No description available.

Thesis advisor: Christopher J. Kelly / Rousseau's Confessions is controversial and influential since its first publication. Besides the dispute over the relationship of Rousseau's autobiographical and philosophical works, by adopting the same title as the famous autobiography in the Christian tradition, Augustine's Confessions, the effect is striking. However, few scholars were interested in their relationship and they write only a few lines about them or do not focus upon the key idea of Rousseau's thought, the natural goodness of man, which contradicts the Christian doctrine of Original Sin. Rousseau promises to delineate his self-portrait as a man according to nature in his autobiography in contrast to the picture of a born sinner saved by God's mercy in Augustine's Confessions. By comparing with Augustine's Confessions, it is clear that Rousseau's understanding of human nature and the source of evil reject the traditional Christian view. It is Rousseau's ingenuity to compose his Confessions structurally and thematically analogous to Augustine's Confessions to refute Augustine's theology and convey his answer to the problem of secular society. I demonstrate their relationship by comparing them according to their structural and thematic similarities. This study will contribute to the study of the relationship between modernity and Christianity and that between secularization and religion. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

No description available.

For approximately the last fifteen years, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been mounting highly sophisticated undercover sting operations in Canada known colloquially as Mr. Big stings. These undercover operations involve multiple officers posing as members of a ruthless, powerful and wealthy criminal organization in order to trick suspects into making confessions to serious crimes, nearly always homicides. The undercover officers essentially orchestrate a chance meeting with the suspect, known operationally as the “target”, and exert their considerable influence and resources to convince him that he is being inducted into a criminal gang. The target is typically a person suspected of having committed a murder in the past, but who has never been charged due to lack of evidence. Over a period of months or weeks the undercover officers attempt to build a relationship with the target based on fear, greed, companionship, or a combination of those or other emotions. The target is given tasks to perform which appear criminal in nature, but which are actually staged crimes in which every participant is an undercover officer. The target is eventually told he must meet with the boss of the gang, the “Mr. Big” after whom the sting is named, in order for a final decision to be made on whether or not the target can join the gang. The target is told that he must confess to the previous murder of which he is suspected in order to join the gang. Sometimes the target confesses readily, other times he protests his innocence, but Mr. Big will not accept exculpatory statements. Often further inducements are offered by Mr. Big, most notably a promise to derail the investigation by using his influence over corrupt justice system participants. If the suspect admits culpability he will be charged with the crime and nearly always convicted at trial. Canadian courts have exercised virtually no control over police tactics in these cases. Defence counsel have argued against the use of the evidence on the basis of a breach of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms with regard to the right to silence and also with regard to abuse of process. These arguments have been unsuccessful. Defence counsel have also argued unsuccessfully that the statements should be inadmissible under Canadian hearsay law. It has also been argued, equally unsuccessfully, that the undercover operators should be treated as persons-in-authority, and hence that the statements elicited from the targets should have to be proven voluntary beyond a reasonable doubt. Canadian judges have also been unwilling to allow the defence to lead expert evidence in these cases to tell the trier of fact about the possibility of false confessions. The ultimate result is that there is no control over police tactics in these stings. There has been one proven wrongful conviction as a result of these stings, that of Kyle Wayne Unger. Other wrongful convictions may come to light. Short of its outright abolition, probably the best way to control the sting and prevent wrongful convictions is to subject the statements to a formal voluntariness inquiry.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Drexel University, 2008. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

False confessions are the most difficult type of confession to detect. Because the Reid interview and interrogation technique is the global gold standard for interviews, interrogations, and confessions, it is used to obtain confessions from suspects. However, the Reid method has been untested in regard to if it can detect false confessions to potentially eliminate wrongful convictions. The purpose of this qualitative study was to perform a content analysis of videos of confessions using several models that make up the Reid interview and interrogation technique. Utilizing attribution theory as a framework, these models were qualitatively assessed for their ability to detect false confessions in comparison with the legal casebook analysis and linguistic analysis. The key research questions addressed how interviewers attribute identification of false confessions through the assessment of the various models and the complete Reid interview and interrogation technique. An additional research question concerned how interviewers identify attribution error in false confessions through the assessment of the various models and the complete Reid interview and interrogation technique. Data were collected from 6 videos and subjected to content analysis, triangulated with discourse analysis and conversation analysis. The results of this study showed that the models applied to the confessions could distinguish between true and false confessions. A social change could occur if some or all of these models are applied to all interrogations to detect false confessions, which would provide law enforcement and the intelligence professions the tools to assess confessions in order to potentially stop wrongful convictions and intelligence failures in interviews and interrogations.

Thesis advisor: Boyd Coolman / This study considers the development of Augustine's early soteriology in the years leading up to and including his writing of Confessions. Central to that inquiry is a treatment of his increasing use of the term humilitas. Yet that inquiry necessitates a broader account of the fallen soul and its healing by the Incarnate Savior. The result is a mostly chronological survey that shows Augustine developing clearer connections between his soteriology, Christology, and sacramental theology. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2009. / Title from screen (viewed on February 1, 2010). Department of English, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Jason T. Eberl, Brian C. McDonald, Kenneth W. Davis. Includes vitae. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 49).

The current study examined the effects of personality traits, psychopathy, and narcissism in the context of voluntary false confessions. The administration of various self-report measures in a sample of university students (N= 485) to assess personality traits, psychopathy, narcissism, and self-reported likelihood of voluntary falsely confessing enabled quantitative analysis of the interaction among these essential parameters. Narcissism and openness to experience accounted for 14% of the total variance in the likelihood of the voluntary false confessions in the male sample. Whilst narcissism and psychopathy accounted for 11% of the total variance in the female sample. These findings indicate that narcissism, psychopathy, and openness to experience are psychological factors that may have an impact on the likelihood of an individual confessing to a crime they did not commit, outside of the forensic settings.