Witness for the prosecution? The effect of confessions on eyewitness testimony

What is it with false confession? It seems crazy on the face of it, to take the blame for a crime you didn't commit. Yet experts have found that while some innocent confessors are mentally disturbed attention seekers, or taking the fall for someone else, most innocents who confess do so under stress, as an act of surrender, during a high stakes, high-pressure police interrogation. According to one estimate, fully a quarter of convictions later overturned by DNA evidence involved a false confession.

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