A false confession is an admission of guilt in a crime in which the confessor is not responsible for the crime. False confessions can be induced through coercion or by the mental disorder or incompetency of the accused. Even though false confessions might appear to be an exceptional and unlikely event, they occur on a regular basis in case law, which is one of the reasons why jurisprudence has established a series of rules to detect, and subsequently reject, false confessions. These are called the "confession rules." Plea agreements typically require the defendant to stipulate to a set of facts establishing he is guilty of the offense; in the United States federal system, before entering judgment on a guilty plea, the court must determine that there is a factual basis for the plea.

False confessions can be categorized into three general types, as outlined by Saul M. Kassin in an article for Current Directions in Psychological Science:

According to the Innocence Project, approximately 25% of convicted criminals ultimately exonerated had, in fact, confessed to the crime. In Canada, courts of law have recognized as valid confessions that were acquired, even though the interrogators lied by suggesting they had substantial evidence against a given suspect when in fact they did not, something known as the “bluff” technique. The high pressure generated may push innocent individuals to produce a confession.

Saul Kassin is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Dr. Saul Kassin is an American psychologist. He has participated in contributing to many books which have helped to explain different aspects in the field of psychology. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa as an undergrad from Brooklyn College in NYC. He then went on to receive his Ph.D. in personality and social psychology from the University of Connecticut in Storrs, CT. With his doctoral degree he went on to begin his psychology and law research career working with Lawrence Wrightsman at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, KS for one year and then taught at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN for two years. A young man born and raised in New York City, he went on to create insightful developments among research involving social perception and influence, and their applications to police interrogations and confessions, lie detection, eyewitness testimony, jury decision-making, and other aspects of law.

Floyd Gregory Brown (born March 10, 1961; Bremerton, Washington) is an American author, speaker and media commentator. He is president of Excellentia Inc., a consulting company specializing in non-profit organizational strategy, development and marketing. Brown has also worked as a political consultant and conducted opposition research for political campaigns. Brown is noteworthy for his introduction of the "Willie Horton" television ad during the Bush-Dukakis presidential race.

The son of a sawmill worker, and the grandson of a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, Brown grew up in the Pacific Northwest in a family of Democrats with 100-year-old roots in the area. When he was in the fourth grade, his 22-year-old aunt, recently married and graduated from nursing school, was robbed and murdered. He graduated from Olympia High School in Olympia, Washington in 1979, and from the University of Washington. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics. He was appointed to, but chose to leave, the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Rob Warden is the executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, Bluhm Legal Clinic, Northwestern University School of Law. An award winning legal affairs journalist, he is the co-author with David Protess of A Promise of Justice on the pardons of the Ford Heights Four, and Gone in the Night on the reversal of David Dowaliby's conviction. He provides a legal analysis in the 2005 Northwestern edition reprinting of The Dead Alive, a 19th century novel by Wilkie Collins based on the 1819 wrongful murder conviction of the Boorn Brothers. He was inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame in 2004. Warden founded the monthly journal Chicago Lawyer in 1978, serving as editor and publisher until 1989. Before that, he was an award-winning journalist on the Chicago Daily News.

Profile by Mara Tapp in the Chicago Tribune:

John Mark is a character in the New Testament. According to William Lane, an "unbroken tradition" identifies him with Mark the Evangelist. John Mark is mentioned several times in the Acts of the Apostles. The first mention is in Acts 12:12, when Peter is coming to his mother's house:

When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying.

John Mark himself appears a bit later in the same chapter, in Acts 12:25, as the travel companion of Saul (Apostle Paul) and Barnabas:

When Barnabas and Saul had finished their mission, they returned from Jerusalem, taking with them John, also called Mark.

John Mark is mentioned soon after the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15:37-41. Paul (Saul) does not have a too flattering impression of his former associate, arguing over him with Barnabas in Antioch:

Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the believers to the grace of the Lord. He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.