Chapter 3 examines the common belief that those who are accused of crimes, particularly ethnic minorities, are probably guilty of something. The chapter begins by citing bias in news presentations of crime that reinforce the belief that people of color are criminally inclined. The process of criminalizing black and brown life begins early with disparities in discipline in schools resulting in the school-to-prison pipeline. Experiments on the shooting bias as well as actual police shootings is discussed next. The popularity of Stand Your Ground laws codifies white vigilantism. Biases that can enter all aspects of police investigation, criminal prosecution, sentencing, and the death penality are discussed. Experimental research exposing the role that harsh interrogations and false confessions in routing innocent suspects into the criminal legal system is presented as well. Juror behavior and their processing of evidence is also addressed in Chapter 3. The chapter concludes with suggested policy changes to prevent false confession and conviction, and toward more fairness in the criminal legal system.

Shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma struggles to find a solid scientific foundation, largely because of a circularity confound, the same diagnostic features under study serve as the basis for categorising cases for research purposes. In an attempt to overcome this circularity, researchers have turned to confessions as a sorting criterion in the research, under the belief that confessions are independent of the diagnostic features and hence not subject to circularity. However, none of the research examines the nature and reliability of the confessions, or the interrogations that produce them; they simply accept the confessions as true, reliable, and independent. Research on interrogations and false confessions, however, along with extensive and wholly consistent anecdotal evidence, strongly suggest that SBS/AHT confessions are largely if not entirely produced by interrogator reliance on the diagnostic findings. That reliance undermines both the independence of the confessions, and hence their ability to break free from circularity, and the reliability of these confessions as a group. On the current state of knowledge, confessions cannot be relied upon to substitute for science to support the SBS/AHT hypothesis.

Doctors and prosecutors who defend the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome (SBS) point, among other things, to the many confessions obtained from parents and other caregivers as evidence of the reality of the diagnosis. Drawing on the existing social science research, this chapter examines the questions of (1) how, if at all, interrogations of those suspected of injuring or killing a child are conducted differently than other interrogations, and (2) what, if anything, would render such suspects more or less vulnerable to confession (true or false). The chapter examines how interrogations are typically conducted, and the primary reasons suspects confess, keeping in mind that their confessions can be either true or false. In the end, this chapter concludes that suspects in alleged shaken baby cases are arguably more vulnerable to false confession than those suspected of other crimes, and accordingly one cannot assume the reliability or truthfulness of confessions in these cases.

This chapter reviews how shaken baby syndrome cases are handled in France. Since 2011, national health guidelines published by the Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS) prompt all healthcare professionals to report to the police all infants with components of the ‘triad’, including subdural haematoma and retinal haemorrhage. The scientific foundations behind these guidelines have been extensively criticised, and their repeal has been requested in front of the French administrative Supreme Court (Conseil d’État). Hundreds of families claiming to be victims of wrongful allegations of child abuse due to medical errors have gathered in an association, Adikia, the largest organization of this kind in the world. Declarative statistics obtained by this association yield interesting insight into wrongful medical determinations of SBS, including the issue of false confessions that is pervasive despite the absence of a formal plea bargaining process in the French criminal justice system.

The early conceptualization of Hugo Münsterberg in1908 laid the foundation for understanding different types of false confession, but tangible theoretical developments, assessment methodology of cases of disputed confessions, and empirical evidence base did not emerge until the 1980s. The gradual emergence of the science of false confession began with real life cases of disputed confessions in the 1970s and 1980s and the lessons that the cases taught scientists and expert witnesses interested in false confessions and psychological vulnerabilities. Theoretical developments led to better understanding of different types of false confessions. The psychological evaluation of real-life cases raised pertinent research questions, led to the development of innovative methodology and validated psychometric tests, and the collection of evolving empirical databases relevant to the evaluation of new cases. There is now a substantial evidence base for the science of false confession. This chapter explains its origin, development, and challenges.