“Okay, fine, I did it!” (False Confessions)
Grade
9-12
Lesson Duration
From The Street Law Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center – The Innocence Project Curriculum
“Okay, fine, I did it!”: Life Taken/Reason for Wrongful Conviction/False Confessions
Go to: (pages 43-50)
“Okay, fine, I did it!” Students are shown three short video clips about false confessions and discuss the techniques used by detectives to get the suspects to confess. Students also participate in a role play that helps them to understand the process of “contamination, during which information needed for a detailed confession is transferred from the police interrogators to an innocent suspect during the course of an interrogation. Finally, students are asked to consider best practices that would minimize the number of false confessions.