"Mental Health and False Confessions"

Recently posted on SSRN: "Mental Health and False Confessions" 

WILLIAM C. FOLLETTE, University of Nevada, Reno

RICHARD A. LEO, University of San Francisco - School of Law

DEBORAH DAVIS, University of Nevada, Reno

Abstract:

This chapter reviews various mental disorders and discusses how the vulnerabilities that are typical of these disorders multiply the effectiveness of the interrogation tactics that produce coerced confessions and increases the risk of eliciting false and unreliable confessions. The chapter also describes how attorneys can use scholarship about false confessions to explain to courts and juries how and why coerced and false confessions occur and their effect in the American criminal justice system.