Areanna Casas

Humanities
Paul Lopez
19 March 2015
Why Do People Falsely Confess?
We (officers) are like used car salesman. But instead of selling a junky car to
someone, we have to sell the idea that confessing is the best thing to do. Even if that
confession is a lie. Witnesses and suspects of crimes are put under an immense
amount of pressure in an interrogation room. Twenty-five percent of people that have
been exonerated due to DNA evidence in the United States have made a false
confession or incriminating statement during their trial.
Imagine being in an interrogation room, not knowing what youre there for, but
something has gone terribly wrong. Someone was murdered. A cop starts feeding you
information about the crime. As soon as you become more familiar with what happened,
he lays down some questions, nothing too hard. You know where you were last Friday
and what time you got off of work and you might have gone to the movies that night.
You saw your coworker 15 minutes before she went missing, but of course you thought
nothing of it at the time. Which movie theater did you go to? What time did the movie
start? What was the movie about? Are you sure that was Thursday? Why dont you
remember? What were you actually doing? What arent you saying? What are you
afraid of? Was it possible that you couldve been under the influence of drugs or
alcohol? Have you ever blacked out? What are you holding back? Maybe you had
something to do with what happened.
In 1944, George Stinney Jr. was put on trial for the murder of 7-year-old Mary
Emma Thames and 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker in South Carolina. George and his

sister, Katherine were the last to see Mary and Betty before they went missing. They
had gone on a bike ride to look for flowers when they stopped at the Stinney residence
to ask George and Katherine if they knew where to find maypops. The girls never
returned that day so a search party of hundreds of people was organized. The next
morning, the girls bodies were found in a ditch. They had suffered blunt force trauma to
the head and face, the medical examiner stated that these injuries were probably
inflicted by some sort of club or hammer. The boy from the Stinney residence was
arrested within 3 months of the murder. George was appointed defense; Charles
Plowden, a 31-year-old tax commissioner. After a two hour trial, 14-year-old AfricanAmerican George Stinney Jr. was convicted of first-degree murder. He was sentenced
to death by the electric chair.
The electric chair was too big for him so he had to sit on a bible. Even the face
mask that was normally used for adult prisoners was oversized so after the first surge of
electricity, the mask slipped off. Spectators said revealing his wide-open, tearful eyes
and saliva coming from his mouth. But where is the evidence? The eyewitness
testimony? The confession? There was no evidence, no eyewitness testimony and the
confession seemed to have been coerced by the police. He was taken to trial within just
a couple months of the murders, now murder trials usually take about one to six years
before they get to court.
Seventy years later in 2014, this case was reopened by an activist named
George Frierson. Stinneys name was cleared. There was said to be a deathbed
confession of the real perpetrator who was a well-known white man in the community.
One of his family members was in the jury that sentenced Stinney to be executed.

Without Georges false confession he never would have been executed. During
the time of his interrogation, he was not allowed to see or talk to his family or defense.
These strategies were used to get George out of his comfort zone so the only way he
could feel better would be by giving the police what they wanted. Cops and prosecutors
often prey on women, minors and mentally unstable people because these often are the
most vulnerable suspects. Police estimate that about 5% of the confessions they elicit
are false, while a new study predicts this to be 42% to 76%.
In the 17th century during the Salem witch trials, many women were tried and
executed based upon confession that only took place after threats and torture from the
law enforcement. Though this was long ago, strategies used by investigators to get
suspects to confess havent changed that much. While torture is illegal in this country,
lying to a suspect is not. Cops are allowed to make fake promises about the trial and
say whatever is necessary in order for someone to say they are guilty even if they
arent. All cops want is for someone, anyone to confess.
The most important part of getting someone to confess is getting in their head
and under their skin. A lot of times, cops will bully people into confessing. How does
that serve justice if the suspect isnt even guilty? It doesnt. The justice system is more
for winning and intimidating people rather than actually finding the truth. In fact, cops
have put plenty of innocent people on death row. It is estimated that 1 in every 25
people on death row in the United States is innocent. Flaws within the justice system
have allowed for our country to inflict uncultivated acts on these people who just so
happened to be an innocent bystander or someone who looked like the real perpetrator,

all while criminals get to walk free in our society and continue to commit heinous acts
because they are able to outsmart the justice system.
Becoming aware of this issue is the first step in changing the way we view the
justice system. Being a cop often doesnt have anything to do with being a good guy.
Being a prosecutor often times doesnt have anything to do with putting the guilty people
away. The justice system needs fixing, thats for certain, but it is not just lawyers and
investigators. There are also societal issues that we need to overcome. Stereotyping
plays a massive role in convicting someone. Using someones race, class or
appearance as an excuse to decide that they are guilty or innocent doesnt prove
anything. Just because someone confesses doesnt always mean they are guilty. If we
all put ourselves in an innocent persons shoes in an interrogation room more people
would be guilty in our society than one would think.