Confession can be made under duress. A person who committed a punishable offense can be made to confess if the arguments against such a person are incontrovertible. Someone I met in USA was made to confess by his family lawyer to a crime he committed and he would be given few years in the penitentiary. However, after confession, he a life imprisonment was slammed on him and the lawyer bolted away with a lot of money the accused man's family had raised for the case. Definitely, if permissible, multiple investigations by independent officers should be made before someone is finally pronounced guilty. This may stem the epidemics of false positives and sieve away true negatives in "Confessions." I am not an Attorney but confessions to a crime committed or not committed may have something to do with the genes. Don't you think so?

Confessions of people in the church are always a sincere act. Unfortunately, to confess their sins in any other place can hypocritical people. Unfortunately, it happens.

When we speak of confessions, images of the Dark Ages and the Inquisition come to mind---torturing, wearing down, intimidating, threatening, and otherwise evoking what the inquirer wants to hear---which, whether or not there is guilt, the inquisitor creates it by brute force. Even an individual that is not under duress may feel enormous grief over the loss of a loved one (I caused their death, they say; if only I had arrived sooner; or they would be alive today if I had not....)--may not be of sound mind at the time of their "confession". Thank goodness there are procedures and legal tests of veracity that transcend the false-positive of emotional guilt or the danger of assumption or serendipity. 

Anthony,

Since you did not make the statement that:

99.8% of prosecutions where there is a confession end in a guilty verdict

I am assuming that you are referring to just guilty verdicts overall. Remember that there is also negotiations between the prosecutor and the defense in order to reduce sentence. The negotiation is not about whether the person is innocent or not, but if the case (testimony, evidence, etc.) is in favor or against the accused.

Disclaimer:I am not a lawyer

Yes, confessions of any sort should be inadmissible to court proceedings.

@all good responses

Not good enough, Max.  While there was no confession (rather, a vehement claim of innocence, that was later shown to be highly probable), the case of Michael Morton (Texas) comes immediately to mind.  Sorry, there are not satisfactory procedures nor sufficient legal tests of veracity.

Especially for the prosecutor and the crap that s/he spews to a jury.

I agree, William. My answer was alluding to the general question. But you are right, I wish there were always procedures to protect the accused until actual evidence tells us otherwise. But so often the prosecutor's zeal to get a conviction, any conviction, eludes true justice, and the truly guilty go unpunished---or, as we see in some cases, punishment is given where none was truly required (accidental, unintentional, etc.). 

The classic admonishment, that if you can't do the time, you ought not do the crime, has a corollary, that if you have to do the time, you ought to get to do the crime.

I've taken a few courses in law over the years, and earned certificates in contract law and ethics, not criminal law. So, my opinion is essentially one based on personal observation. But I can see the follies in getting confessions and not supporting their veracity with evidence. So I think a lot of good points have been made here and thank Anthony for bringing up this topic area. 

While I have studied business law only, I have also applied law, like FERPA, and as many persons have been, I have been the subject of investigation, such as when I ran for student office at CSUF, or when I offered opinions not appreciated by the police; an article appeared in Editor & Publisher about this work.  The law is a tool of oppression, abuse and retribution; nothing more.  It should in no way be facilitated by acquiescence to bullshit, of any form.  The confession is a paramount example of bullshit.

BTW - the same goes for the testimony of jail-house informants and  police informants.

Prosecutors need to learn how to prove their cases on evidence, not innuendo.

Juries need to be smart enough to know (and be able to competently recognise) the difference.

You are right, William, that the law can be and is used as a political weapon. We see that throughout history even today--bringing order and justice to a society is a difficult and ardent process. One of my areas of lecture is about the Zeigeists of various ages. We think it humorous when we see Zeitgeists of past ages where progress was impeded because of the ignorance and false notions of the times. Indeed, Hippocrates suffered the fate of the ignorance of his day, as did Galileo centuries later--DaVinci, the list is longer than we can begin to fathom. But when we look at the Zeigeists of our current day we have little room to take comfort, for entire industries and investments have been built on the modern equivalents, and only an unsuspecting public makes it possible to sustain any of them. That's one of the great things about RG is bringing together minds of opinion and learning that shine a brighter light on the falsities and errors of the day can facilitate change, albeit slowly.   

While we are on this topic, I have a most important statement to make.

It is not the job of the prosecutor to put people in prison at any cost.

The job of the prosecutor is to put only the guilty in prison.

Any other result is, and should be, unacceptable.  In my view, failure of the prosecutor to do exactly and only his or her job is want of honorable seppuku.

You have highlighted a common flaw in any adversarial criminal justice system. However in the absence of evidence confession-based evidence should -at the very least- be considered by law enforcement agencies and potentially used as the basis of an investigation. However as with the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six an over-reliance on confession evidence is incredibly dangerous. To make confessions inadmissible would be flawed (even in the absence of other evidence) but all confessions should have to be impartially reviewed (especially easy in England given the high-level of video recorded police interviews) or at the very least require further substantiation from alternative evidence (e.g. forensic, eyewitness or psychological) as you suggested 

Well said, Lee. I agree completely. In cases where the confession is the main piece of evidence and guilt exists there are a number of corroborating tests that should bear out the veracity of the confession. Always, though the burden of proof rests with the prosecution, at least in our justice system it does, and I'm relatively certain it does in yours, also. 

"Always, though the burden of proof rests with the prosecution, at least in our justice system it does, and I'm relatively certain it does in yours, also."

Yes, in general it does in the UK, in theory at least.  In practice, however, in high profile cases and where the media has been monstering the presumed offenders, the burden of proof slides over to the defence.  Thus in the Guildford and Birmingham terrorist cases vengeance and scapegoating were at the top of the public agenda, which is where the enforced false confessions proved so useful. 

"To make confessions inadmissible would be flawed (even in the absence of other evidence)".

Not sure about this.  So could we please have example(s) of cases where a correct conviction of someone for a serious crime was based solely on their confession? 

Just speaking in general terms, Anthony. I agree that sensationalism in the media and political input too often taints the delivery of justice. I would never suggest that guilt be determined solely on the basis of a confession, so I may not have stated my position clearly. There must, for true justice to prevail, always be corroborating evidence buttressing the confession and it must be compelling enough to leave no reasonable doubt. 

Actually, you have a way higher chance to get an illegally obtained/coerced confession than getting a false confession.

No idea where the estimate that 10% of confessions are false, outside of that lawyers anecdotal evidence. Professionally, although I have investigated confessions that were illegally obtained, I have only run into 1 that was false (intentionally) so anecdotally I would say that only around 1% were false...See the problem? By the way, yes I do know of other false confession cases, both through case law and other professionals.

Looking at confessions themselves though. The idea is, as US Supreme Ct. Justice F.Frankfurter stated (Columbe v. Connecticut 1961): "...if police investigation is not to be balked before it has fairly begun--but to seek out possible guilty witnesses and ask them questions, witnesses, that is, who are suspected of knowing something about the offense precisely because they are suspected of implication in it." Basically, they are witnesses because they were involved in the criminal act.

The US Supreme Court, through Escobedo v. Illinois (1964) and Miranda v. Arizona (1966), established the precedent that a person has the right to councel and the right against self-incrimination and must be notified of those rights before any interrogation (questioning related to potential involvement in crime being investigated). They also established that any waiving of those rights have to be voluntary and freely given. 

Here in the US, the courts have set the precedent which deters agencies from crossing the line (note, deters, not necessarily stops). As I already noted, you actually have a way better chance of an illegally obtained confession, than you do a false confession.

Also, unless there is no other evidence (very rare, but does happen), just the process of the actual investigation should develop corroborating evidence (physical evidence, witnesses, video, etc.). Just by the dynamics involved in a criminal investigation, it is extremely rare a case would only has a confession as evidence-even more rare that it would end up at trial (not settled through a plea bargain).

But because it is possible, here in the US there is a legal process of appeals (I know other countries have an appellate court system, I just cannot attest to who does/doesn't).

"Actually, you have a way higher chance to get an illegally obtained/coerced confession than getting a false confession."

 "I would say that only around 1% were false"

I am quite surprised at such a low figure for inaccurate confessions however they originated, though the only direct experience I have is my conversation with a leading UK criminal about 50y ago (he was actually an ex-boyfriend of Jacky Collins!), who said it was commonplace for criminals to be verballed by the police. The fact that there was actually a verb for this confirms that it must have been a very widespread practice.  Webster 1992 does not give this usage, but see Concise Oxford English Dict 2008: 

verbal n : A verbal statement containing a damaging admission alleged to have been made to the police, offered as evidence by the prosecution. 

Excellent perspective, Michel. And that pretty much matches the 1%+ figure often cited. Of course, we are still concerned about the 1% or whatever it is as it is a travesty for even one innocent individual to be wrongfully condemned. Thank you for your excellent contribution to the discussion.

"False confessions are a symptom of a problem within law enforcement (e.g. poor training & supervision, inadequate selection of personnel into specialized investigative units, tunnel vision), legal community (e.g. inadequate or incompetent defense, lack of rigor from prosecution), the judiciary (e.g. lack of training in deception of detection and certain psychological notions), and the legislative community (i.e. inadequate legal framework to prevent false confessions)."

   I don't think these are the main reasons for the notorious cases of false convictions in the UK.  As it says below, it boils down to the pressure the police were under, and the public desire for scapegoats, guilty or not.  It may actually have been the case that the police believed them guilty, justifying in their eyes their use of strong-arm tactics.  Academic psychologists have actually done some good research on various potent cognitive biases, so it is a pity the legal system ignores this work.

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"The bombings were at the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The Metropolitan Police were under enormous pressure to apprehend the IRA bombers responsible for the attacks in England. In December 1974 the police arrested three men and a woman, later known as the Guildford Four...

The Guildford Four were falsely convicted of the bombings in October 1975 and sentenced to life in prison. The Maguire Seven were falsely convicted of providing bomb-making material and other support in March 1976 and sentenced to terms varying between four and fourteen years.

The Guildford Four were held in prison for fifteen years... All the convictions were overturned years later in the appeal courts after it was proved the Guildford Four's convictions had been based on confessions obtained by torture (as were some Maguire Seven confessions), whilst evidence specifically clearing the Four was not reported by the police..."  (From Wikipedia)

Anthony, your concept of "verbal" happens more than people think. Here in the US, in the rules of hearsay, it's known as the "Excited/spontaneous utterance-admission against interests."

A good example is a shooting I responded as a LEO. As I entered the residence, a male adult was crying inside the door saying "I didn't mean to shoot her." His statement, as I entered, was completely admissable in court as a spontaneous utterance (even though I had not had the chance to Mirandize him).

The Guildford Four and the Maguire Seven, are good examples of false confessions, but it really is anecdotal. They are exceptions, not the rule. Especially, as Michel noted, considering the 70s to the present. As you move closer to present times, professional standards and procedures help, but technology (cameras, forensics, etc.) creates a lot more avenues to corroborate anybody's statements, giving them more weight in court. 

As an ex prosecutor I would consider a confession as just an element of the prosecution file - but not necessary.  Paramount will always be firstly sufficient evidence and secondly the public interest in taking the prosecution.