Who Are The Innocents The Psychology Of Confessions - Essay Example

Who are the innocents The psychology of confessions. Study Proposal Introduction False confessions are expensive from a legal point of view, but rather more importantly, the conviction of an innocent is a human tragedy. The act of confession by an innocent has a considerable research history in psychology and law. Much of it has been positive; however we propose a normative study of why innocents confess. A recent article (Kassin 2005) on the psychology of confessions, for example, suggests that video taping should be mandatory, but this proposal will focus on who innocents are, avoiding similar modalities. Therefore we will define innocence as a legal state and, remembering the legal maxim "innocent until proven guilty," innocents as those who are not guilty (Blackstone 1765). An study to measure why innocents confess that we will propose will be empirical, following an experiment closely resembling that carried out by Kassin and Kiechel (Kassin and Kiechel 1996), using participants testimony. The participants will carry out an experiment that contravenes the maxim "innocent until proven guilty" because we can show that the application of psychology to innocence is not relevant if innocent people can think themselves guilty as a result of Kassin and Kiechel's experiment. These psychologists' results are expected to be repeated. Literature Review Kassin and Kiechel interestingly define features of innocents' false confessions as 'confabulated' and 'internalised' - interesting because these same words are used by memory research into false memory. Kopelman describes the varieties of false memory as "spontaneous confabulation in brain disease, false recognition cases, delusional memories and other delusions in psychosis, "confabulations" in schizophrenia, "internalised" false confessions for crime, apparently false or distorted memories for child abuse, pseudologia fantastica, the acquisition of new identities or "scripts" following fugue or in multiple personality, and momentary confabulation in healthy subjects."1 The academic psychology over confessions is mistaken when it presumes that establishing innocence is the purpose of law. Rather, trials happen because a crime has been committed and the law seeks to establish guilt, to punish the guilty. Psychology does not punish, as shown by Kassin and Gudjonnson, instead it designs confessional experiments. (Kassin and Gudjonnson 2004) Many experiments have inbuilt tricks to deceive, replicating experimenters' expectations, in much the same way that many pupils in the classroom replicate teachers' expectations. (Rosenthal and Jacobson 1968) An example of a study devised by psychologists includes a reaction time experiment. After warning participants not to hit a key that caused the machine to crash, experimenters deliberately crashed the machine, reasoning that participants could be made to confess. In many cases the participants did falsely confess, guiltily participating in the psychologists' study, whilst they believed the experiment was about reaction time. Legal cases abound where innocents have been convicted. In 2005, prosecutors forced a confession from a fourteen year-old boy, who confessed to murder in Illinois. The victim found an intruder in his parked car and was shot in the chest. The boy described to prosecutors how he broke into the car, struggled with the man and then shot him, after two weeks in detention and suggestions that he would go to prison for ten to fifteen years and that he would receive legal help. Moreover, the boy was encouraged to plead self-defence, in spite of the fact that the murderer had broken into the victim's car with a gun, firing it lethally. Another example comes from Escondido, California, where Michael Crowe, 14, confessed to the murder of his sister. He was falsely told by prosecutors that his hair was found in his dead sister's hand, that her blood was in his bedroom and that he failed a polygraph. He came to believe that he had an alter ego and confessed after hours of questioning with neither a parent nor a lawyer present. In 2004, another was convicted of the crime. Michael Crowe had believed himself guilty for six years. Of all cases where an innocent has been ruled guilty, 15 - 25% have relied on confession, extracted from innocents like Michael Crowe. (Kassin 2005) Saul Kassin repeats the case of the New York jogger who has brutally assaulted and raped, left for dead, with multiple skull fractures, a crushed eye socket, and a quarter of her blood, who could not recall the assault. Confessions from five fourteen to sixteen year-old African American and Hispanic boys, videotaped by the police, convinced a jury to punish the boys. Thirteen years later, in 2002, Matias Reyes, in prison for three rapes and a murder confessed voluntarily. DNA testing corroborated his claim, but 15-25 % of those in all legal cases involving DNA testing lead to innocents being found guilty in spite of the DNA evidence, leading us to conclude that the five boys' failure to be exonerated by their DNA and convicted on the basis of their confession is unfortunately not a case in isolation. Eliciting confessions from innocents in a laboratory experiment carries nothing like the human cost of such legal cases, however a psychological viewpoint may control experimental variables, thus producing innocents through a scientific process of elimination. Variations on Kassin and Kiechel's machine-crashing experiment may help us to identify our innocents. Horselenbach et al. changed financial incentives and found that innocents were financially incentivised to confess (Horselenbach et al. 2003); Forrest et al. found that stressed males were more likely to make false confessions (Forrest et al. 2002); Redlich and Goodman said that adults are more likely to be innocent than younger people (Redlich and Goodman 2003); Kopelman found that innocents have false memory (Kopelman 1999) and this is supported by the fact that the innocent in the New York rape case was amnesic following her attack by Matias Reyes. Kopelman presents the most measurable experiment because false memory is a medical condition that can be diagnosed and defined. Moreover, it can be treated. In replicating the machine crashing experiment, where volunteers are subjected to medical diagnosis, a memory test may be included to identify innocents. A standard test for short-term memory, to recall a list of disordered numbers or letters, can act as a base-line measure, to be carried out before the beginning of Kassin's machine-crashing experiment. In doing so, we will have a measure by which to compare the less cognitive variables, after confession. Predictions The general question of who are the innocents will be met with the specific hypothesis that the innocents have a better memory. The independent variable is each participants memory score; the dependent variable is the ratio of innocent confession. By increasing the number of innocent confessions we expect that those with the highest memory score will be most likely not to confess. Methodology Participants In line with previous machine-crash experiments we will use participants who most likely to be innocent: rich adult females. We will define these as women who are in the top percentile of national income and over sixteen years old. The reason for doing this follows previous experimental results (Forrest et al. 2002, Horselenbach et al. 2003, Redlich et al. 2003). The greater the number of subjects the better. Materials a pen and paper to carry out the memory test; a machine that can be crashed; a stop-watch to measure reaction time; a laboratory setting; a pen and paper for confessions. Procedure After inviting the large number of rich women to the experiment, they will be asked to carry out the standard memory test. Results are to be recorded. Next, the women must understand that they are to take part in an experiment that measures reaction time, that there is forbidden key which they must not touch because it will cause the machine to crash, before being left in the laboratory setting. After crashing the machine, the researcher will join the subject to attempt to induce the false confession, by presenting the woman with a pen and paper. Discussion With such a pleasant set of subjects the experiments should be a pleasure to carry out. It is of interest to rich women and psychologists must find that rich women are far better company than the standard psychological undergraduate subject. For the general population the results of this experiment might show that psychology pays insufficient attention to rich women. In Missouri v. Johnson a man ultimately acquitted by a jury made a confession to his wife's murder, after 19 hours of police interrogation, when police said that the blood in his car would be sent for DNA testing. The man confessed because he was exhausted and knew that the DNA tests would prove his innocence. Unfortunately, as we noted above, DNA testing does not always guarantee that the innocent will be legally innocent. The experiment devised above, with only X chromosomes present in the experiment's subjects, ought to simplify the testing in a way that no previous psychological experiment has shown. Our expected results match legal innocence, because legal cases show that the innocent are most likely to be rich adult females, conveniently the population group who are least likely to confess in a legal case. Psychology and law show that rich adult females are the innocents. Bibliography Missouri v. Johnson, No. 98-5364(2001). Forrest,K. D., Wadkins,T. A., & Miller,R. L.,2002.The role of preexisting stress on false confessions: An empirical study. Journal of Credibility Assessment and Witness Psychology, 3, 23-45. Horselenberg,R., Merckelbach,H., & Josephs,S.,2003.Individual differences and false confessions: A conceptual replication of Kassin and Kiechel (1996). Psychology, Crime, and Law, 9, 1-18. Kassin, Saul, M., 2005. On the Psychology of Confessions: Does Innocence put Innocents at Risk American Psychologist, 2005, Apr Vol 60 (3) 215 - 228. Kassin, Saul, M., and Gudjonnson, Gisli, H., 2004. The Psychology of Confessions : A Review of the Literature and Issues. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, November 2004, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 33-67(35). Kassin,S. M., & Kiechel,K. L.,1996.The social psychology of false confessions: Compliance, internalization, and confabulation. Psychological Science, 7, 125-128. Kopelman,M. D.,1999.Varieties of false memory. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 16, 197-214. Redlich,A. D., & Goodman,G. S.,2003.Taking responsibility for an act not committed: Influence of age and suggestibility. Law and Human Behavior, 27, 141-156. Blackstone,W.,1765-1766. Commentaries on the laws of England. Oxford, England, Clarendon Press. Rosenthal,R., & Jacobson,L.,1968. Pygmalion in the classroom: Teacher expectation and pupils' intellectual development. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Read More