False Confessions & the DA

Boulder County Colorado district attorney Mary T. Lacey yesterday asked that the arrest warrant against John M. Karr in the Jon Benet Ramsey case be dismissed. “No evidence has developed, other than his own repeated admissions, to place Mr. Carr at the scene of the crime,” Lacey stated. “Mr. Karr was not the source of the DNA found on the underwear of JonBenet Ramsey.”

What may be most remarkable about this latest twist in the long-festering case is the district attorney’s forthrightness and honesty in dismissing Karr’s multiple confessions to the crime. Too often, confession is considered the “queen of proofs,” evidence that closes the case. It’s impossible to estimate how many of those convicted and incarcerated on the basis of confession alone may be innocent—but surely some are, such as the Washington pig farmer Paul Ingram accused by his daughters of the most bizarre crimes—none of which was ever supported by a shred of material evidence—whose case was detailed in Lawrence Wright’s Remembering Satan. Psychologist Richard Ofshe, who has done much probative work on false confessions, quickly established that one could inculcate nearly any false memory one chose in this particularly suggestible suspect. And there are many others who bizarrely convince themselves that they were implicated in crimes they had nothing to do with.

It’s enough to give credence to Sigmund Freud’s apparently bizarre note on criminology called “Criminals From a Sense of Guilt,” where he argues that the reason people commit crimes is that they feel guilty, and want to ensure that they will be punished. This effectively turns the whole criminal justice system on its head.

The Boulder district attorney has taken much flak in this case, but I'd point out that she had the good sense to understand that confessions need some kind of confirmation (in German procedure, a court is not supposed to accept a suspect’s confession unless corroborated by other evidence). Alas, that’s not the standard operating procedure in the U.S.. In most instances, once the police interrogators have got a confession, the suspect is doomed. Not only does this lead to false convictions, it lets the truly guilty escape. Getting confessions comes to appear the easy way to do police work, and that can lead to less than probative results. Confessions should be used to open cases, not to close them.

Peter Brooks

Comments

[RCinProv]

Paul Ingram was not a pig farmer, he was a police officer. And Richard Ofshe's account of the case has been criticized on many levels that are worth examining. There is a reason that the judge did not buy Ofshe's claims. Rather than take the New Yorker at face value, I suggest reading Karen Olio and William Cornell's The Facade of Scientific Documentation: A Case Study of Richard Ofshe's Analysis of the Paul Ingram Case (Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, vol. 4, issue # 4, pages 1182-1197). Wright, by the way, was required to publish an unusual New Yorker "correction" for his inflated and inaccurate editorial about these cases a few months later.

Moreover, transcripts of the clemency hearing in the Ingram case reveal that Ingram's own son, who never spoke to Lawrence Wright, corroborated the claims that Professor Brooks describes as "surely" not true. I wonder how Prof. Brooks has come to have a better factual handle on what happened in the Ingram family than Chad Ingram does?

[Bill Poser]

In Jewish law an uncorroborated confession is insufficient for conviction. In contrast, in traditional Chinese law (i.e. the Tang code and its descendants up to 1911), a confession is essential for conviction. That is why the magistrate was permitted to torture the defendant. (This wasn't quite as bad as it sounds as a false conviction had serious consequences for the magistrate.)

[Washington DC Lawyers]

What may be most remarkable about this latest twist in the long-festering case is the district attorney’s forthrightness and honesty in dismissing Karr’s multiple confessions to the crime.

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Alas, that’s not the standard operating procedure in the U.S.. In most instances, once the police interrogators have got a confession, the suspect is doomed. Not only does this lead to false convictions, it lets the truly guilty escape. Getting confessions comes to appear the easy way to do police work, and that can lead to less than probative results. Confessions should be used to open cases, not to close them.

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Moe Nawaz is recognised as the UK's Most Trusted Insolvency Auditors and mastermind business coach. He has worked in the turnaround industry since 1989. Moe helps over 500 business people every year via a free advice line ukadvice.com. Moe is the founder of mastermind business coaching and a mastermind executive coach himself. His clients include high tech companies, manufacturers, financial services, entrepreneurs and family run businesses throughout Europe. He has been featured on TV, Radio and other Media.