Addressing these arguments, the appellate court noted that under Rule 703 an expert witness is permitted to base an opinion on facts not otherwise admissible as evidence. It is the jury's role, not the expert's, to weigh the validity of a confession. Many have written of the major problems in this area prior to .

The paucity of scientific studies linking the relevant personality disorders to false confessions did not bar the admission of the expert's testimony in King, which was otherwise admissible under the Frye test. By contrast, the appellate court in King observed that Harris personally examined the defendant as a basis for the psychiatric diagnoses.

[T]he admissions of a defendant come from the actor himself, the most knowledgeable and unimpeachable source of information about his past conduct. Given the inadmissibility of the social science model in the earlier New Jersey decision in Free, the King decision places New Jersey squarely within the category of state jurisdictions showing a preference for the medical model. To that end, the court upheld the inadmissibility of the expert's testimony related to police investigators' statements about Mr. King's reference to other unsolved crimes during the interrogation. From the suspect's side, a variety of mental conditions may contribute to the susceptibility to confessing falsely or to confessing without full understanding of the waiver of rights.1 These conditions include mental illness (e.g., psychosis, depression), mental retardation, and drug intoxication or withdrawal. Rather, all factors, including objective evidence of the interrogation, the defendant's prior experience, and the Axis I or II diagnosis, must be synthesized. With Crane in mind, the New Jersey appellate court reviewed cases in other jurisdictions, extending Crane beyond the objective interrogation environment to the subjective psychological makeup of defendants. In assisting a jury's assessment of causation, an expert may testify in some jurisdictions that a particular psychiatric disorder is consistent with a false-confession claim, in the sense that the disorder may have been a factor in this suspect's behavior on this occasion. The court observed that psychiatrists had been permitted regularly to testify in New Jersey criminal cases about a defendant's statements if the expert relied on those statements to reach an opinion about a psychiatric condition. We are uncomfortable with the appellate court's elevating DSM-IV to the level of implying that an official diagnosis tells us something meaningful about the reliability of a confession. Obtaining evidence in criminal cases takes on different meaning when it is infused with interpersonal dynamics (the interrogation) and the psychological traits or psychopathology of the suspect. As the U.S. Supreme Court has noted, quoting Justice White's dissent in Bruton v. United States: A confession is like no other evidence. We review the 2006 New Jersey Superior Court decision in State of New Jersey v. George King to illustrate what is involved in the admissibility of false-confession testimony and use the case as a starting point in developing a best-practice approach to working in this area.
If argued under this line of cases, it is unnecessary to prove that the confession was, in fact, involuntary. concluded that these findings lend support to the practice of admitting expert testimony when the question turns on whether the subject matter is beyond the knowledge of the average citizen. The judicious use of expert testimony, when grounded within the limits of empirical science, has the potential to provide fact-finders with needed perspective. Essentially, an expert may base an opinion on facts not otherwise admissible as evidence. In that case, the Court ruled that police officers could initiate a second interrogation of a suspect who had previously invoked his Miranda right to remain silent once two weeks had elapsed from the date of the original interrogation. The court found that Harris had diagnosed psychiatric disorders in the defendant that were described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV),19 and that the “[g]eneral acceptance of the DSM in the psychiatric community is beyond dispute” (Ref.

Prosecutors may view the hearsay exception as a drawback, since it allows the defendant's words to reach the jury without cross-examination. The proffered testimony is more likely to satisfy the threshold requirement for admissibility if the expert offers a specific DSM-IV diagnosis of the defendant. The Beagel court found that the testimony was supported by diagnostic criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition, Revised (DSM-III-R),21 representing a prima facie case that the testimony was based on generally accepted principles in the field of psychiatry, as required by Frye. to invalidate a confession.” 641 So. The defense also argued that Harris should be allowed to refer to police investigators' statements, as they supported his opinion that Mr. King attempted to confess falsely to other murders. They acknowledge that whether the admissibility standard is Frye, Daubert, or another, the question of the utility of an expert is reduced to “whether the expert's proffered testimony: (1) will assist the jury in evaluating the credibility of the confession and is therefore admissible; or (2) is already within the common knowledge of the jury, making the testimony superfluous and therefore inadmissible” (Ref.

Custodial confessions, in the absence of physical evidence, can be the key to a criminal prosecution. It is our position that since the empirical evidence linking psychiatric diagnoses to false confessions is lacking, it should be left to the jury to determine causation and whether the diagnostic features as outlined by an expert are consistent with a particular defendant's false-confession claim.

He claimed that he had also attempted to confess falsely to several other murders during his interrogation.

33, pp 20–21). Such a determination would be critical in assessing the defendant's claim and is clearly beyond the knowledge of the average lay person. In addressing the state's motion, the trial court stated: [B]y human nature, individuals will neither assert, concede, nor admit to facts that would affect them unfavorably. Both the defense and prosecution appealed this ambivalent ruling. To bridge the cognitive dissonance of guilt in the face of amnesia, interrogators supply theories such as alcohol- or drug-induced blackout, momentary lapse in consciousness, a repressed memory, or multiple personality.2 Ofshe and Leo2 also illustrate multiple dynamics by which skilled interrogators obtain confessions from innocent suspects—for example, the rhetorical minimization of the recited Miranda warnings, which can induce hopelessness; interpreting the suspect's demeanor (“I'm a human lie detector”); and fabricating eyewitness corroboration, co-perpetrator confession, or scientific evidence (polygraphy, fingerprints, DNA). The confession of a criminal defendant serves as a prosecutor's most compelling piece of evidence during trial. The court also cited the New Jersey decision in State v. Farthing,22 recognizing the admissibility of hearsay statements relied on by an expert, not for the purpose of establishing the statement's truth, but to provide the jury with the basis of the opinion.
As such, the defendant's psychology was considered relevant to the reliability of his confession. Otherwise, such a sweeping prohibition would leave Harris with a net opinion.

This perspective becomes obvious when one considers the fundamental role of the expert—assisting the jury to understand subject matter that is beyond the ken of the average citizen. He pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter of Ryan, but claimed that his confession to Rush's murder was fabricated. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition, Revised.

This rule is a result of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Miranda v.Arizona, which is why they're referred to as "Miranda rights.". While it may be true that clinicians generally accept DSM-IV for classification purposes, we do not suggest that the willy-nilly use of medical labels should pass for acceptable testimony. Very few said that one could tell whether a confession is true or false by listening to an audiotape or watching a videotape.

Thus far, we have looked at the reasons that expert testimony may aid the adjudication of false-confession claims, ranging from the prevalence of the phenomenon to the social and psychological dynamics of interrogations to an education gap in jurors' understanding of the process. The Michigan court in Hamilton, considering Crane, found that although Crane dealt with the external interrogation environment, its principle was equally applicable to the psychological makeup of the defendant. Coerced-compliant false confessions are offered in an attempt to avoid external pressure or to obtain a reward. By now, there is little doubt that innocent criminal suspects give incriminating statements.

The defense appealed the limitation imposed on Harris's testimony. According to the court, all of these methods were satisfied in King. It is our view that a best-practice approach includes two elements: knowledge of the social science literature regarding police-suspect interactions and the permutations of how a suspect's will and motivations are shaped by the demand characteristics of the interrogation; and clinical data from personal examinations, psychometric testing, medical records, and school records that inform the court, within reasonable scientific certainty, about how, in the instant case, the suspect acted against liberty interest. The modest analogy we propose is that the literature on the social psychology of confessions is sufficiently robust for expert witnesses to assert, for example, “There are certain characteristics of humans in stressful situations that give rise to adaptations that would be considered self-defeating.” There does not appear to be much controversy about whether false confessions occur. However, within this framework, the confessor subjectively does not accept the confession as true. Thus, the social science model looks generally at the problem, and the medical model specifically at the person under consideration. This article outlines the scientific and epistemological bases of expert testimony on false confession, notes the obstacles facing its admissibility, and provides guidance to the expert in formulating opinions that will reach the judge or jury. Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution and Other Dispatches From the Wrongly Convicted.