Why Do People Confess to Crimes They Did Not Commit?
by Steven Drizin Most people can’t imagine any set of circumstances, other than perhaps torture, under which they would confess to a crime they did not commit. And even fewer can imagine ever falsely confessing to a murder, a crime that can lead to a death sentence or life without parole. Only in the past few years has the phenomenon of false confessions begun to be accepted in our society. Yet today, false confessions still occur with alarming frequency and most documented false confessions occur in murder cases. According to the most recent data from the Innocence Project at Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School, 142 wrongfully convicted persons have been exonerated by DNA evidence. Of these 142, false confessions played a role in approximately 25% of the cases. Of those who have been wrongfully convicted of murders, the percentage of false confessors is even higher. Of the first thirty-seven DNA exonerations in the U.S. for crimes involving murder, two-thirds of the suspects had been convi
