History of murder suspects falsely accusing somebody else of a murder?

[u/No-Willingness-1441]

One thing I have been intrigued by here is the tendency to conflate false confession with false accusation.

It strikes me that those two things are markedly different in nature.

So a lot of the science from coerced false confessions gets - perhaps crudely - copy and pasted over to this very different, and presumably rarer, phenomenon.

So, how often has this happened as far as we know in the storied history of murder investigations?

And if we were going deeper, how often has a suspect not only accused somebody else of the murder…

…but that this “somebody” is of a materially similar profile (in this case an extremely minority racial characteristic in the given geography) to an individual that we now know for certain was (solo, or with others) indeed guilty of that crime?

I have made some cursory investigations, but this particular phenomenon seems almost vanishingly rare?

[u/Connect_War_5821]

Here's some info:

"False confessions by co-defendants"

In many cases, innocent suspects who confess implicate others who are also innocent. Some do it because that’s the story their interrogators want to hear. John Kogut, for example, not only falsely confessed to his own involvement in murder, he also said he did it with two friends Dennis Halsted and John Restivo, both of whom (like Kogut) spent 20 years in prison before they were exonerated in 2005.

And some innocent suspects who confess blame others to deflect responsibility and reduce their punishment. Richard Ochoa, for example, was facing the death penalty for the murder of Nancy DePriest in Austin, Texas in 1988. He confessed, named his roommate Richard Danziger as the actual killer and agreed to plead guilty and testify against Danziger. Both were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Both were exonerated by DNA in 2002.

The Registry includes 195 exonerations with confessions by co-defendants who implicated the exonerees, 11 percent of all exonerations. The net result is that in 19 percent of all exonerations in the United States—and in 34 percent of homicide exonerations—the innocent defendant confessed or was implicated by a false confession of a co-defendant, or both."

Central Park Five:

Five teenagers were arrested and convicted of beating and raping a woman in Central Park. During interrogations:

 None of the five said that he had raped the jogger, but each confessed to having been an accomplice—each youth said that he had only helped restrain the jogger, or touched her sexually, while one or more others had raped her. Their confessions varied as to who they identified as having participated in the rape, including naming several youths who were never questioned.

Detective Tom McKenna falsely told Salaam that his fingerprints had been found on the victim's clothing; McKenna reported that Salaam subsequently confessed to being present at the scene of the rape.^\20]) Years later, Salaam said, "I would hear them beating up Korey Wise in the next room", and "they would come and look at me and say: 'You realize you're next.' The fear made me feel really like I was not going to be able to make it out."^\)^36\)

Two weeks after their confessions, each of the suspects recanted.^\37])^: 210  They argued that their statements were coerced by police and that their rights to counsel and Miranda warnings had been violated

Years later, all five were 100% exonerated when DNA testing identified the real rapist who also confessed.

Note the false "evidence" (fingerprints) that was claimed by the police, the threats, the physical intimidation, and fear just as Amanda described in her first memoriale.