Leo & Brittany Liu, What do Potential Jurors Know About Police Interrogation Techniques and False Confessions?
(electronic copy available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1404078). This article is an empirical analysis of the importance jurors give to confessions when evaluating evidence. Specifically, the authors are concerned about the prevalence of false confessions during police interrogations and whether jurors are aware of the possibility that a confession could be extracted under coercive circumstances. Using data collected from over 200 college students at a southern Californian university, the authors discovered that these potential jurors considered false confessions to be unlikely even under admittedly coercive psychological critiques. As a solution, the authors propose that expert witness testimony should be used more frequently to educate jurors as to the reality of confessions procured under psychologically coercive circumstances. Justin D. Levinson, Race, Death, and the Complicitous Mind, 58 DePaul Law Review 599 (2009). Based on recent social science research, the author proposes two
