The interdependence of perceived confession voluntariness and case evidence.

Abstract

The current research investigated the mechanisms by which perceptions of confession evidence both influence and are influenced by perceptions of other case evidence using the theoretical framework of coherence-based reasoning (CBR). CBR posits that ambiguity and uncertainty are eschewed by artificially imposing consistency between pieces of evidence through bidirectional reasoning: Inferences about evidence lead to a preferred verdict, which in turn radiates backward to influence the perception of evidence. Two studies tested the CBR account with regard to confessions. An online sample of participants evaluated confession and nonconfession evidence at pretest and posttest. Study 1 revealed that, during pretest, participants (N = 119) deemed the evidence independent and nonprobative and the confession to be voluntary. However, at posttest, in the context of a criminal trial, participants considered the same evidence interrelated and highly inculpatory or exculpatory, depending on their verdict. Moreover, participants who voted to convict deemed the confession substantially voluntary, whereas participants who voted to acquit deemed it involuntary. Study 2 experimentally manipulated the strength of the nonconfession evidence in an effort to push participants (N = 127) toward a particular verdict. The same patterns of results emerged but were conditional on the strength of the nonconfession evidence: Strong case evidence caused the confession to be perceived as more voluntary, despite the fact that the confession was held constant. These findings replicate the coherence effect in a new domain and suggest that judges conducting harmless error analysis or making admissibility decisions might underappreciate the impact of confession evidence on jurors' verdicts. (PsycINFO Database Record

Cumulative Disadvantage: A Psychological Framework for Understanding How Innocence Can Lead to Confession, Wrongful Conviction, and Beyond

“…People do not adequately discount confession evidence even when the confessions are perceived to have been coerced by police (Kassin & Sukel, 1997); even when told that the defendant suffers from a mental illness or was under duress (Henkel, 2008); even when the defendant is a juvenile (Redlich, Ghetti, & Quas, 2008; Redlich, Quas, & Ghetti, 2008); even when the confession was reported secondhand by an informant motivated to lie (Neuschatz, Lawson, Swanner, Meissner, & Neuschatz, 2008; Neuschatz et al, 2012); and, even at times, when the confession is flat-out contradicted by exculpatory DNA (Appleby & Kassin, 2016). The disadvantages are so compelling at this stage that people perceive coercive interrogation tactics that elicit a confession as more acceptable, and the confession as more voluntary, when other incriminating evidence (that may or may not be independent of the confession; see above) suggests the defendant’s guilt (Greenspan & Scurich, 2016; Shaked-Schroer, Costanzo, & Berger, 2015).…”

Initial evidence for the assimilation hypothesis

“…Given the ubiquity of mental cross-over effects, it is not surprising that mutual influencing of different pieces of evidence occurs in the process of becoming convinced of the suspect's guilt. As such, the assimilation effect may well be part of the story-model hypothesis (Pennington & Hastie, 1992), or the coherence-based reasoning hypothesis mentioned earlier (see Greenspan & Scurich, 2016). In fact, the hypotheses at hand (assimilation, storymodel, coherence-based reasoning) stipulate the difficulty of thinking about whether or not the suspect has committed the crime.…”

“…Recent research suggests for example, that if the decision maker is convinced of the suspect's guilt, he will consider the evidence to be stronger, compared to when he judges the strength of the evidence outside of the context of a specific case. Greenspan and Scurich (2016) found that people who are convinced of the suspect's guilt perceive a disputable confession to be more voluntary than those who are not convinced. The evaluation of evidence strength may not only be influenced by the decision maker's conviction, but also by the presence of other pieces of evidence.…”

On Juror Decision Making: An Empathic Inquiry

“…Such unwarranted-and otherwise inexplicable-influences are observed, often incidentally, across a variety of research projects. For illustration, the undermining of a defendant's alibi results in stronger belief in the prosecution evidence (Smith et al 1996), increasing the strength of a prosecution witness's testimony results in lower judgments of police coercion during an interrogation (Greenspan & Scurich 2016), and learning that the suspect confessed to the crime increases the (erroneous) belief that his handwriting matches the writing on the note used in the robbery (Kukucka & Kassin 2014). In other words, evidence items will be under-or overweighted depending on their placement in the broader constellation of evidence.…”