The danger of innocence : common sense beliefs and misconceptions about false confessions

Schell-Leugers, Jennifer Maria

doi:10.26481/dis.20141215js

Cited by 2 publications

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References 86 publications

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“…Finally, it is possible that guilt feelings alone do not impact the probability of a false confession. Rather, guilt feelings may interact with other risk factors, as suggested by research and documented cases (e.g., Russano et al, 2005;Schell-Leugers, 2014). Plausible candidates for such an interaction include a close relationship to the perpetrator or low IQ.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Voluntary false confessions

Schneider

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published version features the final layout of the paper including the volume, issue and page numbers. Link to publication General rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.• Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain 11In 2002, a well-known German actor, Günther Kaufmann, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He had confessed to murdering his friend and tax accountant Hartmut Hagen. Three years later, Kaufmann was acquitted in a retrial after the police had identified the real perpetrators, his wife, her previous lover, and two accomplices (Mielke, 2005). It became clear that Kaufmann had falsely confessed to protect his terminally ill wife. Günther Kaufmann's wife, Alexandra Kaufmann, had told Hagen of a fictitious compensation suit against a real estate investor and claimed that she would get a tremendous amount of money and share the profit. However, Hagen had to finance the alleged lawsuit because the Kaufmanns had spent all their money on her cancer therapy. Hagen gave 830.000 DM to the Kaufmanns before he became suspicious. At the same time, Alexandra Kaufmann was spending the money with her lover in Berlin. Apparently, Günther Kaufmann also believed the story about the compensation suit and did not know that his wife had the affair (Bayer & Röbel, 2003). In February 2001, Hagen was found murdered in his house in Munich. Shortly after, Günther Kaufmann confessed to the murder in order to protect his wife who would die in May 2002 in the course of the trial (Otto, 2006). While Günther Kaufmann was in prison, the police found the real perpetrators because a girlfriend of one of the perpetrators went to the police.Individual cases like this show that voluntary false confessions to protect someone else occur for very serious crimes. I describe this phenomenon as voluntary blame-taking behavior. Surveys suggest that taking the blame for minor offences occurs at a high rate (e.g., Gudjonsson et al., 2007;Willard et al., 2015). Furthermore, it happens frequently for non-criminal acts that do not entail contact with law enforcement. For example, voluntary blame-taking behavior is an issue for insurance companies. Millions of insurance payers' contributions are lost each year to insurance fraud, when a self-inflicted damage is claimed to be caused by another person such as a friend or neighbor (Kunz, 2014). The threshold for making these false statements is low, because detection is unlikely and the fraud is often seen as a trivial offense and an act of helping (Maaß, 2015). Another form of voluntaryblame taking occurs in Germany where more severe traffic violations such as running a red l...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Voluntary false confessions

Schneider

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Confesiones falsas - Frecuencias mundiales e implicaciones de la investigación

Wetzels¹,

Nieden²

2020

Nuevo Foro Penal

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Las investigaciones realizadas en las últimas tres décadas han demostrado la existencia de confesiones falsas en los interrogatorios policiales que se producen por todo el mundo. Asimismo, las razones y las circunstancias de las confesiones falsas también han sido investigadas. No obstante, la frecuencia de este fenómeno aún se desconoce en gran medida. Existen diversos estudios, que han abordado este tema. Pero, la naturaleza de una confesión falsa hace que sea difícil su reconocimiento, al igual que recopilar datos verídicos sobre su frecuencia. La comparación de diversos estudios muestra, que las confesiones falsas ocurren mucho más a menudo de lo que se piensa. Este artículo presenta el estado actual de la investigación sobre la frecuencia de las confesiones falsas y discute los enfoques de investigaciones realizadas.

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The danger of innocence : common sense beliefs and misconceptions about false confessions

Cited by 2 publications

References 86 publications

Voluntary false confessions

Voluntary false confessions

Confesiones falsas - Frecuencias mundiales e implicaciones de la investigación

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