False Confession

Kimberly’s false confession occurred during the final interrogation by the detectives Saturday night June 13th. Kimberly was arrested and brought to this interrogation while attending her husband’s wake under the minor charge of obstructing justice. This charge was brought against her for not telling the detectives sooner—and with absolute certainty—that John Boyd Frazier was the shooter, something that Kimberly is still unsure about to this day. This final interrogation was the detectives last opportunity to ensnare Kimberly in a larger plot.

Kimberly was arrested and brought to this last interrogation while she was at her husband’s wake and memorial service. Kimberly was suffering from a deep depression in the days following her husband’s murder (she would lose over 15 pounds) and it hit especially hard this day, the day of her husband’s wake. Kimberly’s mom had given her Lorazepam this day, as she had been doing all week to help Kimberly. Kimberly’s severely depressed state, further exacerbated under the influence of Lorazepam, coupled with the emotional anguish of it being the day of her husband’s wake and memorial service, significantly diminished her mental and cognitive abilities.

Before the final interrogation began Kimberly had requested to speak with her mom and dad. The detectives denied this request. Their plan now was to isolate 21 year old Kimberly and to administer extreme psychological pressures using questionable tactics (lies, threats and promises) to extract a ‘confession’ to their imaginary plot.

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Those three yeahs would constitute her confession. Those three “yeah” would be used to charge Kimberly with murder under the Hand of One law in South Carolina. This law is called Felony Murder in other states, and is a law originating from England and English Law but abolished there in 1959 for being too draconian. This law implies that all parties are held equally as responsible. As an example this draconian law would apply in the following scenario: You are homeless, hungry and meet a fellow homeless person also hungry, and you both decide to steal bread from the nearby convenience store. You agree to act as a lookout / offer a distraction while the other person steals the bread. This person gets spotted by the owner, a struggle ensues and the store owner is stabbed. Unfortunately the store owner dies from his wound. Besides the homeless person who stabbed the store owner being charged with murder, you would also be charged with murder. It doesn’t matter if you just met this other homeless person 5 minutes ago. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t know this other homeless person had a knife or any weapon. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t do anything but act as the lookout. It doesn’t matter if your original intention was to only steal bread. You would be held equally as responsible for the murder even though you didn’t commit it. You’d spend the rest of your life in jail for basically being destitute and hungry.

We believe the false confession that Kimberly gave the detectives is a type of false confession known as Compliant False Confession, as outlined in the American Psychological Association in their 2009 study. This study was done in response to the release of the many hundreds wrongfully convicted with ‘confessions’ but exonerated (on average 15 years later) by irrefutable DNA evidence. The specific incentive for compliance for this young 21 year old mother was fear of losing her 2 year old daughter and the promise that she wouldn’t. Kimberly’s diminished mental state (as outlined in the section above) also prevented her from overcoming the pressure of coercion and compliance.

“In contrast to voluntary false confessions, compliant false confessions are those in which suspects are induced through interrogation to confess to a crime they did not commit. In these cases, the suspect acquiesces to the demand for a confession to escape a stressful situation, avoid punishment, or gain a promised or implied reward. Demonstrating the form of influence observed in classic studies of social influence (e.g., Asch, 1956; Milgram, 1974), this type of confession is an act of mere public compliance by a suspect who knows that he or she is innocent but bows to social pressure, often coming to believe that the short-term benefits of confession relative to denial outweigh the long-term costs. Based on a review of a number of cases, Gudjonsson (2003) identified some very specific incentives for this type of compliance—such as being allowed to sleep, eat, make a phone call, go home, or, in the case of drug addicts, feed a drug habit. The desire to bring the interview to an end and avoid additional confinement may be particularly pressing for people who are young, desperate, socially dependent, or phobic of being locked up in a police station. The pages of legal history are filled with stories of compliant false confessions. In the 1989 Central Park jogger case described earlier, five Law Hum Behav 123 teenagers confessed after lengthy interrogations. All immediately retracted their confessions but were convicted at trial and sent to prison—only to be exonerated 13 years later (People of the State of New York v. Kharey Wise et al., 2002).”