Coffman And Dailey's Study On False Confessions

Improved Essays
Furthermore, Henkel, Coffman and Dailey also conducted a study in regards to false confessions but more focused on the people’s attitudes and beliefs about such issue. The purpose of the study was to examine the ability of jurors in regards of false confessions and their potential biases in the matter. Henkel, Coffman and Dailey conducted their study by administering two different surveys, each survey took approximately 10-15 minutes. One survey was to measure the knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes about false confessions in regards to issues in the criminal justice system, the second survey was just a continuation of the first one regarding aspects of the criminal justice and false confessions as a strong indicator of guilt. One half of the …show more content…
Silva, according to this study people do have the acknowledgment of the occurrence of false confessions. Furthermore a very important concept touched in the newspaper article in regards to this study is how judges did not only based their evidence on the confession, but in all of the evidence pointing at the father; which also points to one of the findings of judges most likely finding the defendant guilty even when a false confession is given. When evidence is flawed itself and subject to errors in identification like the footage found, it would be hard for judges to discriminate between false or true confessions. It is also interesting, how the article explains that situational factors should be considered, yet people still think that they would never confess to a crime they did not commit. It is the situation in this case and the circumstances of the son being young, that impulse Mr. Silva to take blame for his son’s actions. More so, the reaction of the prosecutor about the belief of the false confession and how he perceives it was more radical. The prosecutor according to the NBC news said that the whole situation was a manipulation of the criminal justice system, his beliefs and reaction about such case was disappointment at bringing justice into the hands of the victims. He brought out how the family deliberately decided among themselves who was going to take the blame and pay for the crime. (CITE) This view, its tied to those …show more content…
“Legal scholars have called for policy changes that would require safeguards to reduce the risk of false confessions.” (CITE) there is a movement towards bettering the system and ensuring more true confessions than those false ones. There should be an implementation of more safeguards, and also the use of more expert testimony from psychologists to ensure such confessions are in fact, true or not. Although people might have views that they will never confess to a crime they have not committed, there should never be an exact certainty of whether that statement might be true in a situation where an actual case and under the right pressures this might be the only way to presumably ‘solving the problem’. The importance of false confession in the psycho-legal subject still a developing issue. Both studies suggest that there should be more studies to look into this matter. People’s belief and perceptions of such, can be highly important in regards to juries biases and the hardship to dismiss such in certain

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