Coerced Confessions & Jury Impressions

    

    The issue of coerced confessions and subsequent jury impressions can not be discussed without reference to the Supreme Court case of Arizona v. Fulminante. Oreste Fulminante was suspected of murdering his stepdaughter, but before any arrest for that crime he was incarcerated for an unrelated crime. While serving his time, Fulminante became friendly with another inmate who had an agreement with the FBI to collect information on other inmates. Despite protestation of his innocence initially, Fulminante admitted his guilt when the other inmate offered him protection in exchange. At Fulminante's trial for the murder, he disputed the admittance of his confession on the basis that it was coerced. The trial court admitted them and Fulminante was convicted and sentenced to death. On appeal, Fulminante was successful in getting a retrial without the use of the confession. The Supreme Court reviewed the case and described the initial admission of the coerced confession as "prejudicial error.""

    While it is customary to exclude a confession that "was elicited by physical violence or a threat of harm or punishment, promise of leniency, or without notifying the suspect of his or her Miranda rights", this is all dependent on the judge's own discretion. Even if a coerced confession is introduced at trial, evidence about coercion can still be presented to the jury. But how much does such evidence actually affect the jury and jury deliberations?

    Fundamental attribution error is a trap that many jurors fall into in cases of coerced confessions. Fundamental attribution error is the tendency "to assume that a person's actions depend on what 'kind' of person that person is rather than on the social and environmental forces that influence the person." A 1980 study from Kassin and Wrightsman found that "when a defendant confessed after an explicit threat of harm or punishment, [mock jurors] rejected the information." Yet, when the confession was elicited after a promise of leniency, "they conceded that the confession was involuntary but used it to vote guilty." Bottom line, a promise of reward was seen as a weaker inducement of confessions than threats of punishment.

    In a study of 85 mock jurors, "the mere presence of a confession was thus sufficient to turn acquittal into conviction, irrespective of the contexts in which it was elicited and presented." Even when given an instruction to disregard an inadmissible coerced confession, 44% still voted to convict and stated that the confession had not affected their verdict in an otherwise weak case. At the end of the study, the researchers determined that "confession evidence has a profound, context-resistant impact on jurors and should be admitted only with extreme caution."