History Main / FalseConfession

* ''Series/DeathInParadise''ld:

[[folder:Film -- Animation]]

[[folder:Film -- Live-Action]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

** One episode featured the case of a man walking into a police station confessing to have murdered a doctor, carrying the revolver used to kill her as proof and sporting gunshot residue on his clothes. Turns out it was his wife that killed her. The man had a terminal illness and the couple [[AssholeVictim was swindled by the doctor into spending all their money in a non-working treatment]], causing the wife to kill her in a rage, leading the guy to discharge the gun someplace else to incriminate himself, seeing as he is about to die anyway.
** Another has a man confess to a fatally hitting a girl on a bicycle so his daughter, who was really driving, wouldn't be charged because he wanted her to finish med school.
* ''Series/DeathInParadise'':

* ''Series/TheWire'': at the end of season on, Wee-Bay Brice has already been arrested and very credibly linked to some homicides in service of the Barksdale organization, already facing life in prison, decides to just confess to every unsolved murder the gang had done.

* Played with in ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender''. In an early season 2 episode, Team Avatar stumbles upon what they think is a celebration of the Avatar. It turns out that it's an anti-Avatar event because the previous Earth Kingdom Avatar , Kyoshi, had murdered their leader. Aang stands trial in her stead only for her spirit to visit them and say that she had killed him. Aang points out that she didn't confess to murder because she didn't murder him, he chose to not move. Kyoshi later tells Aang that she sees no difference between killing him and letting him die because she was fully willing to kill him.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Strobel Lee Strobel]], during his job as a reporter for ''The Chicago Tribune'', once recalled an unusual case where a man pleaded guilty to shooting the host of a party. It was later found that the host had shot himself by accident, and the man "confessing" had done so because he found that his time being spent in jail while awaiting his trial counted as part of his sentence. If he was found guilty, he would get to go home anyway in three days. If he pleaded not guilty, but was found guilty, then his sentence could have been massively increased.
* Sadly common in totalitarian regimes. An old Soviet joke runs like this: The UsefulNotes/{{CIA}}, the [[UsefulNotes/MoscowCentre KGB]] and the [[UsefulNotes/GaulsWithGrenades GIGN]] have an argument about who is best at catching fugitives. Tired of their bickering, the Secretary-General of the UsefulNotes/UnitedNations sets them a task-each is given a ten square miles of forest, in which there is a white rabbit, which they must catch. Their respective efforts go like this:

* ''Series/MidsomerMurders'': In "[[Recap/MidsomerMurdersS1E2 Deathof a Jollow Man]]", Colin Smy confesses to killing Esslyn after [[TakingtheHeat he thought he saw his son David change the blade of the razor used]]. He shortly afterward withdraws the confession after David is cleared (he has just spread some Vim [[note]] cleaning product [[/note]] on some cakes Esslyn ate onstage).

* ''Fanfic/IdTradeMyLifeForYours'' [[ForWantOfANail diverges from]] ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaV3KillingHarmony'' when Shuichi Saihara, who'd been suspected of Rantaro Amami's murder midway through the trial, falsely confesses to doing it, and is executed instead of [[spoiler:Kaede Akamatsu]], who he ''knows'' is the murderer by this point. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, [[spoiler:like in canon, Kaede is ''also'' innocent of the crime, and Rantaro was actually killed by Tsumugi Shirogane]].

The possible reasons for the false confession are many. Perhaps the character is confessing because he [[MamaDidntRaiseNoCriminal knows or thinks one of his loved ones is really the criminal]] [[TakingTheHeat and is covering]]. Perhaps the character is mentally ill and is willing to confess to just about anything the police tell him to confess to. Perhaps the character just wants the publicity. Perhaps the real killer is coercing the character into TakingTheHeat. And maybe, just maybe, the character actually thinks he committed the crime. Also, as real life interrogation tapes show, being questioned by the police can be a highly stressful experience. If made to go through it long enough, a suspect may confess just to end it, whether they're guilty or not. This can also be done sometime through PoliceBrutality.

* On ''Series/{{Castle}}'', a woman confesses to killing a man in a hotel room. She knows details of the crime that only the killer would know but does not know why she did it. The detectives cannot find any connection between her and the victim and then find out that she was somewhere else when the crime occurred and that there are witnesses who will confirm that. Then a man comes in and confesses to the same crime. He tells pretty much the same story and the detectives discover that he also could not have done the crime. When a third person comes in to confess to the murder, the detectives don't even bother to interrogate him properly since they know by then that the memories are false. [[spoiler:The murder victim was an actor who starred in videos used in an experimental treatment method. The people who confessed were test subjects, and as part of the treatment they were made to play out a scene where they confront the source of their problems (as represented by the actor) and kill it. When the subjects started showing disturbing side effects, the researchers drugged them and induced EasyAmnesia in order to cover up what happened.]] The killer knew what happened to them and deliberately staged the murder to look exactly as the fake murder in their memories.

** In ''Trials and Tribulations'', Ron [=DeLite=], a meek and timid guy, confessed being the GentlemanThief Mask☆[=DeMasque=] the day after his last heist, even though he didn't have the object stolen, and when Phoenix goes to visit his wife she tells him that Ron is deluded and thinks he is [=DeMasque=]. Turns out [=DeLite=] ''is'' Mask☆[=DeMasque=], but didn't commit the crime in question. He confessed to have an alibi because at the time of the theft there was a murder in which he was implicated, but which he didn't commit either, and the one who did commit the murder had the same idea and had Phoenix find him as Mask☆[=DeMasque=] in court.
** Also in ''Ace Attorney'', there's Lana Skye who confessed to stabbing a detective to death. She was arrested and put on a rather lengthy (by AA standards anyway) and complicated trial before it was eventually revealed that [[spoiler:she was covering up for the chief of police, the real murderer, who for the last two years since the SL-9 Incident, had been using Lana as his puppet.]] In reality, Lana '''did''' stab the victim, [[spoiler:however, she did so after said victim was already dead in order to fabricate a false murder weapon to throw suspicion away from the chief. She was caught in this act by a witness, making it seem like she was stabbing the victim to death.]] Although this is more a case of Lana having to cover for the real killer rather then wanting to. As Phoenix says: "Protecting? No. I think 'afraid of' is more like it."

** Done in ''[[VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneyDualDestinies Dual Destinies]]'' as well, but this time it's not just one confession, but ''three'' of them, back-to-back. One of which is from [[spoiler:Juniper Woods]], the defendant, and the other two are from the two witnesses in the trial (as well as friends of the defendant), [[spoiler:Hugh O'Connor and Robin Newman]]. It turns out that [[spoiler:All three confessions are in fact false, and occurred one after the other in a domino effect. Robin "confessed" to save Juniper from getting convicted, causing Juniper to "confess" so her friends can't take the rap for her any-more, which in turn causes Hugh to "confess" to nullify Juniper's confession. Hugh's confession is also partly out of self-protection too: Since Robin and Juniper's confessions were rather obviously out of protection for one another rather then due to their actual guilt, Hugh, the only other suspect at the time, would have seemed pretty guilty if he stayed quiet. In other words he actually ''confessed to make himself NOT look like the culprit'']].

* The reason that Eddie Brock (ComicBook/{{Venom}}) hated Franchise/SpiderMan was because after Eddie broke journalistic ethics to apprehend someone who had confessed to being the serial killer Sin Eater, Spider-Man caught the real Sin Eater, revealing Brock's catch to be a false confessor.

* ''Videogame/RedDeadRedemption2'': [[spoiler: Molly O’Shea drunkenly confesses that she’s the mole in Chapter 5 and gets shot by Miss Grimshaw. Towards the end of Chapter 6 you find out that the true mole is Micah and Molly was innocent.]]
* ''VideoGame/YesYourGrace'': During one stage of the game, it's necessary to execute a scapegoat for a murder that has been comitted to avoid losing the help of a powerful ally. If the player refuses to choose a scapegoat among the three options given, a character whose survival is necessary to get the GoldenEnding will falsely confess to the murder instead.