Talk:Deathbed confession

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Kosaskih.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 19:08, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Possible new lead section
A deathbed confession is an admittance or confession when someone is nearing death, or on their “death bed”. This confession may help alleviate any guilt, regrets, secrets, or sins the dying person may have had in their life. These confessions can occur because the dying want to live the last moments of their life free of any secrets they have been holding in for a portion, or the entirety of their life. A deathbed confession can be given to anyone, but a family member is usually with their loved one during this time. Doctors and nurses may also hear a deathbed confession because they are often present in a person’s last moments.

These confessions can range from a confession of sins that have been committed to crimes that have been committed or witnessed. Often, these confessions are made to clear the dying’s conscience. A common type of confession is either religious or spiritually based. On the death bed, the dying will confess sins or mistakes they have made in their lifetime, and ask for forgiveness, so that they may move on to the afterlife that their religion believes in. Different religions have different protocols for the deathbed confession, but all religions seek to provide relief for the dying. People may also confess their feelings for another person while dying. This can relieve the dying of the internal struggle with hiding how they actually feel for someone. These emotions can range from hatred to love, and everything in between.

Many confessions have involved the admittance of a crime that the dying has committed, which cannot be prosecuted once the perpetrator has died. On the other hand, someone can confess that they have knowledge of or witnessed a crime that has been committed. This special kind of confession can sometimes be admissible in court to get a conviction, depending on the circumstances the statement was given under. Another use for a deathbed confession in the criminal justice system is to re-open a case that may have gone cold to get closure for the victim's family or friends, even if prosecution is not an option.

Kosaskih (talk) 18:35, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Rough Draft

Buddhism

Many terminal patients look to religion or spirituality to bring comfort in their remaining time. Buddhism has been showing up in palliative care more frequently to help patients cope with death and come to peace with the end of their life. Buddhism is a philosophically based religion mainly focused on suffering: why it exists, what causes it, and how to escape it. The belief is that ignorance, anger, and attachment cause inevitable suffering to the body. Buddhism also believes that life and the body is temporary and it is a privilege used to look for enlightenment. Discussing any issues in a patient's life related to suffering can bring inner peace and relief. Buddhism does not seek to manipulate a dying patient into following a religion or forcing dying confessions, but rather to become a thought-provoking way to talk about their suffering and clear themselves of attachment to their body, to prepare for death. Talking about suffering may bring up confessions or secrets that can be released before death to journey towards enlightenment. Kosaskih (talk) 19:38, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Christianity

Many Christians, most notably Catholics, believe that sins must be confessed to a priest before death. The priest can then absolve the dying of their sins, so that they can prepare for the afterlife.[3] The admittance of sin is important to the patient, because they are then free of sin and able to go to Heaven and enjoy their afterlife with God. These last moment confessions are often performed by a hospital priest or chaplain due to the sudden decline in quality of patient life.

Hinduism

Hinduism is largely centered around the idea of karma and reincarnation. Good karma allows the soul to move up on the incarnation hierarchy to a better life. Bad karma does the opposite; it causes the soul to have to pay for its actions in this life or the previous one. The next incarnation is less fortunate until the bad karma is cancelled out by good deeds or suffering. This heavy emphasis on karma leads many Hindus to carry out many final acts to improve their chances in the next life and reduce end of life suffering. The main ways Hindus try to increase their karma before moving onto the next life is by apologizing to people, resolving any issues with family or friends, confessions with a guru or other religious figure, religious ceremonies, sacrifices or repentance. Performing all, or some, of these actions allows the patient to think about their God, Brahma, while they pass and prepare for the next life. Kosaskih (talk) 02:59, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Native American Spirituality

Many tribes of Native Americans have similar views regarding death. Death is seen as a natural transition, and a part of life. The world is seen as an interconnected web, and a person is an extension of the web, as well as all other life. After death, it is believed by many that the components of your person is returned to the web of life. Making this transition smoothly is important to both the dying, and the loved ones left behind after they have passed on. Ensuring that there are no secrets remaining is vital to a transition back to the web of life.

Legality and Crimes

A deathbed confession can be admissible in court under the right circumstances. If someone confesses knowledge of a crime and then dies or their condition worsens, the law does not consider the statement to be hearsay and can be used in a criminal trial. A deathbed confession can be a valuable piece of evidence in a case that may not have much physical evidence. Even criminal confessions that have been secret for years can still be of use, such as in a murder case, because there is no statute of limitations on murder cases. Kosaskih (talk) 03:41, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Deathbed confessions can be used to re-open cold cases to benefit the victim's family. A notable example of this was the disappearance of a 16 year old servant girl in 1926. The case had gone cold until the family emerged with a deathbed confession from the sister, years after her death, in 2009. The case was reopened, not to find a killer, but to find the body of the young girl to give her a proper burial.

Editing Deathbed Confession
Hi Hannah,

I think you picked a very intriguing topic for your Wikipedia Project. Reading through your lead section and your body paragraphs you seem to do a great job in keeping a neutral point of view throughout. For your lead section you define your topic very well in the first couple sentences. Reading your lead section you discuss many topics like crimes, religion, emotions, and media. These are a lot of different topics to discuss for this project. Were you planning on touching on each of these topics for your final draft? It might be too much work on your part if you do. Maybe instead try to in depth explore a few topics like you did for religion, which I found very informative and interesting. You created a great start to the legality subheading you could possibly try to intertwine crime into that section if it makes sense in the research that you find. Also, in your lead section for the final draft make sure to link certain words, like confession to an article, so that a reader doing research can further expand their knowledge on subtopics in order to really understand your article on deathbed confessions. Make sure too that the order you discuss your subheading topics in the lead section match the way you organize them throughout your article. For example, you first bring up the topic of crime in your lead section, but the first subheading talked about in the body of your article is religion. In the body paragraphs of your essay possibly try to find facts or statistics on what are common things people confess or regret on their deathbed. I think that would be interesting to discuss in your article and to research about. I think for the religion portion of your editing process you did a great job exploring each religion and explaining their way of viewing death and the afterlife. Try to expand a little more on each of those sections by explaining who is at there deathbed (family members, friends, etc.), what process or rituals are performed while they are on their deathbed or once they have already pasted. If you want to expand on the crime or legality section try to find if anyone in the past or in history has confessed on their deathbed to a crime they or a friend committed and how the legal regulations played out because of this confession. For your media section if you choose to edit and expand this section you could bring up movies that include a deathbed confession in them and how it was pivotal to the plot. Overall, for your body paragraphs make sure to link words to articles in order to allow the readers the opportunity to explore related topics. Also, try to add more research to your article and make sure to ref tag it. I saw in your journal post that you were having trouble finding reliable useful sources. What helped me during my research process was using the MSU library search engine and the Google scholar search engine. I don’t know if you have already tried this but it helps changing up the word you are searching, so if you were looking up more information on the Catholic religion search “catholic confession, forgiveness of sins, etc.” Overall, I love your topic I found it very interesting learning how different religions think about death and the processes of approaching it. I think you have a great start to your Wikipedia Project and I hope my peer review and ideas helped. Good luck on the rest of your editing and if you have any questions you can email me!

https://www.lib.msu.edu/

https://scholar.google.com/

LindseyRenk (talk) 19:34, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

What would happen if somebody confessed to a crime on their deathbed, and then against all the odds actually got better? Could they be prosecuted? PatGallacher (talk) 01:35, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Buddhism and Hinduism.
There is no concept of confession in Buddhism. Zero. Nada. None. So I removed the section about it. I suspect that some Buddhist erroneously inserted it wanting to represent their faith, but it's wrong to lie like that. This article is about deathbed confessions. It is an extreme stretch to claim that there is such a concept in Hinduism, apologizing to people you have wronged isn't exactly a confession and one doesn't confess to a guru. But perhaps someone can enlighten me on the topic, as I am not a Hindu so I cannot be 100% sure. 2001:8003:2961:AD00:5197:4A89:E953:5FC4 (talk) 16:20, 26 August 2023 (UTC)