Suggestibility, Low Intelligence and a Confession to Crime

Abstract

There are considerable practical and ethical difficulties that confront a psychiatrist preparing a report for the defence when the case against the accused rests upon his confession of guilt. Until recently there has been widespread belief that a false confession is not made to a serious crime except in highly unusual or irregular circumstances. Indeed, Sir Henry Fisher, a former high court judge, who had been requested by the Home Secretary to examine the cases of three youths who had confessed to the murder of Maxwell Confait, a transvestite prostitute, concluded that their confessions could not have been made unless at least one had been involved in the killing. His belief has now been considered ill-founded, yet it was an opinion made after the three boys had been given their absolute discharges at appeal.