What do legal professionals know about false confessions? A survey with defense attorneys, public prosecutors, and criminal judges.

In criminal proceedings, legal professionals have to make crucial decisions, for which they need relevant knowledge. For example, to prevent and reverse wrongful convictions based on false confessions, legal professionals need to be aware of their existence and associated risk factors. In an online survey, we evaluated German defense attorneys', public prosecutors', and criminal judges' (N = 191) knowledge of false confessions. All respondents believed that false confessions occur in police interviews. However, in contrast to prior research findings and real-life cases, around 25% of respondents answered "no" when asked whether false confessions occur due to pressure by the police in a suspect interview and indicated that minimization and maximization tactics would not increase the risk of false confessions. Legal professionals believed that mental illness, low intelligence, withdrawal symptoms, and leading questions are the strongest contributors to coerced false confessions. Overall, defense attorneys demonstrated higher levels of agreement with evidence-based risk factors compared to public prosecutors and criminal judges. The findings suggest that legal professionals underestimate the risk of confession-oriented interrogation tactics, which could hinder them from protecting innocent individuals from wrongful convictions based on false confessions.