DNA Testing Exonerates Jailed Man

[Try2Win]

MACOMB COUNTY, Mich. -- Recent DNA testing has cleared a Detroit man of all charges against him after he spent 12 years in prison on charges of kidnapping and raping a Macomb County woman in 1998.

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/15878495/detail.html

[LiveLaughLuv]

Hatchett was arrested three days after the crime driving the victim's car. He confessed to the crime and was positively identified by the victim.

I'll never understand why someone would confess to a crime they weren't actually involved with, but this one had her car.

Not much is really said in the article, this dude did it to himself....

[wheezer]

I'll never understand why someone would confess to a crime they weren't actually involved with, but this one had her car.

Not much is really said in the article, this dude did it to himself....


Many who have later been proven to be innocent have at the time of their arrest or during police interviews confessed.

This is an article from the Innocence Project website.

False Confessions

In more than 25% of DNA exoneration cases, innocent defendants made incriminating statements, delivered outright confessions or pled guilty.

These cases show that confessions are not always prompted by internal knowledge or actual guilt, but are sometimes motivated by external influences.

Why do innocent people confess?
A variety of factors can contribute to a false confession during a police interrogation. Many cases have included a combination of several of these causes. They include:

* duress
* coercion
* intoxication
* diminished capacity
* mental impairment
* ignorance of the law
* fear of violence
* the actual infliction of harm
* the threat of a harsh sentence
* Misunderstanding the situation

Some false confessions can be explained by the mental state of the confessor.

* Confessions obtained from juveniles are often unreliable – children can be easy to manipulate and are not always fully aware of their situation. Children and adults both are often convinced that that they can "go home" as soon as they admit guilt.
* People with mental disabilities have often falsely confessed because they are tempted to accommodate and agree with authority figures. Further, many law enforcement interrogators are not given any special training on questioning suspects with mental disabilities. An impaired mental state due to mental illness, drugs or alcohol may also elicit false admissions of guilt.
* Mentally capable adults also give false confessions due to a variety of factors like the length of interrogation, exhaustion or a belief that they can be released after confessing and prove their innocence later.

Regardless of the age, capacity or state of the confessor, what they often have in common is a decision – at some point during the interrogation process – that confessing will be more beneficial to them than continuing to maintain their innocence.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/False-Confessions.php