The Truth About False Confessions Analysis

For this portfolio assignment, I have chosen three articles that illustrate three different legal psychology concepts. In this first article, The Truth About False Confessions, the author talks about how two brothers are sentenced to death, after falsely confessing to the rape and murder of a child. However, they have recently been released from the North Carolina’s death row, as DNA evidence has finally established the guilt of another man. The reason why I chose this article is because the two brothers, who were convicted in this case, were vulnerable suspects as they were under the age of nineteen and had a mental disability. According to research, false confessions by minors have recently been increasing during the last couple of years, because minors tend to comply with authority figures, as they lack maturity and life experience (Schwartz, 2016). Also, they are particularly …show more content…
Yet, instead of going home, they ended up spending thirty years in prison for a crime that they did not commit. Based on what I have learned this semester, this statement most likely resembles a coerced-compliant confession because the suspect confesses to achieve a specific goal, and in this case, the goal of the suspect was to escape the hostile environment of the interrogation room. According to the textbook, when a suspect finds himself in this situation, he or she feels that there is no other choice than to confess, as they naively believe that the evidence will show that they are innocent (Schwartz, 2016). However, in the criminal justice system, a confession is considered to be the best evidence of guilt a person can have because the individual acknowledges his or her participation in the crime, even if they are falsely