False Confessions and the Death Penalty

1
False Confessions and the Death Penalty

• Prepared by
• Caitlin Chamberlin
• Margaret Lai
• Kelly Thomson

2
Admissibility of a Confession Constitutional
Analysis

• 4th Search and seizure limitations
• 5th Right ag. self incrimination
• 6th Right re assistance of counsel
• 14th Protects ag. involuntary confessions

3
14th Amendment Voluntariness

• For confessions to be admissible, the Due Process
  Clause of the 14th Amendment requires that they
  be voluntary.
• Voluntariness assessed by looking at the
  totality of the circumstances.

4
Totality of the Circumstances Test for
Voluntariness

• Totality of the Circumstances includes
• Suspects
• Age
• Education
• Mental Physical Condition
• Police
• Setting
• Duration
• Manner of Police Interrogation
• Spano v. New York, 360 U.S. 315 (1959)

5
14th Amend Case History

• 1936 Supreme Court rules that a confession is
  involuntary where it was obtained by physically
  beating the defendant.
• Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278.
• 1986 Supreme Court rules that a confession is
  not involuntarily merely because it is the
  product of a mental disease that prevents the
  confession from being of the defendants free
  will.
• Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. 157.

6
Voluntary?

• 1991 Supreme Court held that a conviction will
  not necessarily be overturned if an involuntary
  confession was erroneously admitted into
  evidence. The harmless error test applies, and
  the conviction will not be overturned if the
  government can show that there was other
  overwhelming evidence of guilt.
• AZ v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279.

7
6th Amend Right to Counsel

• 6th provides that in all criminal prosecutions,
  the D has the right to the assistance of counsel.
  
• This is violated when the police deliberately
  elicit an incriminating statement from a D
  without first obtaining a waiver of the Ds right
  to have counsel present.

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Example

• 1980 The 6th Amend right to counsel is violated
  when an undisclosed, paid government informant is
  placed in the Ds cell, after D has been
  indicted, and deliberately elicits statements
  from the D regarding the crime for which the D
  was indicted.
• US v. Henry, 447 U.S. 264.

9
5th Amend Privilege Ag. Self-Incrimination

• No person shall be compelled to be a witness
  against himself. This has been interpreted to
  mean that a person should not be compelled to
  give self-incriminating testimony.

10
5th Miranda Warnings

• The 5th Amend. Privilege ag. compelled
  self-incrimination became the basis for ruling on
  the admissibility of a confession.
• The Miranda warnings and a valid waiver are
  prerequisites for admissibility of any statement
  made by the accused during custodial
  interrogation.

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5th Miranda Warnings

• Police may not badger the D into
  talking/confessing if he invokes his right to
  remain silent.
• Also protects ag. self-incrimination by the
  admission of evidence based on a psychiatric
  interview of D who was not warned of his right to
  remain silent.

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5th Miranda Warnings

• If the police obtain a confession from a D
  without giving him Miranda warnings and then give
  the D Miranda warning and obtain a subsequent
  confession, the subsequent confession will be
  inadmissible if the question first, warn later
  nature of the questioning was intentional.
• However a subsequent valid confession may be
  admissible if the original unwarned questioning
  seems unplanned and the failure to give Miranda
  warnings was inadvertent.

13
But

• Miranda generally only applies to interrogation
  by the police. It does not apply where
  interrogation is by an informant who the D does
  not know is working with the police (like a
  cellmate covertly working for the police).
• Rationale the warnings are intended to offset
  the coercive nature of police-dominated
  interrogation.
• Illinois v. Perkins

14
And

• A confession obtained in violation of a Ds
  Miranda rights, but otherwise voluntary, may be
  used to impeach the Ds testimony if he takes the
  stand in trial, even though such a confession is
  inadmissible in the states case in chief.

15
Available Police Interrogation Methods

• Approaching the suspect too closely for comfort.
• Overstating or understating the seriousness of
  the offense and the magnitude of the charges.
• Presenting exaggerated claims about the evidence.
• Falsely claiming that another person has already
  confessed and implicated the suspect.

• Feigned sympathy and friendship
• Appeals to God and religion
• Blaming the victim or an accomplice
• Placing the suspect in a soundproof, starkly
  furnished room
• Wearing a person down by a very long interview
  session

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But this can lead to

• D feeling that it is in his best interest to
  confesseven though this is the most
  self-defeating course of action.
• Deception techniques allow police to create
  evidence so accused thinks there is DNA or other
  air-tight evidence against them.

17
Garrett case

• Edgar Garrett of Goshen, Ind.,
• suspected in 1995 of his daughters murder,
  despite the absence of direct evidence linking
  him to the crime.
• Garretts interrogators lied egregiously, saying
  that several witnesses saw him with his daughter
  shortly before she disappeared. They also said
  that a polygraph test had proved his guilt.
• Then one of the detectives put it to the accused,
  who sometimes drank heavily, that he could have
  experienced a blackout. He reminded the suspect
  that he had once struck his daughter while in an
  alcoholic haze.
• Garretts confidence in his memory began to
  falter and, though increasingly upset and
  confused, he ceased insisting that he had not
  seen the girl shortly before she disappeared.

18
Garrett case

• After 14 hours of such cynical manipulation,
  Garrett signed a statement that he had killed his
  daughter and was charged with capital murder. In
  the months that followed, however, evidence
  turned up showing that Michelle was slain with a
  knife, not thumped with a stick, and that
  Garrett could not have been anywhere near the
  crime scene. He was eventually exonerated.

19
Richard Danziger case

• Nancy DePriest was raped and murdered in her work
  place in Austin, Texas in 1988. Chris Ochoa pled
  guilty to the murder of DePriest and his friend,
  Richard Danziger, was convicted of rape. Ochoa
  had confessed to the crime and had implicated
  Danziger. It would be discovered, however, that
  his confession was coerced and that neither man
  had anything to do with the slaying or raping of
  DePriest.

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(No Transcript)
21
Richard Ofshe and Richard Leos Experiment

• Case selection
• 60 cases where an individual was arrested
  primarily because police obtained an inculpatory
  statement that later turned out to be a proven,
  or highly likely, false confession

22
Case classification

• 1) Proven false confession (34)
• 2) Highly probable false confession (18)
• 3) Probable false confession (8)

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Cases involving suspected or established false
confessions

• Typically resulted in some deprivation of the
  false confessors liberty
• 30 of the false confessors whose cases proceeded
  to trial had a 73 chance of being convicted
• 81 of false confessors find themselves having to
  choose either to plead guilty to a crime they did
  not commit or go to trial and risk the harshest
  possible punishment DEATH

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Conclusions of Ofshe and Leo Study

• Confession evidence substantially biases trier of
  facts evaluation of the case
• These 60 false confessions show that the manuals
  often teach police to use tactics that end up
  producing false confessions since those tactics
  are coercive
• Not enough safeguards in our criminal system
• Criminal justice officials and lay jurors treat
  confession evidence with such deference that it
  outweighs strong evidence of the defendants
  innocence

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General Information

• In more than 25 of DNA exoneration felony cases,
  innocent defendants made incriminating
  statements, delivered outright confessions, or
  pled guilty

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Factors that contribute to confessions by
innocent people

• Duress
• Coercion
• Intoxication
• Diminished capacity
• Mental impairment
• Ignorance of the law

• Fear of violence
• The actual infliction of harm
• The threat of a harsh sentence
• Misunderstanding the situation

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Ways to prevent false confessions from leading
to wrongful convictions

• Electronically record the entire interrogation
• States IL, ME, NM, WI, DC
• Sup Ct decisions AK, MA, MN, NH, NJ

• Mandatory jury instructions directing the jury to
  disregard the confession if believed to be
  coerced