A True Crime: Why Innocent People Get Convicted Derner Alumnus Studies the Psychology at Play in Wrongful Conviction

According to the Innocence Project, 63 percent of the wrongfully convicted individuals the organization helped to exonerate were victims of eyewitness misidentification and 29 percent gave false confessions.

It has been the life's work of Matthew Barry Johnson, MA '82, PhD '84, to better understand why innocent people get convicted of crimes-from understanding why people confess to crimes they did not commit to the psychological processes that impact criminal identification-and to be an advocate for turning that tide.

We interviewed Dr. Johnson, a Derner clinical psychology and general psychology alumnus and professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice-CUNY, to learn about the roots of his interest in research at the crossroads of psychology and due process, and to gain insights into his profound findings that have had a meaningful impact on the justice system.

Your research focuses on interrogation and confession, wrongful conviction, and parental rights termination in family court. How did you develop your interest in psychology in the area of criminal justice?

There are several sources of influence that led me to the intersection of psychology and law. As an adolescent, I was influenced by the civil rights and the racial justice movements. Pivotal events in my development were the assassinations of Malcolm X when I was 12, Martin Luther King when I was 15 and Fred Hampton when I was 16. I admired the work these men did. I also admired Thurgood Marshall's accomplishments, and considered a career in law. As an undergraduate, journalism was also a career interest after I read several books by journalist Louis Lomax.

Though I had a deep interest in civil rights and racial justice issues, which were being considered in the legal arena, I wanted a profession that would both allow me to make a good living and have a degree of independence.

A few key moments helped to crystallize my direction. At some point, I read the book Simple Justice and learned about the role of psychologist Kenneth Clark, PhD, in the legal challenge to school segregation. I also learned about George Jackson, PhD, a Black psychologist who was well regarded in the community where I was raised, making court appearances related to his clinical work. Then while I was completing my PhD at Derner, I saw the film A Death in Canaan about Peter Reilly, a young man from Connecticut who was manipulated by the police to confess to the murder of his mother. This fascinated me and I knew I wanted to study that process.

You're a well-known expert in the areas of eyewitness memory/identification and interrogation/false confessions. What are some of the psychological processes at play in these criminal justice situations?

Within forensic psychology, eyewitness misidentification and false confession are typically separate areas of research. In the textbooks, they are covered in different chapters. However, they are both situations where unreliable evidence is used to convict an innocent person. That is, a witness who identifies an innocent person as the perpetrator, and a criminal suspect who is persuaded or coerced to take responsibility for a crime they did not commit. These are not simply errors.

Psychological research has identified a host of factors that undermine reliable identification. Some are circumstances that may limit the view of the person initially, then there are other factors that interfere with accurate recall of the face later. Psychologists have demonstrated that questioning about a past event can produce false memories of the event. We know from controlled studies, as well as review of actual cases, that about 30 percent of eyewitness identifications are inaccurate. When there is a weapon involved, when it is a cross-racial identification, when it is a high-stress situation, there is an increased likelihood of error. Police officers conducting the lineup may inadvertently, or intentionally, guide the witness to make a misidentification. Also, whenever the actual perpetrator is not in the lineup or photo spread, witnesses are likely to choose the person who most closely resembles their recall of the perpetrator.

False confessions are typically a product of police coercion, though sometimes false confessions are provided to protect a third party or stem from an impaired state. Interrogators have elaborate, multifaceted methods they employ to elicit "confessions." Essentially, the same tactics that are effective in gaining confessions from the guilty can cause innocent people to confess. I discuss this in greater length in this interview.

Tell us about the "Interrogations Expectations" instrument you developed to investigate people's comprehension of the Miranda process. What is the most surprising finding that emerged from it?

What we found with this research is that many people fully understand the Miranda Rights-the right to counsel and right to silence-but doubt the police will honor those rights when asserted. That is, they are concerned that police can, and will, penalize them if they fail to answer questions or are otherwise deemed "uncooperative." A common strategy used by interrogators is to convey to the suspect that making an admission to the offense will benefit the suspect in some way. Most interrogations occur in a police-dominated environment and are not fully recorded. Suspects often understand their rights fully but feel vulnerable about asserting them. I am continuing to conduct research in this area with my former student, Shereen Lewis, who is currently completing her third year at Derner.

Can you share some of the psychological insights you draw in your 2021 book, Wrongful Conviction in Sexual Assault: Stranger Rape, Acquaintance Rape, and Intra-Familial Child Sexual Assaults?

There are several significant insights and observations presented in this work. The chief insight, as implied in the title, is that one particular type of crime accounts for a dramatically large proportion of wrongful convictions.

That crime is rape by a stranger. Stranger rape occurs less often than acquaintance rape, or child sexual assault, yet it predominates among exonerations. The large majority of victims of sexual assault were attacked by someone they knew, a co-worker, a current or former sexual partner or a family member. Stranger rapes account for only about 22 percent of sexual assaults yet this rare crime makes up about 72 percent of all the cases exonerated by the Innocence Project. The police are under greater pressure to solve stranger rapes because these crimes are especially threatening to the public at large.

However, investigation of stranger rapes presents unique challenges. Victims assaulted by someone they have never seen before often have trouble making reliable identifications (as in the Ronald Cotton, Thomas Haynesworth and Steven Avery cases). In a large proportion of these wrongful convictions, victims were misled into making erroneous identifications. In other cases where victims were raped and killed (or otherwise incapacitated), the police rely on coercive interrogation tactics resulting in the wrongful convictions, such as the Central Park Five, Jeffrey Deskovic and Christopher Ochoa cases.

The psychological reaction to certain crimes leads to common errors in criminal investigation. Where there is a high-profile crime, there are "motivational biases" on the part of investigators and prosecutors. When there is a Black assailant and a white victim, all sorts of racial biases emerge in the investigation and prosecution.

Another relevant insight revealed in the book involves the role of serial sex offenders in wrongful conviction. For instance, in the six prosecutions mentioned above (and many others), each case involved innocent suspects who were convicted of crimes committed by serial sex offenders. The failure of the crime investigators to recognize the serial nature of sex offending in the vicinity meant innocent people were convicted and the serial offenders were left in the community to commit more crimes.

Are there any highlights you'd like to share from your career, particularly relevant cases you've testified in as an expert?

The Lawrence Wright case from Brooklyn comes to mind. Wright was held on Rikers Island for five years. I did not appear in court on his behalf but I played a pivotal role in his release. In this case, I consulted with an investigative journalist who recognized irregularities in his detention. Shortly after the news broadcast was aired, Wright was released.

I also learned a great deal from an early case in my career. A 14-year-old juvenile was charged with the strangulation murder of a young child. The juvenile had made an admission to the offense during interrogation. The attorney who engaged me was hoping I could render an opinion that due to the juvenile's age and immaturity, he lacked criminal intent in the act. My examination revealed the juvenile had cognitive and language deficits, was separated from his mother prior to the interrogation and asked multiple times, "Did you realize as you were shaking her that she stopped breathing?" No matter how he responded to the question, he had incriminated himself. The "confession" was ruled inadmissible and there was no other evidence linking the child to the offense. When I initially accepted the case, I assumed the juvenile had committed the offense-but as a result of my examination, I learned to withhold that assumption.

Your work is incredibly meaningful, particularly in relation to the death penalty. Is there any aspect of your work you are most proud of?

Regarding the death penalty, I have focused on how it does not deter crime and how it has adverse effects on people beyond the condemned inmate. Christopher Ochoa, as well as the Norfolk Four, are examples where death penalty threats produced false confessions to murders. Another aspect of this issue is the grief and trauma experienced by correctional officers who tend to death row inmates for years and then have to take the inmate to be executed.

I'm proud of my work but also aware that much more needs to be done. I'm working now with many younger psychologists who I hope will continue some of this work, including collaborating with the aforementioned Shereen Lewis, who is completing her PhD at Derner, as well as my former student Brittany McCollough, PhD '23, who graduated from the Derner PhD program in 2023.