For our look on GOVT 2305 at civil liberties and the due process of the law. I'm unaware of appellate decisions - or anything from the Supreme Court - related to sleep deprivation.
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Why in the world would someone confess to a crime he didn't commit?
It's a baffling question that has long confounded the criminal justice system. Confessions are powerfully convincing evidence for juries — but false confessions are also relatively common. According to the Innocence Project, one in four people who have been exonerated for crimes they didn't commit confessed to that crime.
Psychologists have documented several reasons this might occur. The big one is that interrogating police officers can impose their suggestions on suspects: "We have evidence proving you were there!" "Your fingerprints were found!"
But there may be another reason people will confess even when they're innocent: They're exhausted.
Law enforcement "really needs to be super careful when a person is being interrogated after they have been up a long time," says Elizabeth Loftus, a co-author on a new study on sleep deprivation and false confessions in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
According to Loftus's study, the majority of false confessions occur when interrogations last more than 12 hours. That fact made her and her colleagues wonder: How much of a role does sleepiness play? Sleep deprivation, after all, is awful for the body and mind, decreasing our abilities of reason and judgment.
For items related to the Supreme Court and false confessions:
- Implications of a Supreme Court Ruling for False Confessions.
- False and Coerced Confessions.
- Overturned Conviction Upheld in False Confession Case.
