What Makes Criminal Suspects Give a False Confession?

When 16-year old Kharey Wise entered the Central Park Police Precinct at 102nd St on April 20, 1989, he didn't realize what he was walking into. It was the day after one of the most grisly crimes in official New York memory-the brutal sexual assault of a woman who would become known as the Central Park Jogger-and Wise had been asked to come in along with other black and Latino youths who had allegedly been in the park the night before. Wise was taken to the scene of the crime and shown graphic pictures of the woman's injuries, which included a fractured skull. Eventually, his visit to the police station would lead to an interrogation and, after nine hours of questioning, a videotaped confession that was confusing, convoluted, and chilling.

"Oh man, blood was scattered all over the place. I couldn't look at it no more," Wise told his interrogators. "…We went to the park for trouble and got trouble, a lot of trouble. That's what they wanted and I guess that's what I wanted. When I was doing it, that's what I wanted too. I can't apologize because it's too late. Now we got to pay up for what we did."

The confession was as good as a conviction. By the time it was shown in court, the jury, the city, and the country were convinced Wise and his four co-defendants-who had also confessed-were guilty as sin. But at the trial a problem arose. Despite his taped confession, Kharey Wise now insisted he was innocent. His confession, he said, had been forced out of him by the police.

A few days after Thanksgiving 1990, a dramatic exchange took place on the stand between the prosecutor and Wise. The New York Times ran it:

"Did the police tell you to say, "It was my first rape?'" [prosecutor Elizabeth Lederer] said, her arms folded tightly around her waist.

"Yes," he said.

"Did they ever tell you to say you had never done it before and would never do it again?"

"Yes."

"Did they tell you to say, "We went to the park for trouble and that's what we got?"

"Yes," he said.

"Did the police make you say 'We got to pay for what we did?'"

"Yes."

"Did they make you demonstrate how she was beaten and raped?"

"Yes."

"How she was punched?"

"Probably."

With that answer, Ms. Lederer shot back: "The police never told you any of those things, did they?"

"I just wanted to go home," he replied.

The jury was not convinced. Unlike his co-defendants, Wise was sent to an adult prison, where he spent 11-and-a-half years behind bars. Then, in 2002, following a confession by another convict (and a conclusive DNA match), he and the other young men - now known as the Central Park Five - were exonerated

The exoneration was met with the outrage and skepticism of many who could not believe that a group of men who had given confessions could possibly have been innocent-exculpatory evidence be damned. As a reporter for the Village Voice wrote at the time: "the acceptance of their guilt appears so deeply embedded in the public consciousness that even Matias Reyes's confession and DNA match aren't enough to quell the murmuring of some pundits and naysayers." Not to mention the NYPD, which released a report denying any mistakes were made and proposing new theories as to how the teenagers had acted in concert with Reyes.

The Central Park Jogger case may have been exceptional in its notoriety-Donald Trump took out a full-page ad in the Times calling for the reinstatement of the state death penalty for the defendants-but its outcome was disturbingly revealing with regard to false confessions. In a court of law, whether written or captured on tape, defendant confessions are so damning, they can easily overpower any other evidence. According to a 1999 study on false confessions written by Richard P. Conti and published in the Journal of Credibility Assessment and Witness Psychology, "the introduction of a confession makes the other aspects of a trial in court superfluous."