외국의 허위자백 연구동향과 형사정책적 함의

Not only the public but also the experts who are engaged in criminal proceedings do not realize truly the fact that there is a ‘false confession’ to confess to a crime one did not commit. In such conditions, if false confession occurs, it has high probability of being ruled as guilty with the risk of spreading to other people beyond just one person. Although a lack of study on false confession is domestically evident, an international study on false confession that began in the 1930s suggests many implications to us. High proportion of false confession found during the process of study on misjudgment have increased its interest and brought forth a study on false confession as a single topic. A study on false confession that started in the early empirical studies have proven the existence of false confession as it identified may cases, and as the focus was shifted to the interest on the cause of producing false confession, it was naturally developed as a study on the people having vulnerabilities in the process of interrogation and questioning which leads to confession. And by studying the relevance of conviction and false confession in the comprehensive level, it has now reached the phase of proposing measures for solving the problems. Such international studies on false confession imply the necessity of urgent domestic studies on the same field. In addition, through the study, it allows us to realize the necessity of active review on the introduction of various measures such as correction of erroneous perception that there is no false confession, improvement of interrogation techniques, special treatment for those with vulnerabilities and ensuring transparency such as recording of interrogation process.