Not too long ago a news headline caught my attention. After twenty-three years in prison the Chicago White Sox rehired Nevest Coleman as a member of the grounds crew. DNA evidence exonerated Coleman, but his false confession, to a rape and murder, led to his wrongful conviction. While the story focused on the Chicago White Sox organization’s kindness and an innocent man’s newfound freedom, I wondered why someone would confess to a crime they did not commit. Why would anyone lie?
False confessions have always been prevalent. It is likely since the existence of laws, perhaps even social norms, people confessed to misconduct they did not perpetrate. Until the second half of the twentieth century the use of physical violence or the fear of it coerced suspects into confessions. Even today many nations readily apply this tactic. Liberal democracies, for two prominent reasons, have phased out the practice of explicitly beating the living hell out of a suspect to gain a confession. First, it is widely understood as unethical. Second, it is a wildly ineffective method for extracting information. When put under intense physical abuse people will admit to whatever they feel the interrogator desires. It is one of the reasons why interrogation tactics no longer include torture. If you are going to be morally bankrupt it should, at the very least, be effective.
While police have stopped slamming heads to garner confessions, they have turned their attention toward other pressure points. Police officers, due in part to their training, believe they are human lie detectors. There is no compelling evidence to indicate police are better than the average person at detecting lies, but nonetheless there is an aura of confidence police can ‘sniff out’ a lie. The consequence of their false confidence is police will deliberately create an incredibly stressful interrogation environment in an effort to squeeze the truth out of a suspect. So stressful, that people, feeling captive and hopeless, will make the massively irrational decision to confess to a crime. Confessions, garnered under these circumstances, have a preponderance to be false. Meaning these tactics are actually leading the police to acquire false evidence, making them worse at their job. False evidence leads the investigation down the wrong path, thus preventing police from apprehending the actual offender, and leading them down fruitless avenues.
Herein lies the problem with the prevailing interrogation tactics. Police should want to, at all costs, avoid false confessions. Yet, they are creating situations which only increase their frequency. The police are the first line of justice, meaning any error reverberates all the way throughout the entire legal process. The evidence provided by the police is then utilized by state prosecutors, the defendant’s attorney, and the judge to argue the case. Any incorrect evidence utilized during the legal process can cause the case to be thrown out, retried, or lead to an innocent person in prison. This wastes an immense amount of the state’s resources and time, both of which can be put to far better use. False confessions are a result of flawed police work, yet in many instances the police are actively searching for a confession in lieu of forensic evidence.
A prominent factor leading to false confessions is the outside pressures to solve a crime quickly. Often time the public demand for justice, exacerbated by heightened media attention and politics, creates an artificial deadline which looms over the police and their entire investigation. These realities raise serious questions about the demands placed upon police. The police are tasked with acquiring evidence, being first responders, apprehending suspects, and are crucial to the justice system functioning properly. Does society's expectations for police accurately reflect the reality of the job? How the police conduct themselves affects the rest of the justice system, and how effectively lawyers, prosecutors, and judges can perform their duties. It is unacceptable that the bar for entry to become a police officer is far lower than every other actor in the justice system. Lawyers spend three years, post-graduate, in law school, and are then required to pass the state bar. Judges are often long time lawyers, or elected public officials vetted by their constituents. Police officers, often straight out of high school, enter the police academy completing their training in twenty-one weeks. Police work should be treated and trained as a white-collar profession opposed to a blue-collar one. Being a police officer is incredibly difficult. It requires quick critical thinking, analytical and interpersonal skills, and excellent self control. These qualities are not sought after in police recruits, and police academies are not rigorous or long enough to develop these essential skills. As a result the criminal justice system suffers.
Police, who believe they know who committed a crime without the requisite forensic evidence, are the catalyst for many false confessions. Most cases contain evidence which point towards an individual suspect, but it only paints part of the picture. The US Constitution affords the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty by a jury of peers. The police all too often abandon this right. The belief in, “innocent until proven guilty,” is vital to maintain, especially when there is a lack of physical evidence. When the police believe someone is guilty of a crime they create a narrative to support that theory. The narrative directs their questioning, their evidence collection, and the direction of the investigation. Maintaining, “innocent until proven guilty,” helps prevent false narratives from developing, and thus leads to a more objective and effective investigation.
The power afforded police officers by society is expected to not be abused. The deadly force used by the police is the most sensational and newsworthy of their misconduct. However, their influence on other crucial components of the criminal justice system are often underreported by the mainstream media. When innocent people are coerced into admitting to crimes they did not commit it indicates there is systematic flaw in the way the police conduct themselves. The criminal justice system can only function properly with good policing. This requires the police maintain the standards of the US Constitution, and vigilantly avoid generating false evidence.
Nevest Coleman’s story sparked a personal inquiry into false confessions and policing. The deeper I looked a clear and worrying trend began to emerge; false confessions are a normal byproduct of the criminal justice system. Their normality stems from an uncomfortable truth, police are not well-prepared to perform crucial aspects of their job due to inadequate training and poor recruitment policies. However, these explanations are ultimately irrelevant. The same truth remains; police are ill-equipped to protect civil liberties and uphold the Constitution.
