Confessions to Police

It's very hard for people to understand why anybody would confess. Lawyers can't understand it. They think it must have been under duress.

But the killing of another human being is such an incredible experience - it's a very emotional experience to take the life of another human being. For most people it's a haunting, frightening experience. Fortunately, the killer wants to tell somebody. If he doesn't go to the cops, he'll tell a friend, a relative, and maybe that friend or relative will go to the cops. If the murderer hasn't told anybody else, if he's kept it inside, once we get them, they're exploding inside. They don't know if ghosts will start appearing, if they'll get the chair, if they'll go to prison and get beaten on and raped by convicts . . .

p. 86

[comment] I can't answer for other attorneys, but I definitely understand this. Of course, I spent 6 years in the Army as a professional interrogator. I think the officer here has got it a little wrong. What he's applying to murders is true in almost all aspects of life. People feel an overwhelming need to tell others what they have done or what has happened to them (some of them even inflict entire weeks of their professional lives on others). They will talk to others to brag or commiserate or just to pass time. If some pressure is added and the conversation is directed, the vast majority will tell you whatever you want to know. Interrogating someone in an atmosphere where he feels that he is in under your control (say in a police station) is actually a pretty easy task which doesn't often require anything more than the situational duress of having a secret and having an authority figure ask/demand that you reveal it.