To estimate the risk of a false confession wrongful conviction (FCWC) at a given interrogation length, a model needs two duration distributions: one for interrogations that produced an FCWC, and one for those that did not. The estimate turns on how much more common a given duration is under the first than the second.
Smith et al. build the first from Redlich et al. (2011) — 35 people with serious mental illness who self-reported a false confession, with a mean total questioning time of 3.07 hours across multiple sittings. They build the second by pooling twelve sets of summary statistics from eight studies, weighted by sample size.
Neither distribution was collected to answer this question, and the two are not measuring the same thing. Below is what that costs.
Change One Study, and the Answer Nearly Triples
Smith et al. motivate the duration contrast with Drizin and Leo's (2004) documented false confession cases, which had a reported mean length of 16.3 hours — but their model uses Redlich et al. instead. Below, everything is held fixed except which false confession study supplies that first distribution. Drag the slider to any duration.
And the Six-Hour Threshold Moves With It
The published thresholds sit far out in the tails of fitted curves. Only about 0.116% of the fitted comparison distribution lies above 12.06 hours — an output of an assumed curve, not an observed frequency. So the threshold depends heavily on how fast that curve is assumed to fall, and on which studies are allowed into it. Each row below changes one such choice.
What This Does, and Does Not, Show
Nothing here establishes that prolonged interrogation is safe, or that duration is unrelated to false confession. Prolonged interrogations may well increase risk. The finding is narrower and about measurement: the available studies do not identify the magnitude of the relationship, and six hours is a product of selected inputs and fitted tails rather than a boundary established by observed interrogations.
Finding that prolonged questioning is common among known false confessors does not tell us whether a six-hour interrogation carries a 2%, 10%, or 50% risk — unless we also know how often six-hour interrogations occur without producing an FCWC. Studies assembled from known cases cannot supply that number. Bayes' theorem can update probabilities using evidence; it cannot create the denominator that more than 45 years of research never collected.
Where we agree. Smith et al.'s replication of our original analysis is a real contribution, and it confirms its central result. Both papers agree on what the field should do next: code actual interrogations for tactic presence, duration, and outcome as recordings become more widely available. Both agree that even a 1% FCWC rate would be problematic.
Recording alone, though, will not supply the denominator. Researchers would also need to define the population interrogations are sampled from, separate individual sessions from cumulative questioning, record the time of the first admission, link interrogation characteristics to case outcomes, and distinguish a false confession from one that contributed to a wrongful conviction.
The disagreement is narrower than it may appear. It concerns whether the available evidence establishes the magnitude of the risk. The seriousness of an outcome informs how much risk society should tolerate; it cannot establish how often that outcome occurs.
Both figures are computed live in your browser from the published duration model — the study inputs and model functions are those in Smith et al.'s deposited code, with the FCWC base rate fixed at .019. The values match the reply's replication package exactly.
Data and code: github.com/smourtgos/fcwc-duration-reply
Mourtgos, S. M., & Adams, I. T. (forthcoming). Interrogation duration and the estimation of false confession wrongful conviction risk: A reply to Smith and colleagues. Journal of Criminal Justice.
Replying to: Smith, T. B., Catlin, M., May, B., Redlich, A. D., Meissner, C. A., & Kelly, C. E. (2026). Simulating the probability of false confession-wrongful conviction conditional on features of police interrogation. Journal of Criminal Justice, 107, 102742.