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On the night of April 19, 1989, Patricia “Trisha” Ellen Meili went for a routine jog through Central Park in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York. She was later found in a shallow ravine in a wooded area of the park, having been physically and sexually assaulted. In the aftermath of this heinous attack, the New York City Police Department arrested 14-year-olds Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson, 15-year-olds Antron McCray and Yusef Salaam, and 16-year-old Korey Wise. Though none of the teenagers’ DNA samples matched samples collected at the scene of the assault, all five confessed to attacking and raping Meili (Bordone & Wright, 2020; Schanberg, 2002). Each confession was recanted, however, as the teenagers claimed they were coerced to confess by law enforcement. Regardless, all five teenagers were incarcerated for the attack until serial rapist Matias Reyes confessed to the assault and corroborated his story with matching DNA samples, effectively vacating all five convictions in 2002 (Schanberg, 2002). Sadly, the case of the Central Park Five, later known as the Exonerated Five, was not the first nor the last instance of a wrongful conviction occurring as a result of a false confession. From 1989 to 2020, the Innocence Project – a nonprofit criminal justice reform organization – reported that 29% of its 375 exonerations involved false confessions (The Innocence Project, 2023). Though quantifiable, such a statistic is merely a single layer in an extraordinary crisis, as the true extent of the problem remains unknown. Such a problem can best be understood through the examination of psychological concepts underlying false confessions. In reviewing relevant literature and research, future research directions and best practices are recommended in order to substantially mitigate the occurrence of false confessions and related wrongful convictions.
This research paper served as the first part of my defense for my Master of Science in Forensic Psychology at Arizona State University.