[OldManAndTheCpp]

Yes, that seems to be a consideration. From the article:

In a report peer reviewed and distributed by the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) in September 2022, Gill and colleagues detailed the statistical missteps in past medical murder trials and made recommendations for how legal systems can do better. Gill hopes the report will help with the case of another British nurse, Lucy Letby, who is now on trial for the alleged murder of seven babies and attempted murder of 10 more in a neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital.

[extasia]

I thought Lucy letby literally had a confession note at her house? [0]

It seems this was in fact the case.

I agree with your broader point however.

0. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/lucy-letby-nurse...

[lazyasciiart]

I don't know anything about her, but that suicide note also says "I haven't done anything wrong", which indicates at best confusion on her part.

[h0l0cube]

How tragic would it be if someone’s deep empathic nature made them feel personally responsible for a death beyond their control – to the point of suicidal ideation - and was then imprisoned for it?

[roxgib]

The Australian case mentioned in the article had a similar theme. Kathleen Folbigg wrote diary entries blaming herself for her kids' deaths, and these were interpreted as admissions of guilt (in fairness they could definitely be read that way). She had four of her own children die of undetermined causes and was basically convicted on the diary entries and the improbability of them all dying. Has been a long and ongoing public debate here (she's still in jail).

[jonny_eh]

Apparently there's new evidence that a gene mutation may have been to blame, and she could be released soon: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/nov/13/australian-m...

The evidence in her case does seem too circumstantial to convict, a real injustice.

[WeylandYutani]

There was a case in the Netherlands in which they got a nurse to confess to a killing spree.

Unfortunately it is impossible to explain to people that a confession is meaningless.

[api]

Good investigators withhold details about a crime from the public mostly to filter out false confessions. This speaks to the fact that false confessions are common enough to make filtering techniques common practice.

[Eleison23]

That's not the only goal. This also reduces the effectiveness of copycat crimes, and differentiates any would-be copycats from the original. Also, it enhances the ability of authorities to receive and authenticate tips from the general public. In fact, in a high-profile case, it's common practice to deliberately plant misinformation in the form of slight immaterial errors, for many of the same purposes.

[ArnoVW]

I think you're talking about Lucia de B. The first sentence of the article :

  When a Dutch nurse named Lucia de Berk...

In fact, she never confessed. As per her Wikipedia page:

  Important evidence at the appeal was to be the statement of a detainee in the Pieter Baan Center, a criminal psychological observation unit, where de Berk had said during outdoor exercise, "I released these 13 people from their suffering". However, during the appeal, the man withdrew his statement and stated that he had made it up.

[lelanthran]

> How tragic would it be if someone’s deep empathic nature made them feel personally responsible for a death beyond their control – to the point of suicidal ideation - and was then imprisoned for it?

Haven't you ever read The Green Mile?

[h0l0cube]

I haven't, but I think, outside of fiction, history is littered with examples of these kinds of witch hunts happening. What bothers me is that now, more than ever, we know about these outcomes – and as you point out there's even neo-folklore about them – and yet we haven't progressed enough as a species to stop them happening.

[eyelidlessness]

Too common and too tragic.

[Nextgrid]

That sounds like a troubled, mentally unwell person?

Let’s say someone who’s mentally unwell wrote notes to confess to crimes, is it enough to convict them based on that evidence alone? And if so, should it be?

[aidenn0]

In the US, at least, a confession is always considered sufficient evidence. It probably shouldn't be, since interrogators have managed to get people to confess to crimes that evidence was later found to exonerate.

[public_defender]

This is not true. Many states have what is called a corpus delicti rule, which requires that a confession be corroborated by other evidence in order to sustain a conviction. I am inclined to assert that this is actually the law in most US states, but I haven't researched it.

[aidenn0]

IANAL, but I thought corpus delicti only means there needs to be evidence that the crime has been committed, not that the crime has been committed by the person confessing to it.

So if they find a body with multiple stab wounds and I go in and say I stabbed the person, I can be convicted. If I say I murdered Audrey Farber, and the police can't even find a record of an Audrey Farber gone missing, then I can't be convicted because there's no evidence than an Audrey Farber was murdered at all.

[watwut]

The other evidence can be quite weak. And fairly often it is pseudoscience.

[public_defender]

Of course I agree with that. It's not an argument for relying more heavily on confession "evidence."

[lelanthran]

> That sounds like a troubled, mentally unwell person?

You mean you don't know for sure? Do you want the investigators to stop investigating if a suspect "sounds" mentally unwell? Should prosecutors refuse to prosecute if the suspect "sounds" mentally unwell?

What I'm saying is ... why, in this particular case, should that make any difference to the prosecution or investigation? We already find mentally troubled people guilty, we just sentence them differently.

So, yeah, the sanity/insanity of an individual makes no difference to whether they are guilty or not, it only changes the specific nature of the charge (i.e. premeditated vs culpable) and the sentencing (asylum or prison).

Someone is is genuinely mentally unwell in a way that results in them harming other people must still be kept away from society!

IOW, people who are dangerous to others need to be locked up. Whether they are insane or not is not relevant to keeping them locked up, it is only relevant to where they are locked up, and how they may be rehabilitated.

> Let’s say someone who’s mentally unwell wrote notes to confess to crimes, is it enough to convict them based on that evidence alone?

No one is currently convicted on the basis of a confession alone[1]. Normally a confession just means that the investigation into the confessor is more thorough than it would ordinarily be.

Is it perfect? No, but it is a lot better than you appear to believe.

I think if you thought about it for more than a few seconds, you'd realise the questions you are asking have obvious answers.

[1] Have you any idea how many people claimed to be famous serial killers? it happens more often than you think. It's also why specifics of a crime may not make it to the news, because the police use those specific details to identify those confessors who are not the perpetrator.

[watwut]

I think that point is it should be taken into account.

> Someone is is genuinely mentally unwell in a way that results in them harming other people must still be kept away from society!

That is extremely poor and dangerous argument for putting them in jail in bad evidence. But yeah, when innocent people get into jail, it is fairly often on arguments like this.

> No one is currently convicted on the basis of a confession alone[1]. Normally a confession just means that the investigation into the confessor is more thorough than it would ordinarily be

Bases in innocence project, people who were provably not guilty were sentenced to death on confessions. And there is literally zero reason to think it is stopped happening.

[lelanthran]

>> Someone is is genuinely mentally unwell in a way that results in them harming other people must still be kept away from society!

> That is extremely poor and dangerous argument for putting them in jail in bad evidence.

Who made that argument?

Here's what I said:

>> the sanity/insanity of an individual makes no difference to whether they are guilty or not, it only changes the specific nature of the charge (i.e. premeditated vs culpable) and the sentencing (asylum or prison). Someone is is genuinely mentally unwell in a way that results in them harming other people must still be kept away from society!

Why on earth would you snip away my text about ASYLUM, and instead warble on about putting those people in JAIL?

I'm genuinely curious about the motivation to pretend that my argument is different to what I said, and then argue against your pretend version of my argument.

Genuinely curious.

[chrischen]

Assuming those kids did die in her care the notes do sound like anguish rather than guilt.