Criminal Justice

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This panel will cover some of the latest developments regarding false confessions and false confession expert testimony. Debbie Davis will present an overview of the current psychological literature regarding false confessions and how they occur. Valena Beety will provide a litigator’s perspective on these cases, and Richard Leo will present the results of a new empirical study (with Steve Drizin) of 200 proven false confessions. Larry Rosenthal will offer a skeptical counter-perspective on false confession experts, asking whether the science is sufficiently reliable for Daubert purposes and whether the benefits of reforming interrogation techniques are worth the costs. Finally, Ed Cheng will offer evidence that the available case law does not accurately depict how courts have received false confession expert testimony, and will offer a new statistical method that detects and corrects for this publication bias.