History Main / ConfessToALesserCrime

** In the second case of ''VisualNovel/SpiritOfJustice'', the defendant is offered at the start of their trial to plead a lesser charge since the circumstances look like the victim died in an accident at the hands of the defendant and practically all of the evidence is stacked against them. Apollo still pushes to get a Not Guilty verdict.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': In "Mr. Plow", Homer crashes his car. Fortunately, it's insured, but the agent wants to know exactly what kind of business Moe's is. Not wanting to admit he'd been drinking, but wondering what else is open late at night, Homer claims it's a porn shop, where he was buying pornography.
* ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'', Robbie tries to win Wendy back by offering her a piece of music he said he composed. Dipper finds out that the music had a [[SubliminalSeduction subliminal message]] that could have influenced Wendy. When confronted about this, Robbie admits he didn't actually make the song. [[MortonsFork Either way, Wendy cuts ties with him for good]].

** In "Bag Man" Jimmy had just been caught up in a shootout and forced to walk through the desert for over a day after doing a favor for Don Lalo Salamanca. He lied to Kim about what happened because he didn't want her to know he was in a shootout, but she was already suspicious because she'd seen the bullet hole in his [[ChekhovsGun coffee mug]]. When she confronts him about it without mentioning the mug, he confesses... [[RefugeInAudacity that he drank his own urine while in the dessert.]]
** Mike makes an anonymous tip to the police about a body buried out in the desert. Mike tells the operator he doesn't want to give his name because he was trespassing looking for arrowheads with a metal detector. In reality, it was because the guy was killed to LeaveNoWitnesses to a robbery Mike committed against the cartel (although Mike himself had nothing to do with it), and Mike located his body due to guilty out of indirectly causing his murder.

A Subtrope of InfractionDistraction. Contrast FalseConfession, TakingTheHeat, and EmbarrassingCoverup.

* Frequently used in ''Series/BurnNotice'' to maintain cover identities. In one memorable case, a drug dealer finds out Michael has been making phone calls to his girlfriend (actually, the girl he's stalking, who's an undercover DEA agent). The dealer assumes they're sleeping together and plans to kill her, until Michael "confesses" that he was asking around about the man because he wanted to do business with him. Thus confessing a minor violation of privacy to cover up a SecretRelationship which was itself a lie to cover up her being a cop.

* Inverted in the song ''Long Black Veil''. The narrator is executed for a murder he didn't commit, because [[spoiler:he refused to say where he was during the crime. He'd been in the arms of his best friend's wife.]]
* Similarly inverted in Gary Moore's ''Over The Hills And Far Away''; the man is convicted of armed robbery because his pistol was found at the crime scene and he had no alibi, because [[spoiler: he'd been sleeping with his best friend's wife at the time.]]

* ''Literature/JudgeDee'': Subverted in "The Chinese Bell Murders", when the Judge gets Lin Fan to confess to dropping the titular bell on the judge in the same breath as his accusation of smuggling salt, as he knows he can use his connections to avoid problems (his many previous crimes, involving the murder of his brother-in-law's family after causing their ruin, aren't addressed as he's managed to destroy the evidence). The judge then informs Lin Fan that an attack on a magistrate is considered a crime against the state, meaning all his relations won't help at all. Lin Fan ends up sentenced to [[spoiler:one of the worst possible death in the Tang dynasty's code, being pulled apart by buffalo.]]

* A memorable incident in ''Series/{{Castle}}'' where a suspect alibis out on account of he was having sex with the victim's wife at the time. (Technically adultery isn't a crime in the United States, but it's still normally a ''motive'' for murder rather than an alibi.)

* At the end of ''Film/OceansEleven,'' Danny turns himself in for parole violation while the rest of his team makes their escape after successfully robbing Terry's casino.

->'''Jesse:''' Why'd you go tell her I was selling you weed?
->'''Walt:''' Because somehow it seemed preferable to admitting that I cook crystal meth and killed a man.

* In the ''Anime/AceAttorney'' anime, Furio Tigre admits to impersonating Phoenix Wright in court, but not to [[spoiler: killing Glen Elg]]. Of course, [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome the fact that he admitted to anything at all keeps him on the spot]], and Wright is able to deduce his real crime anyway.

** Howard's death is faked as a suicide, but his widow suspects Jimmy's involvement. Jimmy does truthfully admit to harassing Howard and that he regrets it, but conveniently leaves out the scheme that led to his death.

** In "Bag Man" Jimmy had just been caught up in a shootout and forced to walk through the dessert for over a day after doing a favor for Don Lalo Salamanca. He lied to Kim about what happened because he didn't want her to know he was in a shootout, but she was already suspicious because she'd seen the bullet hole in his [[ChekhovsGun coffee mug]]. When she confronts him about it without mentioning the mug, he confesses... [[RefugeInAudacity that he drank his own urine while in the dessert.]]

-->--''Series/BreakingBad''

* In ''Series/GameOfThrones'', Ned Stark returns home from Robert's Rebellion with a baby boy, Jon Snow, who he presents as his own illegitimate son that he fathered with another woman while married to his wife, Catelyn. Ned raises Jon as his son alongside his trueborn offspring at Winterfell and refuses to talk about Jon’s mother, straining his marriage to Catelyn and leading to Jon becoming Catelyn's [[TheUnfavorite Unfavorite]]. However, Ned's [[spoiler:cover story]] was far preferable to revealing the truth: [[spoiler: Jon is Ned's nephew, not his illegitimate son. Jon (born Aegon Targaryen) is the Trueborn son of Ned’s sister Lyanna Stark and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, who was just slaughtered -- along with most of the known Targaryen line (save for a few) -- during Robert's Rebellion and the ''rightful heir to the Iron Throne''. The dying Lyanna asks Ned to [[DyingWish keep her son safe.]] Out of love for Lyanna and Jon, Ned spends the rest of his life protecting Jon, raising and loving him as his own son, and claims him as his own illegitimate child to save him from the wrath of Robert Baratheon as Robert would have killed Jon if he knew the truth due to his hatred of the Targaryens. Ned pretends to be an unfaithful spouse, accepting the stain on his honour, while he was actually committing treason against Robert -- all to protect his sister's only child.]]

*** In the flashback case, when Phoenix has proven that a witness, [[spoiler:Valant]], tampered with the crime scene and tried to throw off the time of death, he admits to everything he did, yet continues to deny that he killed anyone. [[spoiler:[[SubvertedTrope For good reason, as he didn't]]; [[DrivenToSuicide Magnifi wasn’t murdered.]]]]

** In Case 2 of ''Justice for All'', the strange circumstances consist of Maya channelling a spirit, only for the possessed Maya to kill her client who requested the channelling. Then it turns out said client brought a ''gun'' as well, presumably to coerce the channelled spirit into signing a confession he prepared if his plans went south. Phoenix is offered to have the defendant plead [[KillingInSelfDefense self-defense]] because of this, but he turns it down since if that offer was taken, Maya would still be charged with killing someone. [[spoiler:Then it's discovered that no spirit was channelled in the first place. The murderer was a seperate living person.]]

** The killer of the third case of ''VisualNovel/TheGreatAceAttorney 2: Resolve'' confesses to being an accomplice to another character's murder plan, and demands the trial end in a Not Guilty verdict for the defendant. Them being so insistent on a quick end to the trial makes Ryunosuke very suspicious though, and he gets the verdict postponed so they can hear one more testimony. Sure enough, it reveals they really murdered the victim personally.
** In the second case of ''VisualNovel/SpiritOfJustice'', the defendant is offered to plead a lesser charge since the circumstances look like an accident and practically all of the evidence is stacked against them. Apollo still pushes to get a Not Guilty verdict.

** In "Magic Man," Gus has to do damage control after Werner is tricked into revealing some details of his secret construction project. He confesses that Werner was directing the construction of a new chiller, when he learned about the drug business and stole some product. Gus claims he'd tried to hide the theft to conceal his own failure. Juan Bolso is pacified, but Lalo doesn't buy it for a second.
-->'''Lalo:''' "South wall's going to look beautiful."

* In Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/IfThisGoesOn'', Lyle is advised to pretend to commit a lesser offense to help cover up his involvement in LaResistance. He's further told that faithfully adhering to all of the regime's many laws is unusual enough to get the regime's attention, so he should "never try to pretend lily-white innocence". Lyle leaves evidence of gambling, gets "caught" and lectured on it, and then is let go.

** In ''Literature/AGameOfThrones'', Littlefinger frames Tyrion Lannister as the man who hired an assassin to murder Bran Stark [[spoiler:(it was actually Joffrey)]], which prompts Catelyn Stark to arrest him in retaliation and take him back to the Vale, where Lysa Arryn acts as the HangingJudge and throws Tyrion in prison to be tortured. Tyrion finally says that he will "confess his crimes", and once he's brought back to Lysa, he "confesses" to numerous personal indiscretions and character flaws, but refuses to admit to the crime he's ''actually'' accused of.

* In ''Literature/ADanceWithDragons'', fifth book of ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', having been imprisoned for numerous crimes by the [[ChurchMilitant Faith Militant]] in [[Literature/AFeastForCrows the previous books]], Cersei Lannister confesses to several of the minor charges (like sleeping around with other men after she was widowed and bearing false witness) to get herself a reprieve from captivity and start planning a way to turn things around before she can be found guilty of the more serious charges (like treason, regicide and deceiving the entire realm into believing the bastard children born of her [[BrotherSisterIncest incestuous affair with her twin brother]] are the legitimate offspring of her late husband, King Robert).

* When sexual misconduct accusations resurfaced against ''Music/RKelly'' in 2017, he released a track titled "I Admit" in 2018 where he confessed to a laundry list of personal issues and misdeeds such as infidelity and being gullible, all the while refuting the criminal accusations thrown his way. He was ultimately convicted of numerous criminal offences in 2021 and 2022.

* After underage SerialKiller Craig Price murdered the Heaton family, the police determined that the killer cut his hand in the process. Price's injury was noticed, he claimed it was the result of drunken vandalism. The police quickly saw through the story due to a lack of a vandalism report and broken glass on the street the alleged vandalism occurred on. He later admitted the crimes as including the detail about cutting himself in the process.

*** In Case 3, [[spoiler:the true killer has evaded the legal system's golden rule that decisive evidence must be presented to convict for a crime. He's only taken down because his act of insurance against his accomplice is rendered null because in the latter's home country, smuggling a powerful and dangerous cocoon out of Borginia is a capital crime punishable by death. Apollo convinces him to confess in the ''Japanifornian'' courts for being the killer's accomplice for the smuggling, as their laws would only give him some lenient nonfatal punishment for smuggling instead of the murder charge against him. The confession becomes the decisive evidence needed to catch the killer.]]

In RealLife, this is one of the most common ways in which criminal trials are resolved. For instance, someone accused of murder may well confess to the crime of manslaughter/culpable homicide, or someone accused of dealing drugs may confess to possession but not to intent to supply. However, it is generally up to the prosecutor if they want to go with this - if they feel that allowing a murderer to confess to manslaughter would not be a just result, then they are within their rights to reject a plea of innocence and fight on. This trope is so common, in fact, that some criminal defense lawyers have said that they dread genuinely innocent clients - there is only ''one'' just result in their trials, whilst most of their clients are at least guilty of ''something'', if not the exact charge on their indictment.

However, the fictional version confessing to a not only lesser but completely unrelated crime is significantly rarer in real life; typically when the authorities are interrogating a person they have ''some'' idea of what crime they actually suspect was committed.