For a confession to be admitted as evidence, the confession must be voluntary, procured when a suspect is aware of his or her right to silence and counsel, and the methods that obtained the confession should not shock the conscience of the public. We conducted 3 studies on samples of Canadian citizens to begin to examine what the public does or does not find inappropriate in the context of police interrogations. Findings suggest that overtly coercive tactics are viewed as less appropriate than psychologically manipulative tactics. Crime severity and evidence strength influenced these perceptions. Of the psychologically manipulative tactics, only police lying about evidence appeared particularly negative to participants. The findings are discussed in the context of confession evidence admissibility and the possible implications for false confessions.
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