Expert Testimony on the Psychology of Confessions: A Pyramidal Framework of the Relevant Science

Increasingly, psychologists are being called to serve as consultants and expert witnesses in criminal cases involving coerced – and possibly false – confessions.1 In some instances, the main purpose is to assess a defendant’s competence or vulnerability, an inquiry that brings into focus individual characteristics such as age, intelligence, mental health, criminal justice experience, and personality traits such as interrogative compliance and suggestibility. In other instances, the main purpose is to evaluate the social infl uence conditions under which the accused waived his or her Miranda rights and then confessed. This latter inquiry brings into play a number of foundational principles of psy-chology and, more specifi cally, social psychology. The trials and tribulations of John Kogut, Dennis Halstead, and John Restivo are a case in point. In 1986, largely on the basis of his confession, Kogut and the two other young men that he had impli-cated were tried for the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl. Two trials were held in Nassau County, New York, at which these defen-dants were convicted and sentenced to prison. They remained incar-cerated for 17 years until DNA tests on the semen originally recovered from the victim’s body conclusively excluded all three men, rendering the confession an inaccurate description of the crime. Through the 1 There is no way to determine the precise number of times that experts have testifi ed on confessions because a record for appeal is created only in cases in which experts have been excluded or limited in their testimony (for a review, see Fulero, 2004). Through an informal, unpublished survey of 12 known experts in the area, which I conducted in 2005, I found that there were 335 reported instances of testimony in federal and military courts and in 36 different states (some were at suppression hear-ings; some at postconviction relief hearings; most in jury and bench trials)