ABSTRACT
A false confession is a statement made by an individual under some fear, threat to take the responsibility of the crime or to make a false statement to make someone guilty as all this circumstances occur under threat or fear of life of some near or dear one or the life of oneself . A false confession is an involuntary statement of guilt made under duress, or as the result of coercion. Confession is quite an adequate form of evidence as the accused himself admits his guilt which can be a ground of conviction but not the sole ground of conviction. In this article detail analysis of confession and why the false confession are taking place and causes that are responsible for the elicitation of false confessions—misclassification, coercion, and contamination, the three psychologically distinct types of false confession (voluntary, compliant, and persuaded) are discussed along side the results of introducing false-confession evidence within the criminal justice system. This article conclude with the strategies to counter the false confession which is hampering the life of the individuals and with strategies to reduce the false confession to improve the evidence that are introduced at the defendant trail.
KEYWORDS:- False confession, wrongful convection, exoneration, incriminating, coercion, error, police interrogation, social pressure, threat, fear .
INTRODUCTION:-
Confession is most important evidence in the criminal justice system as it play an important role in providing justice to an individual who is not guilty and with the due confession of an Individual who is present at the site of the crime and safe a life of the person who has not committed the crime but due presence of the individual at the site of the crime police officials made that individual suspect of the crime. One of the most crucial components of evidence in a criminal case is admission. The value of the evidence presented to the court of law determines the outcome of the entire case. The Indian Evidence Act,1872 does not define confession, but
it provides an inference for it in Section 17 of the Act, which is applicable to both admission and confession1.
It claims that confession is included in the definition of admission. According to Section 17, an admission is a declaration made orally, in writing, or electronically that shows a reference in a fact in issue or relevant facts2. Confessions are not, however, infallible. Over the years, countless numbers of innocent people have been wrongfully convicted, imprisoned, and sometimes sentenced to death after confessing to crimes they did not commit. Confessions have proved false in other ways as well—as when it turns out that the confessed crime was never committed; when new evidence shows it was physically impossible for the confessor to have committed the crime3. Understanding how rewards and punishments affect behaviour, judgement in people, memory and forgetfulness, self-regulation, social impact, social perception, childhood and adolescence, personality, and psychopathology is essential4.
The study of confessions is also influenced by a variety of approaches. False confessions have been confirmed in a few isolated cases, and individual and combined case studies have shown that they can happen occasionally, share some characteristics, and happen more frequently in some people and circumstances than others. Other empirical methods include self-report methods, which are used to estimate the incidence of various interrogation techniques and false confessions among various populations, naturalistic observations of live and videotaped police interrogations, archival records that allow comparisons of actual confessions and other evidence, and laboratory and field experiments that evaluate pre-interrogation judgements5. Whether a confession is accurate or false, how different interrogation techniques affect both, and how confession evidence affects other people in the system are all important considerations.
1.https://lawtimesjournal.in/false-confessions-and-the-way-of-dealing-with-them-in-different-countries/
2. https://jaapl.org
4. https://ccjarmlnlu.wordpress.com/2020/07/04/false-confessions-the-truth-behind-bars/
5. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/false-confession
The media has covered numerous high-profile cases in recent years in which defendants were found guilty of significant crimes they did not commit and imprisoned before being later exonerated, The state will use confessions as its primary criminative and convincing proof of guilt against a suspect6. So, the most compelling and convincing false proof of guilt that the state will use to convict an innocent individual is obtained through fake confessions.
Research Methodology
The research methodology for this project is descriptive and secondary data is used . the data has been collected from various sources such online database of scc online, Manupatra, And various blogs, legal article , legal academic journals and reports published by legal organisation and association. The data has been analyse by using content analysis to identify and analyse how wrongful confession results in wrongful conviction and factor involved in wrongful confession of an individual.
Review of literature
Wrongful confession has resulted in hampering of evidence and causing a innocent person guilty thus various scholar has researched and analyse how and under what circumstances this wrongful confession is given. The following literature review provide the summary of key finding and discussion of various sources.
- “False Confessions: Causes, Consequences, and Implications for Reform” by Saul M. Kassin
In this article author discusses the processes of interrogation by which police assess whether a suspect is lying or telling the truth and the techniques used to elicit confessions from those deemed deceptive. The problem of false confessions emphasizes personal and situational factors that put innocent people at risk in the interrogation room.
- “False Confession Analysis” by Diksha Bhalla
In this article author discusses confessions and false confessions, causes that are responsible for the elicitation of false confessions—misclassification, coercion, and contamination, the three psychologically distinct types of false confession (voluntary, compliant, and persuaded) are discussed along side the results of introducing false-confession evidence within the criminal justice system.
6. https://doij.org
- “The psychology of false confession : forty year of science and practice” by Gisli H. Gudjonsson
in this book author discusses about the topics related to confession, including research development ,real life cases, police practice, and empirical research on false confession. Author also discusses about the full theoretical framework of the theories and explanation of false confession, he summarizes research on suggestibility and the development of his suggestibility scale . author presents the empirical research on interrogation practice and false confession In three groupings.
What is a Confession ?
According to the criminal law in India, a confession is a statement given by an individual towards the acknowledgment and acceptance of his guilt of committing a crime. A confession may be a declaration made by a convicted person who is employed to work out the commission of an offence by him during a criminal case. “Section 24 to 30 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 deals with a confession.” A confession features a rule of going against the one that makes it.
The accuser’s admission of guilt is known as a “confession.” It is the acknowledgment or acknowledgement that an offence was committed. The defendant makes a confession that is not in his favour, allowing the court to effectively make a choice and issue a ruling. The Indian Evidence Act doesn’t define confession anywhere, although Sections 24–30 cover a variety of rules related confessions’ admissibility7. A confession must either admit the full extent of the offence that was committed or all of the circumstances leading up to the offence. Both confessions and admissions are built on the premise that an accused person won’t lie by making a statement that isn’t in his best interests8. Confessions are merely a subset of admissions as a result. The test laid down through which the Court can be satisfied regarding the confessions made are-
- The confession is made voluntarily by the accused or co-accused.
The confession is based on truth and can be relied on.
7.https://www.lawcolumn.in/false-confession-and-the-way-of-dealing-with-them-in-different-countries/
8. https://ccjarmlnlu.wordpress.com/2020/07/04/false-confessions-the-truth-behind-bars/
In case of Pakala Narayan Swami v. King Emperor9 (1939) the Privy Council held that the confession made by the accused are partly confession and partly admission. The observations that were made by Lord Atkin were as follows:
- The confession was partly confession and partly an admission.
- The confession ought to accept the terms of the offence or the factors that constituted the offence.
- Even if the confession falls short of an absolute confession but if an inference can be drawn from that statement that he has committed the offence, it shall be considered as a confession.
- Even if the accused makes a severely accusatory statement still it would not amount to a confession.
In the case of Palvinder Kaur v. State of Punjab & Haryana10 (1952), the Supreme Court held that the Court has to accept in totality the confession as it cannot accept the incriminating portion and reject the defensible portion as the Court is not competent in doing so.
Sir James Fitz James Stephen in the summary of the Evidence Law, defined Confession “is an admission made at any time by a person charged with a crime, stating or suggesting an inference that he has committed a crime11.”
Lord Atkin in the Pakala Narayan Swami case defined “confession is described as either admitting guilt in terms or admitting substantially all of the facts that constitute the offence.”
What is a Wrongful confession?
A false confession is an admission of guilt (I did it) coupled with a post admission narrative (a thorough explanation of how and why the crime happened) of a crime that the confessor did not commit12. Force or intimidation may result in false admissions if used to obtain the
9. (1939) 41 BOMLR 428
10. 1952 AIR 354
11. Kassin, S. M. (1997). The psychology of confession evidence.American Psychologist, 52, 221-233
12. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/false-confession
statement. When someone confesses to a crime in order to distract the court from the real offender, that is referred to as a false confession. A person might, for instance, confess to a crime in order to protect a friend, member of their family, or a relative who is being looked into.
If a confession is shown to be untrue, the judge will surely strike the claim that it was untrue from the records, making the confession inadmissible in court. The person who made the false confession can also be punished further for lying in court. Perjury could be used to describe this.
Lord Atkin stated in Pakala Narayan Swami vs. Emperor, a confession must either be accepted in reference to any offence or to any substantive facts which inaugurate the offence with criminal proceedings13. Admission of any criminal wrongdoing on the idea of coercion or force isn’t a legit confession. Admission of great wrongdoing, even conclusively incriminating fact, isn’t itself a confession.
Different causes of false confession:-
There is no single reason behind false confession, and there’s no single type of false confession. Police-induced false confessions result from a multistep methodology and sequence of influence, persuasion, and compliance and generally involve psychological coercion14. False confession is also made by the police officials to remove their load of investigation by wrongful measures of threatening, beating, keeping psychological pressure they make a individual to confess a crime which he has not committed thus by wrongful confession one individual life is kept in dark in confinement of four walls and thy a wrongful confessions results in a wrongful convection. Once they have evoked a false admission, they pressure the suspect to produce a post admission narrative that they put together type, usually activity the innocent suspect with the facts of the crime15. These are named because the misclassification error, the coercion error, and additionally the contamination error.
13.https://www.lawcolumn.in/false-confession-and-the-way-of-dealing-with-them-idifferent-countries/
14. Dror, I. E., & Charlton, D. (2006). Why experts make errors. Journal of Forensic Identification, 56, 600-616
15. https://lexforti.com/legal-news/types-of-confessions-under-the-indian-evidence-act/
A) The Misclassification Error
The first error occurs when police or detectives incorrectly determine that an innocent person is guilty. They are being dishonest because the law itself specifies that a person is innocent unless proven guilty. When police target an innocent suspect, as Davis and Leo state, “the path to false confession begins, as it should. Once specific suspects are selected, police interviews and interrogations are subsequently target-hunting by the presumption of guilt. “The psychological aptitude and inadequate training of those cops and detectives are to blame for these wrong decisions.
B) The Coercion Error
Detectives typically question an innocent individual who they mistakenly believe to be a guilty suspect after they have made this mistake.
Once an interrogation has begun, the use of psychologically effective police tactics serves as the main defence for police-induced false confessions. Police use of interrogation techniques that are regarded as being inherently effective in science and law, or police use of interrogation techniques that, taken together, make a suspect feel as though he has no choice but to comply with the interrogators’ demands, are two ways psychological coercion is defined16.
The Different Types of False Confession
In 1985, social psychologists Saul Kassin and Lawrence Wrightsman, drawing on case studies and social psychological theories of perspective modification, initial known 3 distinct varieties of false confession, that they known as voluntary (occurring “in the absence of elicitation”), coerced-compliant (occurring once “the suspect publically professes guilt in response to extreme ways in which of interrogation, despite knowing in camera that he or she is admittedly innocent”), and coerced-internalized (occurring once the suspect “actually involves believe that he or she committed the offense17”).
16. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=perception
17. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/false-confession
Ofshe and Leo extended and adjusted the initial categorization of Kassin and Wrightsman to incorporate 5 distinct varieties of false confession: voluntary, stress-compliant, coerced compliant, coerced-persuaded, and non coerced-persuaded18. This classification theme most accurately captures the psychological logic and variation in false confessions. For simplicity, researchers have born the assorted prefixes and easily seek advice from voluntary, compliant, and persuaded false confessions.
It is vital to know that there are 3 conceptually distinct psychological processes at add the assembly and induction of false confessions.
Voluntary False Confession
Together, a voluntary false confession that is made without a police interview is described. Hence, voluntary false confessions can be explained by the confessor’s inner psychological states, wishes, or by external pressure applied to the confessor by someone other than the police. The majority of voluntarily made false admissions seem to be caused by a psychological or medical problem.
Compliant False Confessions
A compliant false confession is one given in response to police coercion, stress, or pressure to achieve some instrumental benefit—typically either to terminate associate degreed therefore throw off an interrogation methodology, to require advantage of a perceived suggestion or promise of leniency, or to avoid associate degree anticipated harsh penalty. maybe the foremost distinct facet of compliant false confessions is that they’re created knowingly: the suspect admits guilt with the data that he’s innocent which what he says is fake19. Compliant false confessions are created shortly once the interrogation is over. There are several reasons that suspects offer compliant false confessions.
Persuaded False Confessions
Persuaded false confessions occur once police interrogation ways cause associate degree innocent suspect to doubt his memory and he becomes briefly persuaded that it’s additional doubtless than not that he committed the crime, despite having no memory of committing it.
18. Ofshe R, Leo R: The social psychology of police interrogation: the theory and classification of true and false confessions. Stud Law Politics Soc 16:189–251, 1997
19.http://jaapal.org.
The Power Of Confession Evidence
Some innocent people will unavoidably be singled out for suspicion, subjected to rough interrogation, and forced to give up their rights and confess. It’s possible that tragedy may have been prevented if the authorities had caught the resulting false admissions and corrected them.
However, the evidence from empirical studies and erroneous convictions raises questions about the effectiveness of this seeming safety net. People are poor judges of confessions, which is where the issue starts. Male prisoners participated in two videotaped interviews as part of a study that examined the common sense notion that “I’d know a phoney confession if I saw one.” Each prisoner provided the experimenter with two statements: a narrative confession to the crime for which they were serving their time and a newly constructed false confession to a crime they did not commit. By his method, videotapes of 10 prisoners confessing to one of five crimes, either truthfully or falsely, were assembled20. These comments were judged by investigators from the police and college students, and the outcomes were similar to those previously outlined for determining whether a denial was true or untrue.
Confession Corrupting The Evidence
Basic research in social cognition suggests a second troubling mechanism by which confessions exert influence: by tainting the perceptions of eyewitnesses, alibis, forensic examiners, and others who are supposed to contribute independent evidence to the courts21. The effects on laypersons can prove substantial.
In a study involving eyewitnesses, participants witnessed a staged theft and then made an identification decision from a target-absent line up. Two days later, they received additional information and an opportunity to change their decision. When told that another suspect had confessed, 61%of the participants changed their initial decision and identified the suspect who had allegedly confessed. Those told that the identified individual had confessed became more confident in their decision. Among participants who had correctly indicated that the culprit was not present in the original line up, nearly half went on to identify an innocent person after being told that someone had confessed.
20. https://californiainnocenceproject.org/issues-we-face/false-confessions/
21. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/false-confessio
Dealing an individual from protecting from wrongful confession
The court employs a spread of techniques to affect and observe false confessions. The term “confession rules” refers to a gaggle of rules that are ordinarily used for this purpose. If a private is caught creating a false confession, the subsequent steps against him may be taken:
Perjury (lying to the court)
“Perjury is outlined as associate degree offence of lying beneath associate degree oath. offense means that to belong a court of law. The Indian legal code, 1860 defines ‘Perjury’ in Chapter IX “of false proof and offences against public justice” beneath Section 191. The social control for the offence of {perjury/bearing false witness/lying beneath oath|misdemeanor|misdemeanour|infraction|offence|offense|violation|infringement} is outlined under Section 193 of Indian legal code, 1860 as seven years of imprisonment22.”
Lying to a officer
“Section 182 of the Indian legal code, 1860” – “False info, with intent to cause employee to use his lawful power to the injury of another person. Whoever offers to any employee any info that he is aware of or believes to be false, intending thereby to cause, or knowing it to be doubtless that he can thereby cause, such public servant23—
To do or omit something that such employee ought to not do or omit if truth state of facts respecting that such info is given were acknowledged by him, or
To use the lawful power of such a employee to the injury or annoyance of any individual shall be chastened with imprisonment of either description for a term which can be six months, or with fine which can be one thousand rupees, or with each.”
22.http://www.lawcolumn.in/false-confession-and-the-way-of-dealing-with-them-in-different-countries/
23.http://www.lawcolumn.in/false-confession-and-the-way-of-dealing-with-them-in-different-countries/
Conclusion
As this text has shown, however and why modern strategies of psychological interrogation can, and generally do, lead innocent people to confess incorrectly to serious crimes. the results of those false confessions area unit unfortunate for innocent those who area unit de jure condemned and incarcerated24.
- Mandatory electronic recording of police interrogations in their completeness is that the single most vital policy reform accessible as a results of it creates associate degree objective, comprehensive, and reviewable record of the interrogation that each one parties—police, prosecutors, defence attorneys, judges, juries, and even the final public in high-profile cases—can review.
- Interrogation time need to be reduced, as a result of it’ll increase the probabilities for the suspects to produce false statements.
- Until the misperception that innocent suspects don’t confess in response to psychological interrogation is dispelled, police detectives can still elicit false confessions that cause wrongful convictions.
By Dilshad Alam
Jamia Millia Islamia University