Home > West's Encyclopedia of American Law > Confession

A statement by which an individual acknowledges his or her guilt in the commission of a crime.

One vital function of the U.S. judicial system is to determine the guilt or innocence of suspects who have been accused of crimes. Confessions can play a key role in making this determination. Courts in the U.S. have recognized the fallibility of inaccurate or involuntary confessions—such as those that have been obtained as the result of threats or trickery—and have developed a body of law to prevent untrustworthy confessions from jeopardizing a criminal defendant's CIVIL RIGHTS.

Confessions were always allowed as evidence in early English common-law trials, even when torture was used to elicit them. Not until the mid–eighteenth century did judges in England start to admit only confessions that they deemed trustworthy. To determine the trustworthiness of...