“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)

http://www.law.georgetown.edu/academics/academic-programs/clinical-programs/our-clinics/DC-Street-Law-Program/upload/001-Lives-Taken-Fixed.pdf

“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.

Source

The Street Law Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center: Georgetown law students designed a unit that provides students with a relevant and interesting introduction to the criminal justice system, criminal procedure, and criminal law, using the Innocence Project to explore how good lawyering, good police work, and a just and effective criminal justice system should operate.