In a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the American Psychological Association has asserted that a voluntary confession should not bar the use of DNA testing for a convicted murderer.
The APA’s brief stems from the case of Anthony Wright, who is appealing a 1993 conviction on charges of first-degree murder, burglary, rape, robbery and possession of an instrument of crime. Wright is serving a life sentence and seeking DNA testing in order to exonerate himself.
The APA asserts that numerous psychological factors can cause suspects to confess to crimes they did not commit and that voluntary confessions should therefore not conclusively establish guilt.
“A confession that may be considered ‘voluntary,’ and therefore admissible into evidence, does not conclusively establish actual guilt,” the APA wrote in the brief. “Psychologists have conducted extensive studies as to the reasons why criminal defendants sometimes confess falsely despite their actual innocence.”
False confessions — even if they are determined to be voluntary — can be provoked by many circumstances, such as the manner of interrogation, or the defendant’s psychological attributes, the association said in the brief. The Washington-based APA, which has more than 148,000 members, filed the 23-page brief in the case of Wright v. Pennsylvania, No. 21 EAP 2008 (Pa.). It is represented by attorneys from the Philadelphia office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.
The APA said it had no position with regard to whether Wright’s confession was false or not, but said that, because there is a possibility it was false, Pennsylvania should move forward with DNA testing.
The amicus brief can be found here: http://www.apa.org/releases/wright-pa-brief.pdf
