Leshem on the Benefits of a Right to Silence for Criminal Defendants

Shmuel Leshem (USC Gould School of Law) has posted The Benefits of a Right to Silence for the Innocent (RAND Journal of Economics, Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 398-416, 2010) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This article shows that innocent suspects benefit from exercising their right to silence during criminal proceedings. We present a model in which a criminal suspect can either make a statement or remain silent during police interrogation. At trial, the jury observes informative but imperfect signals about the suspect's guilt and the truthfulness of the suspect's statement. We show that a right to silence benefits innocent suspects by providing them with a safer alternative to speech, as well as by reducing the probability of wrongful conviction for suspects who remain silent with and without a right to silence.