Videotaping is meant to minimize false confessions since cops are less likely to use coercive techniques that lead the innocent to confess. Just over 500 police and sheriff’s departments now record confessions, says Steven Drizin, director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, with all of those in Alaska, Minnesota and several other states requiring it at least for felonies. But according to a growing body of research, not all recording is of equal value. When a camera shows only a suspect’s face, studies show, potential jurors are more likely to believe the confession was voluntary and the suspect guilty than when it shows the faces of both suspect and interrogator. Now there is more bad news. Even judges with years of experience can be biased by camera angle, deeming confessions voluntary that were actually coerced. Since a confession can be introduced at trial only if a judge rules it voluntary, taping may not reduce the use of false confessions as much as hoped.
In the latest study, psychologist G. Daniel Lassiter and his colleagues at Ohio University showed mock confessions (pictured) to 21 judges. The judges assessed the mea culpas as more voluntary when the camera focused on the suspect alone. “Expertise provides no defense against the influence of camera perspective,” the scientists conclude in a paper in Psychological Science.
New Zealand requires the two-person focus. U.S. jurisdictions? Wisconsin suggests it; no law anywhere mandates it.