Lost proof of innocence: The impact of confessions on alibi witnesses.

Abstract

The present study investigated how alibi witnesses react in the face of an innocent suspect's confession. Under the pretext of a problem-solving study, a participant and confederate completed a series of tasks in the same testing room. The confederate was subsequently accused of stealing money from an adjacent office during the study session. After initially corroborating the innocent confederate's alibi that she never left the testing room, only 45% of participants maintained their support of that alibi once informed that the confederate had confessed (vs. 95% when participants believed the confederate had denied involvement). Even fewer (20%) maintained their corroboration when the experimenter insinuated that their support of the alibi might imply their complicity. The presence of a confession also decreased participants' confidence in the accuracy of the alibi and their belief in the confederate's innocence. These findings suggest that a police-induced confession can strip an innocent confessor of a vital source of exculpatory evidence. This effect may well explain the often-puzzling absence of exculpatory evidence in many cases involving wrongful conviction.

The illusion of the perfect alibi: Establishing the base rate of non‐offenders' alibis

“…In the criminal justice system, there appears to be an assumption that innocent people can generate an accurate and believable alibi (Olson & Charman, ), which means that the alibi should be correct and be supported by strong evidence. For an innocent person, it can, however, be very difficult to provide such strong evidence as also appears in the cases of wrongfully convicted people where convincing evidence is often lacking (Marion, Kukucka, Collins, Kassin, & Burke, ). If people were not at the crime scene but elsewhere and they can remember where they were at that time and evidence to support their alibis, it is perhaps the best chance to prove their innocence.…”

Stigma against false confessors impacts post‐exoneration financial compensation

“…As further testament to its power, recent work has identified ways in which a confession, once obtained, alters the course of a criminal case. For example, confessions can corrupt other evidence in ways that create illusory corroboration (e.g., Hasel & Kassin, ; Kukucka & Kassin, ) while also suppressing exculpatory evidence (Marion, Kukucka, Collins, Kassin, & Burke, ). At trial, confessors may be more likely to receive ineffective counsel (Kukucka & Kassin, ) and less likely to be granted post‐conviction appeals (Kassin, ) than other defendants.…”

“…As further testament to its power, recent work has identified ways in which a confession, once obtained, alters the course of a criminal case. For example, confessions can corrupt other evidence in ways that create illusory corroboration (e.g., Hasel & Kassin, 2009;Kukucka & Kassin, 2014) while also suppressing exculpatory evidence (Marion, Kukucka, Collins, Kassin, & Burke, 2016).…”

Memory Errors in Alibi Generation: How an Alibi Can Turn Against Us

“…It is unlikely that an inconsistent alibi is the only evidence against a defendant: the Innocence Project has implicated inadequate defense, unvalidated and improper forensic evidence use, prosecutorial misconduct, false confessions, and eyewitness errors (http://www.innocenceproject.org/#causes) as leading causes of wrongful convictions. There are also a number of social psychological factors that explain why alibis are not always useful, such as how people evaluate the alibi – its strength and corroborating evidence (e.g., Olson & Charman, ; Olson & Wells, ; Strange et al, ), characteristics of the defendant (Allison & Brimbacombe, ), whether the case is in the investigation or trial stage (Sommers & Douglass, ), the order that evidence is presented (Dahl, Brimacombe & Lindsay, ) or even how other evidence affects alibi corroborators (Marion et al, ). It is worth mentioning, however, that the memory issues we have listed here could potentially affect an alibi corroborator as well, causing them to either give incorrect information about the alibi or fail to remember relevant information.…”