False Confession Day

Coerced-compliant false confessions are the most common type of false confession. False confessions make for the leading cause of wrongful convictions in homicide cases. More than two-thirds of the DNA-cleared homicide cases documented by the Innocence Project were caused by false confessions. There have been 317 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States.

Often police use a “false evidence ploy” to increase the pressure on a suspect toward confessing—whether they committed the crime or not. This particular tactic has been cited by leading false confession experts as a main driver behind innocent people “confessing” to crimes they never committed. Let's stop fake confessions once and for all!