Coerced Confessions
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A coerced confession is an admission of guilt given under duress. This may include physical force, psychological pressure, threats, or deception. Coerced confessions are false admissions of guilt, which undermine the aims of the justice system and violate international human rights standards that prohibit inhumane treatment and torture.
Before the introduction of a more structured and meticulous criminal justice system, obtaining a confession was an important part of determining guilt or innocence. The desire to extract a confession or other information led to inhumane physical and psychological methods of interrogation, including coercion and torture. In the 20th century, the United States saw a shift in the legal landscape that included the protection of the rights of suspects during interrogation.
Two landmark cases regarding coerced confessions were Brown v. Mississippi (1936), which rules that confessions obtained through physical torture were inadmissible in court, and Miranda v. Arizona (1966), which established the Miranda warnings and aimed to prevent coercion by ensuring that suspects were aware of their rights, including the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. These cases, along with the exclusionary rule, which mandates that evidence obtained in a manner that violates the defendant’s constitutional rights is inadmissible, provided the tools to deter coerced confessions. However, this is not a foolproof system.
While the United States boasts a more meticulous and fair criminal justice system, coerced false confessions can occur. Research shows that false confessions are often given as a result of intimidation, force, and coercive and deceptive tactics by law enforcement, including lying about evidence and isolating the suspect during interrogations (Innocence Project). One of the most notorious examples of a wrongful conviction based on a coerced confession is the Central Park jogger case. In 1989, five teenage boys between the ages of 14 and 16, who were predominately Black and Latino, became suspects in the rape of a white woman who had been jogging in Central Park. After they were detained, the boys were subject to coercive tactics and intimidation during the 14 to 30 hours of interrogation they experienced. The coerced confessions were used as evidence in two trials, in which the five boys were found guilty. They served between 6 and 13 years in prison. The Central Park Five–Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise–were exonerated in 2002 following a confession from a serial rapist whose DNA was consistent with the DNA from the crime scene (Montana Innocence Project).
There are also international protections that exist to protect civilians and prisoners of war (POWs) from giving coerced confessions. According to the second paragraph of Article 99 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, “any form of moral or physical coercion of a POW for the purpose of inducing an admission of guilt of the alleged offense” is prohibited. Before 1949, several other pieces of international law had been introduced prohibiting the coercion, extortion, and torture of POWs. The Lieber Code of 1863 prohibited “torture to extort a confession” and declared, more broadly, that violence against POWs in order to acquire information or punish them for giving false information was no longer permitted by modern law of war. Article 61 of the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War provided that no POW should be compelled to admit that they are guilty of an offense of which they have been accused.
Civilians are protected from giving coerced confessions and the use of coerced confessions in proceedings against oneself through:
Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which both state that “no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”;
Article 15 of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which states that “any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made”;
Article 75 of Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions, which states that “no one shall be compelled to testify against himself or to confess guilt”; and
Article 4 of Additional Protocol II of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment, rape, enforced prostitution and any form of indecent assault… [and] threats to commit any of the foregoing acts.”
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