Chapter 33 — Self-Check Quiz

25 questions: multiple choice and short answer. Try them closed-book. The answer key is in the collapsed block at the bottom.

Multiple choice

1. A false confession is best defined as: - A. Any confession a defendant later regrets - B. An admission of guilt for a crime the person did not commit - C. A confession obtained without reading Miranda warnings - D. A confession that is recanted at trial

2. The key difference between an interview and an interrogation is: - A. An interview is recorded and an interrogation is not - B. An interview gathers information with an open mind; an interrogation seeks a confession from a presumed-guilty suspect - C. An interview is conducted by detectives and an interrogation by uniformed officers - D. There is no meaningful difference

3. The Reid technique is characterized by: - A. Open-ended, non-accusatory questioning - B. Isolating the suspect, confronting them with assertions of guilt, refusing denials, and offering minimizing themes - C. Always providing an attorney before any questioning - D. Recording only the final confession

4. A coerced-compliant false confession is one in which the suspect: - A. Comes to genuinely believe they committed the crime - B. Knows they are innocent but confesses to escape the interrogation or gain a benefit - C. Volunteers a confession with no police involvement - D. Is physically tortured into confessing

5. A coerced-internalized false confession is one in which the suspect: - A. Knows they are innocent the entire time - B. Comes to genuinely (if temporarily) believe they committed the crime, their memory distorted by suggestion - C. Confesses for notoriety - D. Is protecting the real perpetrator

6. The Lindbergh kidnapping (1932) is cited in the chapter as an example of: - A. Coerced-internalized confession - B. Confession contamination - C. Voluntary false confessions (an estimated ~200 people confessed) - D. The PEACE model

7. Of the interrogation tactics, the one most strongly associated with false confessions in research is: - A. Reading the Miranda warnings - B. Offering the suspect water - C. The false-evidence ploy (lying that incriminating evidence exists) - D. Recording the interrogation

8. Under Frazier v. Cupp (1969), U.S. police: - A. Must always tell the suspect the truth about the evidence - B. May lie to a suspect about the evidence, and a confession so obtained is not automatically inadmissible - C. May never interrogate a suspect without counsel - D. Must limit interrogations to two hours

9. The constitutional standard for admitting a confession is: - A. Whether it is true - B. Whether it is corroborated by DNA - C. Voluntariness under the totality of the circumstances - D. Whether the suspect was a juvenile

10. "Confession contamination" refers to: - A. Physical contamination of the confession document - B. The disclosure of nonpublic crime-scene facts to a suspect during interrogation, so their later "knowledge" reflects the interrogation, not the crime - C. A suspect lying in their confession - D. Mixing two suspects' statements

11. A confession's incriminating detail is genuinely probative when the suspect: - A. Repeats facts the police already knew - B. Volunteers a previously unknown fact that police did not have, which is then independently confirmed - C. Signs the statement - D. Cries during the interrogation

12. The single most important reform to reduce false confessions, per §33.6, is: - A. Longer interrogations - B. Mandatory complete custodial recording (the entire interrogation) - C. More aggressive use of the false-evidence ploy - D. Removing the Miranda warnings

13. Recording only the final confession (not the whole interrogation): - A. Solves the contamination problem completely - B. Captures the product while hiding the manufacturing — it does not solve contamination - C. Is required by Miranda - D. Is better than recording the whole session

14. The PEACE model is: - A. A more aggressive version of the Reid technique - B. A non-accusatory, information-gathering interview method that does not presume guilt or use deception - C. A forensic DNA protocol - D. A type of polygraph

15. Adolescents are the highest-risk group for false confessions primarily because: - A. They commit more crimes - B. They are more suggestible, more deferential to authority, and weigh short-term escape over long-term consequence - C. They cannot be interrogated legally - D. They always have attorneys present

16. Interrogation length matters because: - A. Longer interrogations are more accurate - B. Resistance is finite; a session extended past exhaustion tests endurance, not guilt - C. The law requires long interrogations - D. Length has no effect on confessions

17. Calling a confession "the gold standard of evidence" is, per the chapter: - A. Correct — confessions are the most valid forensic test - B. An inversion of the validity spectrum: highest confidence attached to a method whose accuracy was never measured - C. A claim supported by PCAST 2016 - D. True only for recorded confessions

18. In the cold case, Renner's confession is contradicted by: - A. A second eyewitness - B. The autopsy timeline (dead before the fire; blunt-force trauma) and the cell-site records (phone far from the cabin) - C. His own fingerprints on the gas can - D. A polygraph

19. The honest status of Renner after this chapter is: - A. "Renner remains the leading suspect" - B. "Renner's confession is false; he is excluded by the physical timeline and cell-site data" - C. "Renner is guilty but the confession was illegal" - D. "The evidence is inconclusive about Renner"

20. Expert testimony on false confessions, increasingly admitted, mainly serves to: - A. Tell the jury the confession was false - B. Counter the juror intuition that "no innocent person would confess" by explaining how false confessions are produced - C. Replace the judge's voluntariness ruling - D. Prove the defendant innocent

Short answer

21. In two sentences, answer the lay question "why would anyone confess to something they didn't do?" using at least two mechanisms from §33.1.

22. Explain the "fundamental attribution error" as it applies to a juror evaluating a confession, and state the safeguard the chapter recommends.

23. Describe the contamination test in one sentence: what kind of fact in a confession actually proves guilty knowledge, and what kind proves nothing?

24. Name the three features of the Renner interrogation that the §33.6 reforms would each have addressed, and pick one to explain how the reform would change what a court could evaluate.

25. Write one honest sentence stating what the cell-site data (Chapter 25) and the autopsy (Chapter 11) together establish about Renner, and why that justifies "Renner's confession is false."

Answer key (click to expand) **Multiple choice:** 1-B · 2-B · 3-B · 4-B · 5-B · 6-C · 7-C · 8-B · 9-C · 10-B · 11-B · 12-B · 13-B · 14-B · 15-B · 16-B · 17-B · 18-B · 19-B · 20-B **Short answer (model points):** **21.** Any two, e.g.: **escape** — an innocent person confesses to end an unbearable, seemingly endless interrogation, often told (falsely) that confessing is the way out, with the short-term relief overpowering the abstract future cost; **perceived hopelessness/coercion** — told the evidence is conclusive, the suspect concludes resistance is futile and conviction inevitable, so confessing for hinted leniency looks rational; **compliance under authority**; or **genuine memory confusion** (coerced-internalized). **22.** The **fundamental attribution error** is the tendency to explain another's behavior by their character ("he confessed, so he's the type who did it") while discounting the *situation* that produced it. A juror compares their calm, rested, free self to a defendant who was exhausted, frightened, isolated, and shown fabricated evidence. **Safeguard:** judge the *process* that produced the confession, not your intuition about the person — ask "what did this interrogation do, and to whom?" rather than "would an innocent person confess?" **23.** A fact the suspect **volunteered that the police did not already know and that was then independently confirmed** is genuine guilty knowledge; a fact the police **already knew and could have conveyed** proves nothing, because contamination is a live explanation for it. **24.** The three: (1) the interrogation was **largely unrecorded** (first several hours) → **complete custodial recording** would let a court reconstruct who first stated each incriminating fact, exposing or ruling out contamination; (2) it ran **~11 hours overnight** → a **time limit** (with breaks/sleep) would have bounded the endurance test; (3) it used the **false-evidence ploy** on a young suspect → **restricting deception** (and requiring counsel/an appropriate adult for vulnerable suspects) would have removed the tactic most tied to false confessions. (Explanation for any one is acceptable; recording is the strongest.) **25.** Model: "The autopsy showed Diallo died of blunt-force trauma *before* the fire — not by a fire set around a living man, the act Renner described — and the cell-site records place Renner's phone far from Mill Creek Road across the relevant window; a confession contradicted by both the body's timeline and the location data is false, and Renner is excluded as the person who set the fire."