Speaker 1: Today we'll be speaking with Saul Cassin, who's distinguished professor of psychology
at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, and also professor emeritus
of psychology at Williams College in Massachusetts.
He is author of the book Duped Why Innocent People Confess and Why We Believe Their Confessions.
I really appreciate your time today.
Glad to have you on.
Speaker 6: I'm very, very happy to be here.
Speaker 1: So anecdotally, we all hear stories of innocent people who confessed to crimes
they did not commit.
I think a natural reaction, a common reaction is to say, I would never do that.
I can't imagine any circumstances in which police sit me down and they suspect me for
a crime.
And I know I didn't commit it.
I would never, ever, ever confess to a crime he didn't commit.
And yet it happens all the time.
Can you tell us a little bit about why this happens?
Speaker 6: You're absolutely right.
I think the first myth that has to be debunked is I would never confess to a crime I did
not commit.
Yeah.
Answer Yes, you would.
And you will note that there are two titles to the title of my book.
One is Why Innocent People Confess, and two Why We Believe Their Confessions.
We are duped into believing false confessions.
So when those of us who are presented with a confession and we're thinking an innocent
person would never do this.
We can't see past a false confession.
It looks true.
It sounds true.
It feels true.
I would never do that.
Innocent people don't do that wrong.
Imagine yourself being brought in as a suspect in a crime.
You're taken into the station, you're alone.
You're isolated.
You're not with family.
You're not with friends.
If you're a kid, you're asking, can I call my mother?
And the answer is not to We're done here.
And then you come in and the detective walks in and slaps a folder on the table and says,
We know you committed this crime and we have a boatload of evidence against you.
And that's how that session proceeds privately without you having any access to outside sources
of information or people.
And that goes on sometimes for hours.
Until the officer, the detective or detectives, plural, offers you something of a way out.
You know, I think you're a good person.
I don't think you intended to do this.
Maybe this was just something your friends put you up to her, or you had one too many
drinks, and they start to make it sound as if the consequence would be minimal.
You want out, you believe.
For whatever reason, they seem to have this overwhelming evidence against you.
And you've been denying this for hours, and they keep calling you a liar.
Every time you deny it, you're trying to get out of the situation.
And now they're offering you an escape hatch, the escape hatches.
You know what?
Just cooperate with us.
We think we think you're a good person.
We don't think you meant to do this.
And before you know what, you're signing a statement believing that that signature and
that statement is in your best interest.
Speaker 1: It sounds like to some degree.
You know, we've talked with attorneys about the kind of plea deal industrial complex and
some of the circumstances, including being able to get out of pretrial detention, including
a known smaller penalty than chancing the possibility of a much stricter penalty.
We've talked about that.
It seems that there are some similar dynamics between that and false confessions, although
they clearly are two different things and they relate to the isolation, the disproportionate
power, that dynamic that exists and the unknown of it could be even worse if I stick to my
guns.
Speaker 6: That's exactly right.
And what we're a perfect parallel to plea bargaining that you just described, because
they are the same process people are making.
What a decision making theorist would say is a rational decision, given the information
they have.
They're trying at this point to cut their losses.
And you know what's interesting about the parallel between the confession that a suspect
gives to police in an interrogation room and then the guilty plea confession that they
give in court to prosecutors and defense lawyers.
It's the same dynamic.
But here's what's interesting.
People who have confessed to police are then later more likely to accept the false guilty
plea.
Why?
Because everybody correctly is telling them if you go to trial, you're going to get convicted.
So the confession now gives rise to and spawns a false guilty plea.
And, you know, I've got a whole chapter in this book about this system of ours being
obsessed with confession.
It happens one more time.
Imagine the person who confesses, later pleads guilty, is sitting in prison and is now eligible
for parole, and they have to appear before a parole board.
Well, guess what?
They can't get out until they accept responsibility and show they've been rehabilitated.
And so I've spoken and worked on cases of exonerees who confessed and then said the
most galling next thing I ever had to do in my life was re confessed years later in order
to become.
Paroled.
And once again, here's the system not understanding that the baseline level of wrongful conviction
it's not zero guys may have been conceived of a zero 50 years ago.
We now know it's not zero.
Speaker 1: When there is a confession and the confession isn't thrown out.
When it's thrown out, we can put it in another category.
But when there's a confession that makes it into an eventual trial, is it overwhelmingly
difficult to to overcome that when there is an accepted confession as part of a trial?
Speaker 6: I once first of all, I seldom see confessions that are suppressed from evidence.
Yeah, they almost always are admitted these days.
The question the judge will ask at a suppression hearing is, well, did he waive his Miranda
rights?
That he did.
He received waive his Miranda rights?
Yes.
Well, then it's a voluntary statement.
That's that becomes proof of voluntariness.
Miranda is a whole separate problem.
Yes.
In this business.
So so now that now the person comes to court and there's a confession in evidence.
I don't want to overstate it, but almost nothing else matters.
I'm in the infamous Central Park jogger case, for example.
People don't realize this.
Those kids confessed on videotape.
They were induced after 14 to 30 hours of questioning to confess.
And only the confession was on tape, not the.
Speaker 1: And just so people know, sometimes this is known as the Central Park Five case.
It's the state.
And we're talking about the same case.
Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yes.
And they've all been exonerated since exonerated.
What people don't realize is after they confessed and before they went to trial, the jogger
was raped and there was a rape kit and there were several semen samples.
And those samples were sent to the crime lab.
And when those samples came back, here was the result, all of the different semen samples
traced to a single individual, not five, not six, one person.
And that person was not one of the five confessors.
The confessors were excluded.
So they come to trial with their confessions.
No other supporting corroborating evidence, contradictory DNA evidence, and they were
convicted.
That's how powerful confession evidence is.
Almost nothing else matters once that is in evidence.
Speaker 1: As a general question, how relevant in these situations is some level of education
as well as the financial access to a lawyer?
And the reason I asked that is, in my mind, I would never even go in to talk to police
voluntarily.
Number one, if I had to go in, I would absolutely get a lawyer.
And if I was arrested and then, you know, if it wasn't a situation where they call and
say, hey, would you like to come in if I'm arrested and brought in?
I would say literally not a word other than I want a lawyer, which seems like it would
help me in this situation or even when doing that.
Do you still see false confessions?
Speaker 6: Man you're asking all the press, all the right questions.
So, myth number one, I would never confess to a crime I didn't commit.
Myth number two is I'd know a false confession if I saw one.
If I sat on a jury and this was an innocent person, you know, it would not.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 6: The third myth is that Miranda protects us that our Miranda rights matter.
Here, here's here's one fact that was discovered within one year of the Supreme Court's Miranda
decision that roughly 80% of people waive their rights right out of the gate.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 6: And we now know that that number is holding steady and higher.
Here's what else we know.
You know who's the most likely to waive their rights?
Innocent people.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 6: When I work on cases involving false confessors who were later fully DNA
exonerated without dispute, they're factually innocent.
I asked them two questions.
One, why did you confess?
And the second question is when things got ugly.
Why don't you call a lawyer?
Why didn't you stop talking and call a lawyer?
Every one of them says the same thing in almost the same words.
I didn't need a lawyer.
I didn't do anything wrong.
Hmm.
Innocent people don't understand the peril.
They have some fundamental belief in the power of their innocence to prevail.
They have some fundamental belief in the world as a place that is more just than this.
And so they figure, you know, I'll talk, we'll talk, they'll see.
I didn't do this very often when the police imply or outright state, we have evidence.
We've got prints we're sending off to the lab.
Now, that sounds like a threat.
We got you.
We've got prints to the innocent person.
Imagine yourself in and you know you're innocent.
They say they've got prints, you've been here for hours and you want to get out and you're
thinking prints.
That's going to show my innocence to the innocent person.
That threat, that bluff of having evidence.
Is a promise of future exoneration.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm.
Speaker 6: And so they think, okay, I've been here for 19 hours.
I can't take it anymore.
Where do I sign?
And when the prints come back, you'll see.
I didn't do this.
Speaker 1: I don't know the law around.
You mentioned 19 hours, 13 hours, 14 hours.
This is sort of an interlude, but I don't know the law around that.
But if you asked for a lawyer right away, is a lawyer going to allow you to be there
for 19 hours or does a lawyer prevent that from even becoming the situation?
Speaker 6: A lawyer seldom people seldom ask for a lawyer right away.
And part of it, too, is and this gets to some points about Miranda.
First of all, people don't fully understand their rights.
And, you know, Miranda is something we hear.
We hear it on Law and Order.
Everybody can recite the words by heart, you know, almost, almost by memory.
And yet when you when you measure people's comprehension of the rights themselves and
how they operate them, it's amazing how little comprehension people have.
So, for example, what if you come in and you don't realize that you're a suspect and you
think maybe you're a cooperating witness and you're not sure that the police are about
to fully accuse you?
Yeah, but they read you your Miranda rights to say, we'd like to talk to you, but we can't
really do that until we get past this formality.
And so I'd like to read your rights.
You've heard them a million times before, but you have the right to remain silent.
Anything you say can be used against you.
The suspect says yes.
Yes, yes, I understand.
Where do I sign?
And they sign away that waiver.
Now, what if things start to get ugly?
Ask the average person, Are you able, once you've signed a waiver of your rights, are
you able to re invoke them later?
The answer is yes, right?
A lot of people don't know.
The answer is yes.
Hmm.
So there is one aspect of comprehension that people lack.
People think once they've signed off on that waiver, that's it.
And they worry also about the optics of silence.
And, of course, for innocent people, they don't understand the peril of talking.
Right.
And so they do.
And so the people that require in some sense the greatest protection, those accused who
are innocent, they're not going to use that protection.
And so it tends not to happen.
Now, as far as the time frame you mentioned.
The average interrogation only lasts for 30 minutes to an hour.
And if you want to encompass 90 to 95 of all percent of all interrogations, it's a couple
of hours.
When you look at the database of wrongful convictions in which people give false confessions,
now you're looking at 8 hours, 10 hours, 16 hours, 20 hours.
Time breaks people down.
Time breaks people down because we start to get lonely.
I don't mean that in a in a, in a clinical sense, but people need others around and they
need social support, especially when times get stressful.
Yeah, they need someone to check in with.
They need breaks.
They need to get.
They need sleep.
Sleep deprivation is accompanied by these 20 hour sessions.
Food breaks, you know.
So it's both.
It's both biological and social needs and fatigue sets in.
I've worked on cases where I literally did a count of the number of times the innocent
person said, I didn't do this and was called the liar.
Hmm.
Sometimes that happens over 100 times in an interrogation.
So if you want out, if you're exhausted, if you can't take it anymore, and every time
you deny involvement, they call you a liar and you realize, this isn't my way out of
here.
You've got to try something else.
Speaker 1: Last thing I want to ask you about.
You write in the book about the Amanda Knox murder case in Italy.
There's a Netflix documentary about that.
And if I recall, generally speaking, this is a case in which Amanda Knox, an American,
was accused of a murder, along with I believe it's a guy she may have been romantically
involved with of of a third person, a woman.
Can you talk a little bit about what happened in that one and how it's relevant to what
you write about?
Speaker 6: You know, it's such a perfect illustration of something that's so important to know when
people hear that an innocent person confessed.
Knowing as you opened with, I would never do that.
A normal person would never do that.
Everyone's first reaction is, what's wrong with that person?
Yeah, that one is they immediately make an attribution to something is wrong with that
person who did this.
They don't think about the situation that person was in that might afflict just about
anybody.
Amanda Knox was a 20 year old American student in Italy.
Smart, smart kid.
But she was in Italy.
She wasn't fluent in the language.
And her roommate was murdered in a vile way.
And she was the person who discovered the crime scene and called it in.
And over the course of four days, for no good reason, she was identified as a suspect for
no good reason.
And I, I could catalog the the numbers of demeanor cues.
Oh, she did that.
She looked like this.
She looked like that.
She didn't cry enough.
She cried too much.
That were used to identify her as a suspect.
To the point where she was interrogated on and off for four and a half days, for over
50 hours, culminating in a final night where they brought her in, told her that that that
romantic, the person she was romantically involved with who was with her that night,
that he disavowed her alibi, that he said he wasn't with her that night.
Now it's now five in the morning.
She's confused.
She's been at this for days.
Her mother, like her mother said, maybe we should come and get you and bring you home,
which says, no, I think I can help them with this.
So she stayed back and had that phenomenology of innocence where she didn't appreciate the
peril.
She wasn't.
She didn't.
When I ask her about this, she didn't realize she was a suspect until the very last moment.
And then at five, six in the morning, they handwrite a confession in Italian and get
her to sign it.
And she confesses.
And then they take another confession a couple hours later.
And as soon as she as soon as she has a little sense of mind and she's left alone, she immediately
realizes, Oh, my God, I'm so confused.
And she hand writes of recantation of that confession.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 6: But in the meantime, the Amanda Knox case shows something else.
She confesses within two weeks, there's DNA splatter all over the crime scene.
They find the guy who did it and he has a criminal background.
And he fled to Germany right after the crime.
I mean, they they got the guy, but they would not overturn her confession.
And they proceeded to prosecute her and the boyfriend, despite having DNA all over the
place from another person.
By the time she got to trial.
And this this tells a lot about confession cases.
By the time she got to trial, it wasn't just her confession.
Her friends turned against her.
Some new witnesses came out of the woodwork.
Forensic analysts were misinterpreting forensic evidence in ways that suggested her guilt.
It illustrates something other some other point about confessions.
When somebody confesses to a crime they didn't commit.
All of a sudden it corrupts that confession once the word gets out, corrupts other witnesses,
corrupt forensic scientists.
And so by the time a confessor and innocent confessor gets into the courtroom, they face
a mountain of evidence, which is really nothing but a house of cards built on the back of
a false confession.
And that's what happened to her.
She appeared in court, and all of a sudden there's this parade of lying and non-credible
witnesses and forensic examiners were not correctly interpreting the data.
And, you know, her case has ultimately been resolved.
Italy's Supreme Court said so, declaring her innocent was critical of the prosecutor for
the case to begin with.
Yeah, but but she went through hell.
And and part of the reason she went through hell was the constant surprise of witness
after witness who appeared in light of her confession.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's a quite a quite a emblematic story of exactly what you write about in the
book.
I'll remind you, the book is Duped Why Innocent People Confess and Why We Believe Their Confessions.
We've been speaking with the book's author, Saul Casson.
Really appreciate your time today.
Speaker 6: It's a pleasure.
It's a pleasure.