Courtesy of Innocence Project of Minnesota (©2007) In September 2017, Netflix aired a new true-crime series that focuses on the issues surrounding false confessions. 1 There are two doctrines in criminal law designed to keep illegally obtained confessions from the jury. The interactive graphic above is a joint project between the Innocence Project and Brandon Garrett, author of "Convicting the Innocent." False Confessions In more than 20% of exonerated cases the defendants made incriminating statements or gave outright confessions to crimes that DNA evidence later proved they did not commit. A false confession caused Romeo Phillion to spend 31 years in prison for murder. Each episode goes inside a murder case where a suspect made a confession, yet later claimed the confession was made involuntarily or under duress. False Confessions Andrew Jarecki, Barry Scheck, Brooklyn District Attorney, Capturing the Friedmans, Congressional election, Defamation suit, Innocence Project, Jesse Friedman, Lonnie Soury, mass hysteria prosecutions, Police misconduct, Prosecutorial misconduct, Ron Kuby, Wrongful Convictions The Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project (MAIP) is dedicated to correcting and preventing the conviction of innocent people in DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Several states already require that interrogations be electronically recorded. Kassin explained that false confessions are not rare: More than a quarter of the 365 people exonerated in recent decades by the nonprofit Innocence Project had confessed to … Coerced Confessions: It may be difficult to understand why a person would confess to something they did not do; however, false confessions are one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions and are present in 25 percent of overturned convictions. ... False Confessions: Norfolk Four. Some techniques include confusing the defendant, lying… From an objective standpoint, it is reasonable to think that no rational person would confess to a crime he did not commit. It has decreased the number of false confessions and increased the reliability of confessions as evidence. False Confessions. False confessions result from coercive police interrogation techniques. Compiled by Amelia Hritz, Michal Blau, and Sara Tomezsko. The Innocence Project indicated that 28% of its overturned wrongful convictions involve a false confession. LEGAL ISSUE Police-induced false confessions are among the leading causes of wrongful convictions. The Innocence Project has determined that 25 percent of wrongful conviction cases overturned by DNA testing involved false confession. There are many reasons why defendants give false confessions, including: The Innocence Project has recommended specific changes in the practice of suspect interrogations in the U.S., including the mandatory electronic recording of interrogations, which has been shown to decrease the number of false confessions and increase the reliability of confessions as evidence.