Interrogations and Confessions (wk 9)

Question 1

What’s the Importance of Suspect Interviews and Confessions?

Answer 1

• In criminal law a confession is the most potent weapon a prosecutor can use
  “The introduction of a confession makes the other aspects of a trial in court superfluous” - McCormick 1972
• people are more likely to believe confessions than denials (as we trust statements made against self-interest, as why would you admit to a crime if you hadn’t done it!)
• the way in which a confession is obtained is often not considered by jurors but is becoming increasingly controversial
• Of the first `143 DNA exonerations in the US, 20% of which the accused had confessed to the crime despite being innocent

Question 2

Teina Pora

Answer 2

Was impressed in NZ for 21 years after confessing to a crime he didn’t commit

Question 3

Two leading reasons to conduct an interrogation

Answer 3

1. To elicit further information relevant to the case (similar to with eyewitness reports
2. To obtain a full or partial confession

Question 4

Full Versus Partial Confession

Answer 4

Full = accept responsibility for the crime completely
Partial = admits to being associated with the crime in some way (eg. I was there but I didn’t shoot the gun)

Question 5

Confession Culture

Answer 5

Is the prowess in policing culture associated with the number of confessions or the speed with which a confession was elicited

Question 6

How many police officers believe the aim of an interrogation is confession?

Answer 6

80%

Question 7

Why is there a focus on confesions?

Answer 7

• Confessions are a quicker way to solve the crime than seeking damning evidence so can mitigate the pressure on police to solve crimes quickly
  “It is far easier to sit comfortably in the shade rubbing pepper into the poor devil’s eyes, than to go out int eh sun hunting up evidence” <McKenzie 1994

Suspects who confess are more likely to then plead guilty (irrespective of whether they did the crime or not)
- this can save resources as pleading guilty means a trial is not required, they can go straight to sentencing

Confessions are persuasive to jurors

Confessions are a mark of prowess (confession culture)

80% of Police officers assume interrogations are there to get a confession and disproportionately assume suspects are guilty

Question 8

What’s the Fundamental Attribution Error in relation to crime

Answer 8

Confession evidence has an enormous impact on jurors in that people assume people would only confess if they committed the crime.

This is an example of the fundamental attribution error, as people attribute the confessions to the crime being committed rather than potentially coercion or other confounds like duress or fatigue etc
-In other words: jurors do not consider how the confession came about

Question 9

What is front-footing in interrogations

Answer 9

When police suggest to the suspect they already know they’re guilty from out the gate
ie. “You’re here today because the jig is up, we know you did it.”

Question 10

Reid Technique 1986

Answer 10

Places focus on the physical environment; suggests the room should isolate the suspect from the rest of the world, be plain and boring, sound-proofed in order to isolate the suspect psychologically

Promotes the use of a 9-step procedure designed to overcome the resistance of reluctant suspects (suggesting the suspects are guilty and that the aim is to extract a confession)

Utilise maximisation (promoting the idea of guilt already being known) and minimisation (buying into the emotional empathic side of the situation, “we understand you’re smart, you’re a good person and this is hard, so just tell us what happened and we can sort this all out”

To account for suspects who are in fact innocent, the Reid Technique suggests that innocent suspects will behave a certain way that differs from guilty suspects but there is no empirical evidence to support this

Question 11

9 - steps in the Reid Technique

Answer 11

Designed to overcome the resistance of reluctant suspects

1. Confront the suspect with his or her guilt
2. Develop a psychological ‘theme’ that justify or excuse the crime
3. Interrupt all statements of denial
4. Overcome the suspect’s objection to the charges
5. Ensure the passive suspect doesn’t ‘tune out’
6. Show sympathy and understanding
7. Offer the suspect a ‘face saving’ alternative
8. Get the suspect to recount the details of the crime
   9 Convert the statement to a full written confession

These steps play on the techniques of maximisation and minimisation

Question 12

Maximisation vs minimisation

Answer 12

Maximization strategies involve presenting the suspect with the maximum possible consequences of their actions, including the severity of the crime, the likelihood of being convicted, and the potential punishment. The goal of maximization is to create anxiety and fear in the suspect and make them feel that confessing is their best option to avoid severe consequences.

Minimization strategies, on the other hand, involve downplaying the seriousness of the offence, minimizing the culpability of the suspect, and emphasizing the potential benefits of confessing, such as obtaining a more lenient sentence or feeling a sense of relief. The goal of minimization is to build rapport with the suspect and create a perception that confessing is a reasonable and safe option.

Question 13

Casey and Caylee Anthony and link to Reid technique

Answer 13

In class we watched a video with audio from Caylee Anthony’s interrogation with Reid technique strategies

• showed maximisation and minimisation

Question 14

According to the Reid technique how will an innocent versus guilty suspect behave

Answer 14

Innocent suspect will supposedly;
- give concise answers because he has no fear of being trapped
- sit upright, but no rigid in front of the interrogator

The guilty suspect will supposedly;
- fail to make direct eye contact
- be overly polite

> There is no empirical support for any of these assertions

Question 15

What’s the limitations regarding the assumptions of an innocent or a guilty suspect and their behaviour in an interrogation

Answer 15

“Nervousness, fear, confusion, hostility, a story that changes or contradicts itself - all are signs that a man in an interrogation room is lying, particularly in the eyes of someone as naturally suspicious as a detective. Unfortunately, these are also signs of a human being in a state of high stress” Simon 1991

Question 16

Is Confession Evidence Valid?

Answer 16

Like in signal detection theory there is a quadrant of sorts for the types of outcomes that can arise from interrogations.

False positive = a not guilty person confesses
Hit = confession when they are guilty
No confession = no confession when they are guilty
True negative = no confession and they’re not guilty

• False positives are the area of main concern as it can result in arrest of innocents

Question 17

The snowball of interrogations

Answer 17

• 80% of police presume a suspect is guilty
• when they believe they’re interrogating a guilty person, they change their interview style. (ie. try harder to get a confession, and are then more aggressive in their questioning)
• This in turn changes how suspects respond (become more defensive or more nervous)
• This in turn changes how jurors evaluate the suspect (they are more suspicious of them)

Question 18

How many confessions are false ?

Answer 18

It’s hard to estimate how many confessions are false but studies suggest it’s somewhere between 35 to 600 per year in the US alone

There are two reasons for this difficulty
1. A confession may be true even if it is coerced and later retracted (a guilty person may confess then try to take it back)
2. A confession may be false even if the suspect is convicted and imprisoned

• this means independent evidence is required

Question 19

List the three types of confessions as identified by Kassin & Wrightsman (1985)

Answer 19

-Voluntary false confessions
-Coerced compliant confessions
-Coerced internalized confessions

Question 20

Voluntary false confessions

Answer 20

-Self-incriminating statement that is offered without external pressure from the police
-Protection of a friend or relative
-Need for fame, acceptance, recognition, or self punishment (e.g. guilt from not being convicted of a previous crime they did actually do).

Question 21

Coerced Compliant Confessions

Answer 21

-Self-incriminating statement that is obtained after intense interrogation pressures
-Suspect knows that he or she is innocent (they confess but in their heads they still know they didn’t do it)
-Suspect confesses to escape or avoid an aversive interrogation or to gain a promised reward
-People make choices that will maximize their well-being given the constraints they face (e.g. confess so that they can get out of the room and go home)
-Delayed consequences depreciate over time in their subjective value: we avoid a smaller negative now in favour of a bigger negative later = Short-sighted decision-making
-Example: central park jogger case

Question 22

Coerced Internalized Confessions. What are the two things they all seem to have in common?

Answer 22

-An innocent person subjected to a coercive interrogation actually comes to believe that he or she is guilty
-e.g., Tom Sawyer case (guy with crippling social anxiety who the police cam to think was guilty after interviewing him)
-Original memories may be irretrievable
-“Interrogative Suggestibility”

-Coerced internalized confessions all seem to have two things in common:

(1) A vulnerable witness
– Age
– Low IQ and/or verbal ability
– Mental illness
– Substance abuse
– Situational factors (e.g., sleep deprivation)

(2) The presentation of false evidence

Note: does not mean that if these two things present you always have a coerced internalized confession

Question 23

Kassin et al. (2005)

Answer 23

Aimed to investigate the “I’d know a false confession if I came across one” claim of many police investigators

Experiment 1
-Undergraduates and police investigators were exposed to prison inmates confessing to crimes
-Manipulated two factors:
Whether the confessions were true or false
Whether the confessions were presented via audiotape or video recording
-The overall accuracy rate was only 54% (poor-not much above chance)
-Participants were more accurate when faced with audiotapes, as opposed to video recordings
-Police were more confident in their judgments than students
-Students were more accurate than police
-Police showed a positive guilt bias

Experiment 2 (tried to get rid of positive guilt bias)
-Participants were told that half of the confessions were true and half were false
-Positive guilt bias was eliminated, but this did not increase accuracy or reduce confidence

Question 24

Kassin & Kiechel (1996)

Answer 24

-Participants took part in a “reaction time” study with an experimental confederate
-Confederate read out a list of letters, and the participant typed them into the computer
-Instructed not the hit the “Alt” key as if do the computer will crash
-Computer crashed 60 sec into task
-Experimenter enters and asks “Did you hit the alt key?”

Manipulated 2 variables:
-High or low perceived vulnerability (fast paced or slow paced task)
-Presence of a “witness” (= false evidence)

-People can relatively easily be led into confessing to something that they didn’t do
-Confessions increase as a function of subjective vulnerability (in fast paced condition as opposed to slow paced condition)
-Compliance, internalization, and confabulation rates increase markedly when false evidence is presented (other witness saying they saw them do it)

Note:
-Compliance: take responsibility but don’t actually believe they hit the key
-Internalization: believe they hit the key (made a mistake)
-Confabulation: adding details about how they hit the key

Question 25

Russano et al. (2005)

Answer 25

-Undergraduate students took part in a decision-making study alongside experimental confederate
-Participants either cheated at the request of the confederate or didn’t
-All participants were accused of cheating
-Two ‘interrogation’ factors manipulated:
(1) Minimisation or No Minimisation
(2) Deal or No Deal

4 conditions:
-No tactic (no Minimisation or deal)
-Deal
-Minimisation
-Minimisation and deal

Results:
-The more tactics you use the more confessions you get (both true and false). Note: true confession is when the student actually cheated and confessed to it. A false confession is when the student didn’t cheat but confesses.
-Diagnositicity is best in the first condition when no tactics were used. As the number of tactics increases Diagnositicity decreases.

Question 26

Innocence as a risk factor

Answer 26

Innocent people might be particularly vulnerable to confessing, because they:
– believe the truth will prevail
– are more likely to waive their rights
– don’t use self-preservation strategies
– overestimate the extent to which their thoughts, emotions, and inner states can be seen (think that police will be able to tell they are innocent)
– are more likely to confess when told there will be physical evidence (e.g. Ted Bradford- confessed to sexual assault and thought biological evidence would come through and save him but didn’t happen)

Question 27

Recommendations

Answer 27

-Reduction of police pressure and use of trickery

-Videotaping of suspect interviews
“Out of context, a videotaped confession is often like a Hollywood drama – scripted with crime facts, rehearsed during interrogation, directed by the questioner, and enacted by the suspect” Kassin, 2002
=additionally usually only show part of the confession so jurors do not get the whole build up of how that confession came about (fundamental attribution error) and the suspect can look extremally callous as they are exhausted from being interviewed for so long and having to tell what happened over an over again.

-Solicitor presence during interviews

-Identification of vulnerable individuals (age, mental illness, substance abuse)

-Additional corroborative evidence (don’t just send someone to trial based on confession alone)

-Research involving “higher stakes” confessions (hard- never going to have high stakes research in this area because of ethics).