Women and Innocence:
Internal & External Factors
That Influence False
Confessions
The Innocence Network Conference
Orlando, FL- May 2015
Presented by:
Stephen Grabner, B.S.
Carlye Conte, B.A., and
Lenore Walker, Ed.D., ABPP
Nova Southeastern University,
Center for Psychological Studies
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Presentation Overview
1. False Confession Research and Literature
a) Innocence, Exonerations, and Limitations
b) Classification of False Confessions
c) General Factors Related to False Confessions
2. Women in the Criminal Justice System
a) Female Exonerations and False Confessions
3. Female False Confession (FFC) Database
a) Creation of the FFC Database
b) Exploratory Statistics
c) Implications for False Confession Classification
Presentation Overview Continued
4. Women and Adversity
a) Impact of Trauma and Abuse History, Mental Illness, Intellectual
Disability, and Substance Abuse on False Confessions
5. Case examples
a) Analyzing Specific Cases to Conceptualize The Internal and
External Influences in Female False Confessions
6. Future Research Directions and Emerging Issues
a) Expert Witness Testimony for Female False Confession Cases
b) The Role of Threats to Children and Child Victims in
7. Practice, and Public Policy Implications
Introduction to Wrongful
Convictions,
False Confessions, and
Exonerations
Defining Admissions and Confessions
▪ Admission
– Simple admission of guilt
▪ “I did it”
▪ Confession
– A confession is an incriminating statement (e.g. admission) + a
post-admission narrative (e.g. details surrounding the crime)
▪ “It was me that ____, with ____, and it happened all over at ___ around
___.”
– In our research, confessions are made to the police or a legal
authority
▪ Excludes “secondhand” confessions, or statements only about the
actions of others;
▪ Excludes cases in which a legal authority claims there was a confession
but the individual denies it.
Defining Confessions
▪ In our research, confessions are made to the police or a
legal authority
– Excludes “secondhand” confessions, or statements only about the
actions of others
– Excludes cases in which a legal authority claims there was a
confession but the individual denies it
▪ Confessions are one of the most incriminating forms of
evidence. Once a confession is obtained, a conviction is
almost always inevitable (Leo and Ofshe, 1998, Drizin &
Leo, 2004)
– Elicited not only from the guilty, but also from the innocent
What is a FALSE Confession?
▪ False Confession
– A false confession is a statement that you make that incriminates
yourself in something that you did not have a hand in, or
exaggerates your role to a significant degree
– A confession is not considered false based on its use/disuse but its
content
▪ Miranda Violations can still bring about true confessions
– In our research, it is important to consider these come about in
various ways, and it can be difficult to determine the veracity of a
confession
Defining Exoneration and Exonerees
▪ Exoneration
– Exoneration is when a person is absolved from legal blame for a
crime. This occurs in two ways:
1. Declared to be factually innocent by a governmental agency with the
authority to make that decision
2. Relieved of all consequences of a criminal conviction
– Includes governmental pardons, acquittal of charges, or a dismissal
of charges
▪ Exoneree
– Following a conviction, an individual is declared innocent or relieved
of all legal consequences.
*Definitions from the National Registry of Exonerations
Defining Innocence
▪ Legal v. Factual Innocence
– Legal innocence is a judicial, executive, or legislative acknowledgment
▪ Individuals can be found innocent of a crime committed due to lack of
information or procedural errors
– Factual innocence is when evidence supports that the individual did not
commit the crime in question
▪ Does not match legal innocence at all times
▪ Conversely, a person could be found guilty of a crime they did not commit
due to a variety of factors (mistaken eyewitness identification, false
confession, false or misleading forensic evidence, official misconduct,
inadequate legal defense, or false accusations)
Innocence and False Confessions
▪ Legal v. Factual Innocence and Confessions (McCann,1998)
– A confession can be legally proven false by a verdict or legal ruling
that the confession was not true
– A confession can be factually proven false when evidence supports
that the individual could not have committed the crime in question
▪ Examples:
–
–
–
–
No crime occurred
Physical impossibility
True perpetrator is later found
Scientific evidence establishes innocence
The Prevalence of False Confessions
▪ More than 80% of individuals taken into custody waive their
Miranda Rights (Sangero & Halpert, 2011)
– Similar to results obtained in the lab: 81% of innocent suspects
waived Miranda Rights (Kassin, 2008)
▪ Approximately 65% of individuals interrogated offer a full or
partial confession (Redlich, Kulish, & Steadman, 2011)
▪ False confessions are more common than initially believed,
yet there is a lack of systematic data to accurately estimate
the occurrence and prevalence of this phenomenon
– Methodological issues in identifying false confessions
Empirical Support: False Confessions in the Lab
▪ Kassin And Kiechel Study (1996)
– Participants told pressing the “ALT” key caused a computer crash
– The computer crashed without them pressing the key
– Individual were then confronted about their part in the crash
▪ Results: 69% of the participants signed a confession stating
that they pressed the ALT key, though none of them had
– Of those, 28% internalized the guilt of pressing the button
▪ This study (and those that have followed) indicate that false
confessions can be elicited under low pressure situations
Factors that Influence False Confessions
Internal Factors
External Factors
▪ Defendant Characteristics
▪ Coercive Interrogation Tactics
– Education/Intelligence
– Age
– Substance Use
– Mental Illness
– Personality characteristics
– Minimization
– Maximization
– False presentation of evidence
– False promises of leniency
– Use of threats and intimidation
False Confession Typology
▪ Original Classification (Kassin & Wrightsman, 1985)
1. Coerced
2. Internalized
3. Voluntary
▪ Differentiating between the sources of external coercion
(McCann, 1998)
– Coerced-reactive
False Confession Typology (Continued)
▪ Differentiating between types of confessions elicited
through improper interrogations (Leo & Ofshe, 1996)
1. Stress-compliant
2. Coerced-compliant
3. Persuaded: coerced v. non-coerced
▪ Extent of criminal involvement (Frumkin, 2010)
– Coerced-substituted
False Confessions as a Contributing Factor to
Wrongful Conviction
▪ National Registry of Exonerations
– Contributing factor in approximately 13% of total exonerations
▪ 201 wrongful convictions associated with a false confession
▪ Innocence Project
– Contributing factor in approximately 28% of DNA exonerations
▪ 91 wrongful convictions associated with a false confession
Women, Innocence, and the
Criminal Justice System
Gender Differences in the Criminal Justice System
▪ Women represent 18% of the total correctional population
– The rate of increase for women is nearly twice that for men
– Despite this increase, woman are often ignored within the criminal
justice system
Correctional populations, by sex, in the U.S. 2013
Jails
Prisons
Probation
Parole
Total
Women
102,400
111,300
962,100
102,200
1,256,300
Men
628,900
1,463,500
2,948,500
751,000
5,642,700
▪ Breakdown by crime type:
– 37.1% violent offenses, 28.2% property offenses, 24.6% drug offenses,
8.9% public order offenses, 1.2% other.
Female Exonerations
Racial Demographics of Female
Exonerees
▪ Women make up a small number
of all exonerations
1%
1%
8%
– National Registry of Exonerations:
141 women (9% of total exonerations)
26%
▪ Demographics:
64%
– Age: ranged from 11 to 59
▪ Major Crimes:
– (1) murder, (2) child sexual abuse,
(3) drug possession or sale
Caucasian
Black
Hispanic
Native American
Other
Factors Contributing to Wrongful Conviction in Female
Exoneration Cases
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Perjury or False Official Misconduct
Accusation
False or
Inadequate Legal False Confession
Misleading
Defense
Forenisc Evidence
Gender Differences in Exonerations
▪ Patterns from exoneration data (Jackson & Gross, 2014)
– Child Victims
▪ 40% of women wrongfully convicted for crimes involving children
– Child Homicide and Child Sexual Abuse
– No Crime Cases
▪ 63% of women convicted of a crime that did not occur
– Child Sexual Abuse Hysteria
– Shaken Baby Syndrome
False Confessions as a Contributing Factor:
Gender Differences in Exonerations
▪ Women are a minority of those exonerated in which a false
confession was a contributing factor in the wrongful conviction
– Female cases are hard to identify and difficult to prove
▪ Innocence Network: 4 females exonerated (1%)
– All exonerated as a result of a male co-defendant
▪ National Registry of Exonerations
– National Registry of Exonerations: 26 females (approximately 13%)
▪ The underrepresentation of exonerated women necessitates
the identification of female false confession cases
Female False Confession Cases:
Database Creation
▪ Identifying Female False Confession Cases
– Innocence and Exoneration Databases (n=30)
– Previous False Confession Literature (n=15)
▪ 6 female cases of 60 identified false confession cases (Leo & Ofshe, 1998)
▪ 9 female cases of 125 proven false confession cases (Drizin & Leo, 2005)
– Legal Databases (n=43)
▪ Lexis Nexis, West Law, Bloomberg Law, Google Scholar
– News Sources (n=6)
▪ Total of 80 female cases included in initial analysis (2014)
Female False Confession Cases:
Database Analysis
▪ Classification
– Demographics
▪ Age, Race
– Crime information
▪ Type, Date, Victim Characteristics
– Case information
▪ Arrest, conviction, and appeal
– False Confession Classification
▪ Typology
▪ Probability
– Current Case Status
Internal
Influences
Voluntary
Internalized
Coerced
Internalized
External
Influences
Voluntary
CoercedReactive
CoercedCompliant
Confession Typology
6%
8%
9%
15%
62%
Coerced-Compliant
Coerced-Internalized
Coerced-Reactive
Voluntary-Internalized
Voluntary
The Influence of Adversity:
Mental Illness, Substance
Abuse, and Histories of
Trauma and Abuse
Prevalence of Trauma and Abuse Among Women
Involved in the Criminal Justice System
▪ Experiencing trauma and abuse during childhood and/or adulthood
– Higher among women involved in the criminal justice system
– Higher for justice-involved females than justice-involved males
▪ More than half of all justice-involved women report histories of
trauma and abuse
– Compared to men, women experience higher rates of abuse during both
childhood and adulthood
– Domestic Violence: of women with abuse histories, up to 61% in state prison
and 66% in federal prison reported they had been abused by an intimate
partner.
Histories of past physical and sexual abuse reported by men and women in jail, state
prison, federal prison, and on probation.
Jail
History of Past Abuse
Physical Abuse
Sexual Abuse
Both Physical and
Sexual Abuse
State Prison
Federal Prison
Probation
Women
Men
Women
Men
Women
Men
Women
Men
47.6%
12.9%
57.2%
16.1%
39.9%
7.2%
40.4%
9.3%
37.3%
10.7%
46.5%
13.4%
32.3%
6%
33.5%
7.4%
37.2%
5.6%
39%
5.8%
22.8%
2.2%
25.2%
4.1%
26.9%
3.3%
28%
3%
15.1%
1.1%
18.3%
2.1%
Note. Adapted from “Prior Abuse Reported by Inmates and Probationers” by C. W. Harlow, 1999,
U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics,
Mental Illness, Substance Abuse, and Adversity
▪ Upwards of 75% of women involved in the criminal justice
system have some form of mental illness
– Greater than rate found in women in the general population (12%)
– Nearly 3 times higher than justice-involved males
– Higher rates of PTSD
▪ (James & Glaze, 2006, Lynch, Dehart, Belknap, & Green, 2012 )
▪ Comorbidity
– Higher rates of comorbid substance use (75%), homelessness (12%)
and histories of physical and/or sexual abuse (68%)
▪ (Bloom, Owen, & Covington, 2004)
Factors Influencing Female False Confessions
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Trauma and/or Abuse
Battered Women's
Syndrome
Mental Illness, Substance
Abuse, and/or Intellectual
Disability
Threats to Children
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Battered
Woman’s Syndrome (BWS)
▪ BWS is a subset of PTSD
– Intrusive recollection of traumatic events
– Hyperarousal and high levels of anxiety
– Avoidance behavior and emotional numbing
▪ Depression, repression, minimization, denial, and emotional numbing
– Disrupted interpersonal relationships
– Body image distortions
▪ Somatic and/or physical complaints
– Sexual intimacy issues
Battered Woman’s Syndrome
▪ Abusive relationships
characterized by
– Power and control
– Cycle of violence
▪ Can lead to beliefs such as:
– The violence is her fault
– Fear for her life (and children’s
lives) if she were to leave
– The abuser is omnipresent
Origin of Research Project: The Case of Darlene Green
▪ Darlene Green
– 79 year old woman in Washington convicted of killing her husband
– In 2010, called her son to tell him she had shot his father. When police
arrived she stated, “I don’t know what the big deal is, I just did what he
told me to do”
▪ Forensic testimony at trial
– Autopsy reports and forensic evidence: manner of death was
consistent with suicide
▪ Confession inconsistencies
– Green stated that she did not recall confessing to her sons or the
police.
– It took several days following the shooting before Green was able to
remember what had happened.
Origin of Research Project: The Case of Darlene Green
▪ Evidence of domestic violence excluded at trial
▪ Psychological expert testimony ruled inadmissible at trial
– Diagnosis of PTSD and BWS
▪ Green was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five
years in prison
Origin of Research Project: The Case of Darlene Green
▪ Appellate Court Response
– Trial court erred in excluding expert witness testimony under ER702
– Testimony was necessary to explain:
▪ PTSD and dissociation can lead an individual to make false, incriminating statements
▪ The conduct of an abuse victim that may appear unusual or counterintuitive
– Prolonged abuse can lead an individual to accept blame for a crime she did not commit
▪ Case Status
– In 2014, Green’s convicted was reversed and her case was remanded for
retrial
– She is now 83 years old, awaiting retrial, and remains incarcerated at the
Washington Corrections Center for Women
Origin of Research Project: The Case of Darlene Green
▪ Explanation for confession
– Trauma-induced state led to partial dissociation in which Green
attempted to piece together what had happened
▪ “I guess I may have thought I shot William…I guess I was in shock… I
didn’t know what to think… He was lying on the floor dead and I was the
only one there”
– History of domestic violence led Green to internalize responsibility for
her husband’s suicide due to her tendency toward self-blame.
▪ “I am sure now that I didn't do it...but I felt to blame...that's the way it was
when he was violent and abusive...he would go on and on about things,
until I finally admitted it was my fault and I was to blame.”
Applying the Typology to
Female False Confession
Cases
How Do Women’s Unique Histories Influence
False Confessions?
▪ Voluntary False Confession
– A battered woman may voluntarily confess to a crime she knows she
did not commit in an attempt to escape an abusive partner
▪ Laverne Pavlinac
– An abused woman may voluntarily confess to a crime she knows she
did not commit in order to protect her child.
▪ Patricia Sloan
– Mental illness may lead a woman to confess to a crime she knows
she did not commit.
▪ Claudia Yasko
How Do Women’s Unique Histories Influence
False Confessions?
▪ Voluntary Internalized False Confession
– Trauma-related symptomology may lead to memory disturbances and
dissociative states. Subsequently, a woman may not remember the
incident, be confused about the details, and be more susceptible
toward internalizing guilt and assuming responsibility for the crime.
▪ Lesley Beagel
– Mental illness may lead a woman to internalize responsibility for a
crime and voluntarily confess in an attempt to absolve her feelings of
grief, depression, and self-blame.
▪ Vicki Jo Aten
How Do Women’s Unique Histories Influence
False Confessions?
▪ Coerced-Internalized False Confession
– During the course of a coercive interrogation, vulnerabilities may be
manipulated causing a woman to doubt her own recollection of
events, and internalize guilt for the crime
▪ Beverly Monroe, Beth Labatte
– The use of coercive tactics, such as dream hypnosis or suggestive
inferences about blocking out memories, may be used over the
course of the interrogation to help the woman ‘remember’ what had
happened
▪ Kenzi Snider, Kelly Jo Koch
– Even once innocence has been established, a woman who has
internalized guilt may have difficulty believing that she did not commit
the crime
▪ Debra Sheldon
How Do Women’s Unique Histories Influence
False Confessions?
▪ Coerced-Reactive False Confession
– A battered woman may confess to a crime she did not actually
commit in an attempt to protect an abusive spouse who committed
the crime.
▪ Imogene Faith Farrell, Carline Balbuena
– A battered woman may take responsibility for a crime committed by
an abusive partner out of fear of direct threats to herself or her
children.
▪ Kristina Earnest
– A woman may confess to a crime committed by a loved one such as
a child or significant other
▪ Donna Macdonald
How Do Women’s Unique Histories Influence
False Confessions?
▪ Coerced-Compliant
– Factors such as substance abuse, mental illness, and abuse
histories may lead a woman to confess in an attempt to escape the
aversive interrogation
▪ Cara McIntosh
– Cognitive limitations can lead a woman to acquiesce to suggestions
of guilt during the interrogation and confess to a crime she did not
commit
▪ Dayna Christoph, Shawnte Shuree Jones
– Interrogation techniques, such as threats to child, may appeal to
maternal instinct and lead a woman to falsely confess in order to
protect her children
▪ Michelle Byrom, Doris Green
Emerging Issues and Future
Directions
The Role of Children
▪ Threats to Children
– In original analysis, approximately 40% of cases involved threats to the
woman’s child during the interrogation
▪ Direct threats: removal of children, blaming child for the crime
▪ Indirect threats: manipulating maternal instinct and the desire to protect
▪ Child Victims
– In original analysis, approximately 38% of cases involved a child victim
▪ Women were wrongfully convicted of child homicide or child sexual abuse
▪ Patterns: no crime occurred, child sexual abuse hysteria, accidental death
(SIDS)
– In some cases, women confessed to child homicide out of fear of an abusive
spouse. In these cases, there was evidence of both child and spousal abuse
prior to the false confession.
Expert Witness Testimony
▪ In 35 cases, expert witness testimony was proposed during
criminal legal proceedings to explain:
– General factors related to false confessions (n=14)
– The relationship between cognitive limitations such as intellectual
disability and false confessions (n=4)
– The influence of trauma and abuse histories and trauma-related
symptomology associated with Battered Woman’s Syndrome and
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (dissociation, psychogenic amnesia,
confabulation) (n=17)
▪ Expert testimony was only admitted at trial in 11 cases
Expert Witness Testimony
▪ During appellate proceedings, the conviction was reversed and
the case was remanded for retrial based on the inadmissibility
of expert witness testimony in 6 cases
▪ In the remaining cases, the inadmissibility decision of the trial
court was affirmed on appeal
▪ Reasons cited:
– Within common knowledge of jurors and would not assist the trier of fact
– Probative value outweighed by potential prejudicial effect
– Testimony lacks reliability
Expert Witness Testimony
▪ Reasons cited when proposed testimony included the
relationship between false confessions and trauma and
abuse histories:
– Lack of general acceptance within the scientific community
– Theory has not been subjected to peer review and publication
– Theory is novel and lacks scientific reliability
– Proposed theory has unknown error rates
Ongoing Analysis of Cases
▪ Expanding our database
–Since 2014:
▪ 6 new cases added to the National Registry of Exonerations
▪ Approximately 20 new cases identified through legal databases,
news searches, and peer support
Implications of Research
Overarching Goals
▪ Promoting continued psychological research into women
and false confessions
▪ Integrating this research into practice
– Implications for the criminal justice system and legal system
▪ Interrogation
▪ Trial and conviction
▪ Post-conviction assistance
▪ Changing public policy
Question and Answer
Session