False confessions: Even judges are biased by camera perspective

False confession videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xJlsxCGw9w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkLHXKHb1Vc

-----------------------------------

False confessions: Even judges are biased by camera perspective

Category: News
Posted on: March 15, 2007 7:49 AM, by Dave Munger

When a suspect confesses to a crime, it's often seen as a clear victory for the prosecution. But what if the confession was coerced? Under the emotional strain of an interrogation, it happens more often than you'd think. In response to the problem of coercion, many police departments now videotape interrogations. This should eliminate all potential for abuse, right? Wrong. Teams led by Daniel Lassiter have found that when the camera is focused on the suspect instead of both the suspect and the interrogator, people are more likely to view the confession as voluntary rather than coerced (the video the viewers saw was based on the transcript of an actual false confession). Even when a judge warns jurors of the potential for bias due to camera perspective, the bias still occurs.

But perhaps judges and law-enforcement professionals, trained in the handling of suspects and interrogations, won't be swayed by the camera angle of a videotaped confession. Lassiter's team has just completed a study which shows confession footage to both groups:

The researchers presented participants with different versions of the confession in which the camera focused on only the suspect, only the detective, or both suspect and detective. Participants assessed how voluntarily the suspect confessed in each case.

The study found that judges and law enforcement officers considered the suspect-focus version of the confession to be more voluntary than the equal-focus and detective-focus versions.

"The phenomenon (camera-perspective bias) is rooted in a naturally occurring perceptual bias that affects everyone and which cannot be readily overcome regardless of people's expertise or the amount of professional training they have received," Lassiter said.

[...]