Why Are Innocent Suspects Confessing?

            I recently read an article from Science Daily that I found to be very interesting, called “Why Innocent Suspects May Confess to a Crime”. The article was examining the reasons behind people falsely confessing to a crime that they did not commit.

            According to The Innocence Project, out of the 266 post-conviction DNA exonerations over the last 20 years, 25% of them involved a false confession. A study was done by the Iowa State University which tried to understand the reasons for which someone would confess to a crime despite their innocence. The answer came down to short-term versus long-term consequences.

            The first experiment interviewed 81 psychology undergraduates, men and women, about illegal and immoral behaviour. Their admissions and denials were paired with either short-term or long-term consequences, the short-term consequences being a long set of repetitive questions, and the long-term consequences being having to meet with a police officer in a couple months to discuss their answers in full. It was found as a result of this study that the participants made decisions to avoid the proximal (short-term) repetitive questions.

            The second experiment interviewed 143 men and women from Iowa State University in the same manner, except this time, the proximal and distal consequences were reversed (the proximal consequences being going to meet with an officer directly after the interview, and the distal consequences being returning to the lab in a number of weeks to answer repetitive questions). Surprisingly, the results were found to be similar, as the participants tended to accept the long-term effects in order to avoid any short-term annoyances.

            In both experiments the participants responded in a way which eliminated proximal penalties as opposed to distal ones. The researchers think that these results help to explain why an innocent person would confess to a crime which they did not commit. Since DNA evidence is used to exonerate cases which involve atrocious crimes, the innocent suspects assume that the truth will comes out eventually, and that any possibility of long-term consequences like conviction, prison, or even a death sentence, is very unlikely.

Because of this, I think when the suspect weighs the two consequences (proximal and distal) in his/her mind, their behaviour will be shaped in a way that allows them to avoid consequences happening right now, versus the ones that may happen in the future. I think it is wrong that so many people feel the need to falsely confess to a horrible crime that they did not commit, and something must be wrong with the system that it has such a high percentage of suspects being wrongly accused. I see a need for police interrogation methods to change so that it limits these methods from encouraging suspects to make decisions based on gains in the short term, as opposed to telling the truth about their situations.

If anyone is interested in the article, here is a link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110218111825.htm.

Thank you.

Doctor Discredited

            I read a pretty disturbing article in the newspaper today called “Doctors, squeal on thyselves”. It was very interesting, and really put things into perspective for me.

This article is about a doctor named Dr. Charles Smith who was thought to be one of Canada’s leading experts in pediatric forensic pathology. Whenever a case needed to be solved regarding an unnatural or suspicious death of a child, Smith was the one called to inspect the body, obtain all essential medical information and evidence, and show his findings in the court of law. Recently, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario revoked his license to practice medicine, and made him pay almost $4000 to cover the costs of his hearing, when they discovered that Smith had been sloppy in his work and had failed to adequately investigate several cases. It was found out that Dr. Charles Smith had also greatly exaggerated his credentials, despite his lack of forensic training, in order to cover up his sloppy examining and insufficient evidence and organization, which in many instances, lead to a false conclusion of the case. Because of these flaws, families were destroyed, as parents were wrongly accused of killing their children, resulting in them going to jail, and people were found to be child killers and sex offenders, when they had faced completely false accusations. Smith’s flawed investigations tore families apart and wrongfully accused people of horrific actions in over 20 cases.

I found this article extremely upsetting, because of the fact that someone so illegitimately qualified in the medical field had the power to destroy so many innocent people’s lives. This also brings up an important issue of doctors and their qualification. This case shows that, at least for this specific case, other doctors were not able to publicly report the incompetency of their colleagues or the unacceptable level of care that their colleagues were putting into their work. If people are not willing to stand up and report the truth when these accused families need it the most, then they are not qualified to be practicing medicine. I think because of the accepted presumption that all doctors have the professional qualification to practice, it can cause people to have a false sense of security and cause a lack of questioning of the public in regards to the legitimacy of evidence for a specific case.

Sciences and medical sciences are wonderful tools that can be used to find the answers to many of the world’s important issues, but it is up to the honour and integrity of people to allow for science to help out. These critical failures made by Dr. Charles Smith were not critical failures of science itself, but of the person failing to adequately and truthfully perform his job. It is because of the inherent flaws of people, and not because of the inherent flaws of science, that something as horrible as this was able to happen.

If anyone if interested in reading this article, here is a link: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/doctors-squeal-on-thyselves-115354924.html.

Thank you!