Research Paper on "Forensics, Law, & Psychology: False"

Research Paper 3 pages (1096 words) Sources: 3

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Following cases of a similar kind, particularly that of Miranda v. Arizona (1966), the Supreme Court ruled that coerced confessions were inadmissible in court unless the defendant had previously been allowed to consult with an attorney and advised of his rights to remain silent. Nonetheless, as shown, false confessions remain a regularity of the forensic scene and this is due to the fact that numerous elements involve themselves in prompting such a confession. Unless these factors are known too many innocent people will continue to be convicted wrongfully. The only way to prevent this is to conduct reliable and insistent research into the factors that prompt false confessions. Disallowing coerced confessions is insufficient. As shown earlier, Bedau and Radelet (1987) discovered 350 cases of false confessions in the United States alone. In 49 of these cases, coercive strategies were used to elicit the confession. That this situation exists and continues may be primarily due to the Arizona v. Fulminante (1991) where the Supreme Court ruled in reversal to its former decision that convictions based on coerced confession need no longer be automatically reversed. Other evidence needs to be accumulated to show that the conviction was wrongful. In other words, the confession may have been coerced, but significant evidence nonetheless exists to convict the defendant. In this case, the prosecutors may continue with their judgment and the sentence stands.

This latest ruling by the Supreme Court is changing and has changed methodological research in this field for no longer is it exclusively and conclusively accepted that coercive strategies are unwelcome and forbidden, and that, if they occur, they annul the conviction with recurrence of the case having to occur, but now researchers are focusing on the possibility that coercive strategies actually do occur and, this being so, methodologies come into focus on how to recognize these coercive confessions. Furthermore, related research also attempts to distinguish between coercive confessions that have elicited deserved sentencing and those that have sentenced an innocent person to undeserved consequences. Researchers in the convergence of psychology, law, and forensics provide various reasons as to the recent trend in coerced confessions. Some provide psychodynamic rationale (Conti, 1996), whereas Zimardo (1967) posits police incompetence. The tendency has become for police interrogators to resort to outright lies (Conti, 1996), and more than one recent textbook presents step-by-step methods whereby interrogators can elicit a forced confession from a suspect (ibid.). From disallowing coerced confession to allowing it under certain conditions -- this has become a situation that is convenient for the police and has changed the environment of forensic law in convergence with psychology. In return, social psychologists now focus their methods to examining the why's and wherefores of coerced confessions as compared to a time -- not too long ago -- when coerced confession was disallowed and, therefore, methodological research on the subject was non-existent.

References

Brandon, R., & Davies, C. (1973). Wrongful imprisonment. London, England: Allen and Unwin

Brothers Ltd.

Conti, R.P. (1999) The Psychology of False Confessions. The Journal of Credibility Assessment and Witness Psychology, 2, 14-36.

Huff, C.R., Rattner, A., & Sagarin, E. (1996). Convicted but innocent: Wrongful conviction and public policy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

McCormick, C.T. (1992). Handbook… READ MORE

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