Juror perceptions of false confessions versus witness recantations.

In false confessions, someone confesses to a crime but then later retracts that confession, whereas in witness recantations, an eyewitness testifies but then later revokes that testimony. The revocations are conceptually similar, but they differ in the author of the revocation - the defendant versus a third party. The current study examines differences in juror perceptions of the legitimacy of false confessions versus witness recantations, and also takes contextual influences (coercion and crime severity) into account. False confessions were found to be judged more harshly than witness recantations, but, surprisingly, levels of coercion and the severity of the crime did not influence decision-making in the manner that the original hypotheses predicted. Implications for the application of this research are discussed.