The expression "confess error" is correct and usable in written English.
Generally speaking, it may be used when someone admits that they are at fault for something, or have made an error. For example: "After reviewing the data, I had to confess error and accept that I had made a mistake."
She was convinced that Dugan was the murderer and that Burris's office should "confess error" — the legal term used by a prosecutor to acknowledge a miscarriage of justice.
Mr. Elman urged the Solicitor General, Philip Perlman, to tell the Supreme Court that the dining car segregation was indefensible -- to confess error, as lawyers say.
But when the solicitor general prevails on grounds that he considers unjust (for example, when evidence supporting a criminal verdict is slight), he may "confess error" and recommend that the Supreme Court overturn the decision.
Others suggest requiring mediation, or granting doctors presumptive protection in malpractice lawsuits if they have followed recommended clinical practice guidelines, or encouraging doctors to confess error promptly, apologize to patients forthrightly, and offer them fair compensation for their injuries.
"It helped me personally to be a better person, to be constantly judged and condemned and torn apart, then to have to confess error and be publicly humiliated and all that," he said.
If the panic establishment can confess error on saccharin, there may yet be a glimmer of hope for silicone, power lines, dioxin and tomorrow's terror du jour, whatever it may be.
The opinion said that in September 2000, "the government came forward to confess errors in 75 FISA applications related to major terrorist attacks directed against the United States -- the errors related to misstatements and omissions of material facts".
His Thoughts Occasioned by the Perusal of Dr. Parr's Spital Sermon (1801), sought dispassionately to answer his critics and to confess errors which he now recognized — and which had already been acknowledged both in the revisions to the later editions of his Enquiry, and in his comments in St. Leon.
"Did your office ever consider just confessing error in this case?" she asked.
Enron executives are not the only ones who dislike confessing error.
When it turned out that this suspicion was based on forged documents, the embarrassed C.I.A. and humiliated White House confessed error.
