and prosecutors are less aggressively trying to convict you no matter your innocence or guilt. Or not speaking to the cops is held against you far more.

>Every defense attorney I've talked to says they've had a hundreds of cases where they wished their client hadn't talked to the cops

It may be good advice, but this logic is clearly confirmation bias. A person who talked to the cops and succeeded in convincing them of their innocence would not have a need for a defense attorney.

Once the police officers are convinced enough that you did it to bring you in for questioning the chances you'll be able to just convince them otherwise are slim and a huge risk.

I don't think that's true. The police cast a wide net and will question anyone they think might have something to do with a crime. Especially if they don't have good leads to go on. Being uncooperative can definitely raise suspicions.

Watching the first 48 (a show following murder investigations) I'd break it down to:

(1) people that are guilty and think things like "he had it coming" or "my buddy was just supposed to rob him" help their case. They admit to capital crimes when trying to lessen their guilt.

(2) people the police think are guilty and ineffectively lie. They probably don't hurt or help themselves.

(3) people the police aren't sure of. They can talk themselves in or out of suspicion based on their guilt and/or ability to effectively lie.

The group that get coerced into confessing to a crime is a very small percentage of people interviewed.

To be frank, this is bad advice [EDIT: parent wasn't giving advice, so instead this should read as something like "Talking to police without your attorney present is a very risky idea..."] that probably literally every criminal defense attorney in the United States will disagree with (I am not a lawyer, however, to be clear). A better framing perhaps is that there are two scenarios if you are being interrogated by the police:

(1) The police have enough evidence to charge you with a crime

(2) The police do not have enough evidence to charge you with a crime

They do not have to tell you (and can actively lie!) which scenario you are in, and these scenarios are only loosely correlated with whether or not you actually recently committed a crime.

In scenario (1), they're going to charge you with a crime no matter what you say - they already have enough evidence. And anything you say to the police in this scenario can only be used as evidence against you to further strengthen the police's case, it cannot be used in your own defense in court. So it's better to remain silent.

In scenario (2), if you remain silent, they cannot charge you with a crime - they don't have enough evidence and you're not giving them any (asserting your right to remain silent is not evidence). If you answer their questions, you might accidentally give them enough evidence to charge you with a crime, like contradicting your own story because your memory is fallible. The police are allowed to lie to you, ask you trick questions, wear you down, and in general do anything they can to get a confession or other evidence against you. The things you say here can only be used against you to strengthen the police's case. So it's better to remain silent.

If you are being interrogated by the police, they are not your friends and nothing you say can help you. The only person on your side is your lawyer. Stay silent until your lawyer is in the room, and then do exactly what your lawyer says.

It's been linked elsewhere, but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE is a real-life law professor and a police officer both saying exactly the same thing. American TV often includes narratives about the behavior of police officers that do not align with reality or the best interests of people accused of crimes.

>To be frank, this is bad advice that probably literally every criminal defense attorney in the United States will disagree with

There's no advice in my post.

You're right, sorry. Edited my post.

> The group that get coerced into confessing to a crime is a very small percentage of people interviewed.

It seems you are OK with this group not being zero.

No, the attorneys I've talked to or seen discuss this directly cover that, and I'm afraid the mistake here is yours. What you've pointed out is that of course the odds of any random person ending in trouble are low. However, we're talking about a situation where (1) the police have already taken notice of you, personally, which significantly shifts the risk up and (2) the potential outcomes are wildly different. So you must weight even a smaller risk. On the one side, someone who, on their own, "convinces the cops of their innocence" gets to just go home a few hours earlier and possibly save a bit of money. But the person who fails faces enormous negative consequences, huge amounts of money, prison time, a felony conviction will have permanent consequences for the rest of their life, etc. Furthermore, they are at a radical information disadvantage. They not merely face huge risks, they don't even have any real way to know what those risks are in their specific case, and on top of that they're unlikely to be in a good mental state to dispassionately consider even what little they do know!

Consider an exact equivalent of what you just said: "A person who didn't wear a seatbelt and succeeded in making it to their destination safely would not have a need for a doctor" so therefore doctors saying they've had hundreds/thousands of cases where they wished their patient had worn a seatbelt is confirmation bias. But on the one hand is a certain amount of extra inconvenience and some money that has to be spent (in mandating it by law we're forcing people to spend it, but that was a debate), whereas on the other is horrific injuries and possibly death. Even if the latter risk is small, because the outcome is so significant it's worth weighting higher. And drivers are often at the highest risk when they're sleepy, or distracted or otherwise mentally disturbed which in turn is the exact worst time to be making judgements. So it's best to just have it be habit to do without thought, each and every time (and a requirement on top to help form that habit).

Similarly the you, and me, and everyone else in this thread sitting comfortably on a Sunday afternoon discussing on HN are mostly not going to be in the same mindset we would be after having been taken in for questioning. You cannot count on yourself. You will be facing unknown unknowns. And the risks of screwing up are huge. Your opponents are experienced, and have vast resources they will draw on unhesitatingly. That's why the advice is always simple: just do not try to outthink this, unless perhaps you know for sure you're willing to have your reputation destroyed and go to prison for it (and few actually have any real inkling what that is like or means) and it seems to be a genuine emergency (because otherwise it will not hurt to give it a day).

>No, the attorneys I've talked to or seen discuss this directly cover that,

Whether they have a separate argument has no bearing on the logical consistency of the one the GP gave.

>A person who didn't wear a seatbelt and succeeded in making it to their destination safely would not have a need for a doctor" so therefore doctors saying they've had hundreds/thousands of cases where they wished their patient had worn a seatbelt is confirmation bias.

This absolutely is the same logical fallacy. In this case the conclusion is still correct.

On the other hand consider a trauma surgeon and motorcycle accidents. They may very rarely treat a patient that was not wearing a helmet. Does that mean wearing a helmet is dangerous? Of course not. It's because an accident severe enough to require a trauma surgeon is likely to be fatal to someone not wearing a helmet.

Again, the point is not that asking for an attorney is the wrong course of action. The point is that the argument in the GP isn't logically sound.

If you had a really rock-solid alibi - something that meant there was not even a remote possibility that you were the offender, would you still not bring it up at all to the Police? You'd go all the way to court, months later, and only then bring it up?

If you have a rock solid alibi, like you're on video tape somewhere else while the crime happened and the police know exactly when the crime happened then you'll get off whether you talked to the police or not.

But it's even hard to figure out whether or not you have a rock solid alibi because you don't necessarily know the timing of the crime.

Also plenty of people have gone to jail for 20 years in the u.s. who have rock solid alibis(like they were in another city).

Wow, that sounds really bad. Do you have any examples of cases where people who were in another city got such large sentences?

This guy was at work, still got convicted of murder, put on death row, because bad prosecutor and sheriff.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/08/13/michael-morton-murde... https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/the-innocent-man-part-...

In the US: you don't ever talk to the police for any reason unless you have a lawyer with you telling you what to say.

You're completely right about the UK though. If you didn't do it and police are asking if you did it it's normally much easier to just tell them that you didn't do it, and this has very little risk.

The risk comes from people who have committed the offence, but who think that it's a minor issue and think that just explaining it to police will mean they can go.

If the police stop you and you have a self-defence baseball bat in the boot of your car then you need to say "it's for playing baseball with the kids". As soon as you say "it's for self-defence, just to scare people off, I'd never hit anyone with it" that converts it into an offence and police are a bit touchy about weapons at the moment.

> In the US: you don't ever talk to the police for any reason unless you have a lawyer with you telling you what to say.

How far do you take this? Here are a couple of hypothetical situations, and in both of them I would answer police questions. I've had people tell me that they would not, and have cited the popular video someone else cited earlier as the reason.

1. You are walking down the sidewalk and pass a parked car. You are a car enthusiast, and recognize the make, model, and year of the car because it is one that is sought after by enthusiasts, and this one particularly stands out because it looks like it some options that were only available in a limited edition.

A moment later, you hear a commotion, and see a man run out of a building holding a baby, followed by a woman who is shouting "help! my baby! he took my baby!", and then faints. You see the man get into the aforementioned car and get onto a nearby freeway, heading South.

Police quickly arrive. None of the other witnesses saw where the man went or could describe anything about him, because they were distracted when the woman fainted. The police ask you if you saw anything that could help find the man or identify him.

Do you really wait until you cat get a lawyer to advise you before you describe the car and tell them he appeared to get on the Southbound freeway?

2. There is an explosion in your small office. Police are the first emergency responders to arrive. They ask if everyone is accounted for. You saw a coworker go into the bathroom shortly before the explosion, and did not see them come out, and looking around at your coworkers gathered across the street watching the office burn and being given first aid, you see everyone except that one coworker.

Do you tell police that you still appear to have one missing coworker, or wait to run the question by a lawyer first?

I think the advice of never speaking to the police is meant to say that you can only get yourself into more trouble, not less. Emergency situations like this require you to make judgement calls. These situations seem like obvious cases to help out with your eyewitness testimony. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you wouldn't be breaking some lay by intentionally not helping in an emergency.

Don't ask me. I'm English, and in England the advice "never speak to the police" is fucking stupid.

> and you have a self-defence baseball bat in the boot of your car

Well this isn't a great example because that is an offence and the Police would be right to do you for it! You're advocating lying to cover up offences for your own selfish benefit!

But it's only an offence if it's there for self defence.

If the police say "what's this bat for" and you know you only use it to play baseball then you should say that.

If they ask and you say "I'm not saying anything" then they have enough to arrest you and take you to the station.

This supports your point: in England it's often a good idea to talk to the police.

> But it's only an offence if it's there for self defence.

Well yes that was the situation described that I was replying to.

> you have a self-defence baseball bat

It's not hard to turn that into a situation where it can work against you.

What if it were your child's baseball bat? You can say that's what it's for but then what if the cop asks you if you'd use it for self defense? Would saying yes potentially be incriminating?

You would potentially bring this up to the police, after consulting with your lawyer and ascertaining the precise language and limits of what you'll say. You won't be doing this on the fly without consulting with a lawyer. This doesn't require you to wait until a court date to have any statement made on behalf of yourself.

What if the police aren't questioning you about what they say? Your alibi can place you where they want to place you.

Why not consult with a lawyer who will be qualified to advise you appropriately?

The UK specifically rules that failing to speak to the police can be held against you. (You still shouldn't speak to the police, even in the UK.)

Every country is somewhat different in its rules for how a suspect can be questioned, what inferences can be drawn, etc. But the advice for everywhere is still the same: shut up.

I mentioned this in another comment - only in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is it true that silence can be held against you. In the other constituent part of the UK, Scotland, there cannot be any adverse inference drawn from your silence.

You have the absolute right to a solicitor before giving a statement. Your solicitor will advise appropriately - until they have I personally would shut up.

Giving a statement is not the same thing as being interviewed as a suspect. You don't have a right to a solicitor before giving a witness statement, but it's completely up to you whether you want to give a statement.

You have a right to free and independent legal advice if you are interviewed under caution as a suspect (whether or not you have been arrested).

The thing is the police have a small habit of not really telling you that you are a suspect...

Not in the UK; the rules around interviews are very clear (PACE Code C) and very strictly enforced.

What are you basing your statement on?

This covers interviews under caution. Remember that the police can/will take a note of everything you say...

I am not giving advice only friendly suggestions based on other people's real world experience. You are free to ignore me.

> It must work differently in the UK where either the cops and prosecutors are less aggressively trying to convict you no matter your innocence or guilt. Or not speaking to the cops is held against you far more.

Cops and prosecutors are definitely just as aggressive in the UK. The difference is that UK case law, unlike the US, allows the refusal to speak with the police to be construed as evidence in itself, whereas the US does not.

Sort of. You have the absolute right to a solicitor before giving a statement. Your solicitor will advise appropriately.

With today's technology I don't think you need to talk without a lawyer to better case your alibi.

You have to remember that it is legal (USA) for the police to lie to you but not the other way around.

Such as?

Such as if you had an alibi that you try to use as a defence in court but you didn't mention it when questioned by Police in the first place. This can cast doubt on the alibi - presumably because people will think you made it up later and if it was true you should have been able to say so in the first place.

> it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court

https://www.gov.uk/arrested-your-rights

Or it gives the cops time to poke holes in your alibi or otherwise intimidate your alibi if the cops are dead set on you being the guilty person. Better to tell a lawyer your alibi so he can collect the information first so that he’s not blindsided later.

This is if you can afford a lawyer who can work with you quickly. If you’re poor and you think your alibi is strong enough to let you go immediately then it might be better.

I think what everyone is getting at is that you should refuse any questioning at all, full stop.

Yes I know - but the problem with that is that when you get to court and try to defend yourself, your defence will be weaker because you didn't answer questions at the time. It's bad advice.

Only if you aren't human. On the other hand...

>You might make mistakes when explaining where you were at the time of a crime that the police interpret as lies; the officer talking to you could misremember what you say much later

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mvkgnp/law-professor-poli...

No, your defense will be weaker if you talk because the prosecution will use your words against you. They're not going to give you virtue points for being kind to them and not bothering them with things like asserting your right to an attorney. That's not their job.

That's exactly what defense attorneys and police themselves advise. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mvkgnp/law-professor-poli...

Well the law in some jurisdictions says explicitly

> it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court

As in the jury are allowed to take into account the fact that you did not reveal information at the first opportunity as a negative.

That's something that your solicitor would know and advise on. There is still no reason to talk to the police without an attorney/solicitor present.

What you're saying and what's in the link seems to be consistent with the advice of refusing to talk to the police at all, and not to talk partially or to answer some questions and not answer other questions, or answering but changing the statement later.

You should have mentioned that you're talking about the UK in your original statement. The fact that you did not may be used against you in the furtherance of this discussion.

In the US we have the fifth amended, and it seems that [1] as long as it explicitly invokes the protection one would be safe from similar repercussions.

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/when-how-invoke-your...

But if you do mention it and make any kind of error, that seems likely to be used against you as well.

The ancient Artha Shastra had an interesting take on this. Thanks to its time period, it advocated torturing suspects during interrogations (of limited duration). However, due to the near certainty of false confessions in such an interrogation, it instructed the interrogator to attempt to obtain knowledge through the torture that only the guilty could have, such as the location of stolen property or murder weapons.

I have read that good interrogators will do that without torture. They will check the information they are getting against facts that can be checked. From what I have read about innocent people that got convicted most of these convictions relied on “evidence” where nobody made the effort to sanity check the information and see if it really makes sense.

I wonder if this is part of why police officers (on podcasts etc.) often decline to discuss details of, say, unsolved crime scenes. They need to make sure that some arbitrary details aren't made public, so that they can later prove a confession is real.

Also check for the consistency of the person's story. Lying is stressful and you have to remember details you have invented and that don't match your own memory. This is difficult to keep straight, especially over an extended period.

Memory is malleable and false memories can be created in people's minds even when they know it is happening. If the police are showing pictures and telling a narrative then that will eventually be adopted as the person's memory.

That's exactly right and I don't know why people would downvote it unless they've never had it happen to them.

I remember having a quite nasty accident as a kid, but actually it happened to my friend, and I only found out many years later when recounting it.

I've had some similar episodes while drunk, but not as extreme as that one.

I have a memory as a young kid watching a spaceship launch in person. I even told my first grade class about it during show and tell time or something. I remember this because the teacher corrected me, suggesting maybe I watched something on TV (probably true).

I live in the PNW and have never been near a spaceship launch but to this day it feels kind of like a real memory.

It seems that over time it’s pretty easy to write false memories into our real memories.

While true, people also make honest mistakes. While this is a very different context, I have played a lot of mafia (AKA werewolves) online, and often the liars are the ones who have gone to great lengths to make sure their story checks out. Innocents are often more likely to be accidentaly inconsistent, because they are not trying to keep their story straight.

Psychological questionnaires also make use of this: turn a page or two, and you might find the same question get asked a second time.

Besides the ethical implications of using torture at all (especially those who do not the criteria for being convicted),

I am deeply skeptical that any organization could simultaneously:

* use torture of prisoners to obtain confessions (true or otherwise)

* still respect the rights of those prisoners enough to refrain from planting evidence in line with those confessions

It doesn't have to be about respecting the rights of the prisoners if you think it's bad enough to have the real culprit run free because you got the wrong person and thought you were done.

This is basically the 'ticking bomb' scenario isn’t it. If the question was to keep torturing until “was Mr Bloggs a part of the meeting” is a yes then that is pretty much not valid as the subject will likely say anything to stop it. To find the location of bomb going off in 30 minutes is a very different matter as it’s a clear true or false question with a very direct answer.

No it isn't. It is information that may be difficult to obtain but trivial to verify.

> it instructed the interrogator to attempt to obtain knowledge through the torture that only the guilty could have

This (AIUI) is currently used in Japan (without the torture). It's not a cast-iron guarantee against false confessions:

> Article 38 of Japan's Constitution categorically requires that "no person shall be convicted or punished in cases where the only proof against suspect is his/her own confession," In practice, this constitutional requirement take a form of safeguard known as "revelation of secret" (Himitsu no Bakuro, lit "outing of secret"). Because suspects are put through continuous interrogation which could last up to 23 days as well as isolation from the outside world, including access to lawyers, both the Japanese judiciary and the public are well aware that confession of guilt can easily be forced. Consequently, the court (and the public) take the view that mere confession of guilt alone is never any sufficient ground for conviction.

> However, most miscarriage of justice cases in Japan are, indeed, the results of conviction solely based on the confession of the accused. In these case, (1) the record of sequence and timing of the police discoveries of evidence and the timing of confession is unclear (or even faked by the police) (2) the contents of the revelation of secret has only weak relevance to the crime itself or that (3) the revelation of secret to be actually vague enough that it is apply only loosely to the elements of crime (Prosecutor's fallacy). Serious miscarriage of justice cases in Japan involve police deliberately faking the police evidence (and insufficient supervision by the prosecutor to spot such rogue behaviour) such as where the police already knew (or suspected) the location of the body or the murder weapon but they fake the police record to make it appear that it is the suspect who revealed the location. During the 1970s, a series of reversals of death penalty cases brought attention to the fact that some accused, after intensive interrogation signed as-yet unwritten confessions, which were later filled in by investigating police officers. Moreover, in some cases, the police falsified the record so that it appear that the accused confessed to the location where the body was buried, yet the truth was that the police had written in the location in the confession after the body was discovered by other means. These coerced confessions, together with other circumstantial evidence, often convinced judges to (falsely) convict.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_system_of_Jap...

> Serious miscarriage of justice cases in Japan involve police deliberately faking the police evidence (and insufficient supervision by the prosecutor to spot such rogue behaviour) such as where the police already knew (or suspected) the location of the body or the murder weapon but they fake the police record to make it appear that it is the suspect who revealed the location.

It's also not difficult for police to do this purposely or even by accident when they don't know the information yet, but there are only a small number of plausible answers to the question. So they ask you two dozen questions that each have five plausible answers, investigate the answers you give and five of them turn out to be correct by random chance. Then the wrong answers are forgotten or written off as a guilty person casting misdirection while the probability of each correct answer is incorrectly multiplied by the others to produce a strikingly inaccurate probability result.

Wrongly confess: you'll be released today, albeit with a criminal conviction and a fine.

Maintain innocence: spend the next 3-18 months in jail, then have a trial without effective counsel, probably lose, be sentenced to time served and a fine. You'll have lost your job, your kids will be in foster care, and your family will have been evicted.

It's not complicated. (For more serious crimes, the police still generally promise "you'll be released today", they just don't deliver on that promise. "Just tell us what happened and we can put all this behind us, we just have a few questions." So even though the accused is facing serious punishment for wrongly confessing, the decision still appears similar to the above.)

It also helps to remember, the police are not there to find the truth or find your innocence.

Their job is to gather evidence sufficient for the DA to charge you and convict you. Once you've been arrested or detained, you're not talking your way out of it, you're just giving them information to pass on to the DA.

In other countries the police is tasked with doing an impartial investigation.

They not allowed to lie, or even interrupt an explanation to attempt to tweak the wording.

Using American tactics in other countries could get a police officer fired or worse.

> Judge Steven Barrett of the Bronx Supreme Court vacated Burton's 3-decade-old conviction, citing such work as the basis of his decision.

This worked in a subdivision of a single city, but may never work in rural Wisconsin or the other 30,000+ municipalities in this country which operate under 55 sovereign districts with completely different legal hierarchies.

We don't even have total transparency about who is even in most of these municipal prisons and under what circumstances.

The work in New York City - "the center of the free world" - is probably the most advanced, and the world's news organizations have barely scratched the surface about whats going on in Riker's Islands and its other prisons.

How can we really address this?

>More than a quarter of the 365 people exonerated in recent decades by the nonprofit Innocence Project had confessed to their alleged crime.

Using guessimation, x would be the numer of people that confessed that were innocent, so 91.25 < x < 182.5, and that, alone, was the principally driving force (assumptive, I'm aware) to convict them - and these are the numbers that we're aware of because of the overturned convictions.

Whilst I can understand the reprieve it must give police and the district attorneys in the efforts of building a case, it almost seems as if they just kind of give up applying any further scrutiny, once any confession is had - whether the person actually committed the crime or not.

I'm not sure why this breakdown, for lack of a better vernacular at present, occurs though.

Is it antipathy? Is it because numbers are more important than anything else (e.g.: for elected positions such as Sheriffs)? Is it because we ply the path of least of resistance to the investigating demeanor?

I'm sure a lot of the convictions in the past are biased for varying other degrees but this seems to infer that even without those other degrees of influence, we have a high margin of error for putting innocent people away.

Add those varying degrees referenced above into the equation and I'm not so sure that the deflection, "It's not a perfect system but it works," is really applicable, anymore.

Serial's third season podcast series covered this a bit, since the 1980's or so in the USA, we've decreased funding for the judicial system, and not increased prosecutors funding and staff to commensurate with increased crimes due to larger population (if crime rate stayed the same or even decreased.) This puts a lot of pressure on prosecutors to get plea bargains, the logical gaming of the system by prosecutors is to layer on as many of the hardest charges possible, then offer a plea bargain that has a fraction of the penalty of the initial charges. We do not have enough courthouses to actually let every defendent get judged by a jury of their peers. Even if one is innocent, rational people will choose to plea guilty given that prosecutors have something like a 95% conviction rate in the USA and all the resources of their local/state/federal government behind the prosecution. Someone facetiously but based on my viewing of The Wire and The Shield, large city police departments are judged on finding someone to charge with reported crimes and having a lot of open unsolved crimes is seen as a terrible statistic, there's no extra reward in finding the actual person who did each crime so some might find a perverse incentive to clear crimes no matter what.

It’s my understanding they are metric’d on wins....

One factor worth considering from the study the article references, which it really should have acknowledged. Tactics such as minimization, are extremely effective in increasing the rate of true-confessions as well, which significantly outnumber the number of false-confessions.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7798075_Investigati...

"Results indicated that guilty persons were more likely to confess than innocent persons, and that the use of minimization and the offer of a deal increased the rate of both true and false confessions"

Condition, True confessions, False confessions

No tactic 46% 6%

Minimization 81% 18%

I'm not sure I prefer to have more true confessions of that implies more wrong confessions (even if one might outweigh the other)..

If you look at the stats, the ratios are getting worse

> John Kogut, a Long Island man who after an 18-hour interrogation falsely confessed

How is this not considered torture? How is the confession of a sleep deprived and hence mentally impaired man even valid? Why are the feral cops who interrogated him not in jail for crimes against humanity?

On the other hand, why don't they go a step further? Sharp tools, electricity, hallucinogenic drugs, etc. would go a long way towards getting a confession sooner.

In that specific case, the police did not consider the confession by itself to be enough to falsely convict Mr Kogut and his two friends.

So the police took a hair from the victim, put it in an evidence bag, and testified under oath that the hair had been found in the defendants' van.

It looks like the innocent men were released in 2003, and have had to wait 15+ years for compensation.

https://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/fusco-restivo-hal...

But hey, it shows that the criminal justice system works!

>On the other hand, why don't they go a step further? Sharp tools, electricity, hallucinogenic drugs, etc. would go a long way towards getting a confession sooner.

Chicago[0] beat you to that idea, my friend.

[0] - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/homan-square

Perhaps one of the best videos on YouTube "Don't talk to the Police":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

Its really unfortunate. Your lawyer will tell you not to take the polygraph. Your lawyer will tell you not to sign a damn thing. Your lawyer will tell you to STFU. Your lawyer will tell you about all the little mindgames and brainwashing that you are going to experience.

But if you're poor you don't have a lawyer to save you from the bad people. And its not in the government interest to provide you with one.

Can you not be provided a lawyer even if you're poor? I thought that was a right.

You have a lawyer you meet at trial and don't get privacy with, and that's provided they're not incentivized (with money or otherwise) to deliberately fail to defend you.

I just don't think people that went through years of education are still capable of doing something like that. People are motivated by more than just money...

It's not malice. In some places (I believe my state is one), even normal lawyers are required to periodically serve as a public defender. These defenders are just handed cases and required to handle them, period. Now what if it should take you a whole week to go through the facts of the case to properly defend the accused, but it turns out the court handed you about 10 cases that week, and they all have the same issue?

Education has nothing to do with elimination of greed. White-collar crime exists, after all. You can't out-nurture human nature.

Though sometimes people confess due to interrogation pressure tactics, there is still this phenomenon that the article doesn't touch on: attention-seekers who voluntarily call in and turn themselves in, claiming to be the perpetrator of some widely publicized crime, like a serial killing or whatever.

There is a fair amount of press in the UK at the moment related to a Westminster VIP paedophile ring where it looks like the "victim", a Carl Beech, may have been making it up.

In India, confessions in lock-up or to the police are not admissible in court in a criminal proceeding. I've always found that as the way to prevent innocent people from being convicted based on their confession.

Well, I am not surprised at all. In US police,not all of them, often lie under oath.It is called ‘Testilying.’[0]

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/nyregion/police-lying-new...

American Vandal (Netflix original) season 2 deals with this theme and is pretty amazing all around!

Scene from the Wire relating to lie detector machines https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN7pkFNEg5c

"under US law, police are allowed to lie"

in consideration of this fact, anyone taken into US police custody, for any reason, ever, should refuse to open their mouth, or help police in any way.

The sad thing is that if your neighbor was burgled and the police comes knocking on your door to ask questions, you also have an interest in getting the culprit caught.

Yet, you can't trust the police to not entrap you.

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