Interviewing and Confessions - Lecture 5

Question 1

What is a voluntary confession?

Answer 1

A formal admission of guilt given freely, which can be true or false, usually made to the police.

Question 2

What is the Innocent project USA?

Answer 2

A public policy organisation in US, has currently 325 DNA exonerations, about 25% of wrongful convictions identified using DNA evidence involved a false confession and 17 of those exonerated were facing the death sentence.

Question 3

Are there differences between approaches taken to interrogation in the UK and US?

Answer 3

Yes, some that are lawful in US (usually those that involve deceit and lying) are not lawful in the UK.

Question 4

What is PACE?

Answer 4

The Police and Criminal Evidence act (1984) - states that a tape recording of suspects interviews is mandatory, safeguards laid down for interviewing those mentally disordered or at risk.

Question 5

What was introduced following the Birmingham six case of 1991?

Answer 5

The Royal Commission of Criminal Justice - it scrutinises operation of criminal justice system.

Question 6

What percentage of interrogations results in confessions?

Answer 6

40-76% (Gudjonsson 2003)

Question 7

What did Gudjonsson et al reveal in their 1994 experiment?

Answer 7

It involved 156 suspects at two police stations and they revealed that:
7% were suffering from mental illness
3% had learning difficulties
3% were illiterate
2% had language problems
Only 4% of the cases were the adults “appropriate” for interrogation.

Question 8

What type of people does Gudjonsson propose are more prone to giving unreliable confessions?

Answer 8

People with mental disorders (eg. depression)
Abnormal mental state (eg. phobias, high anxiety)
Low intellectual abilities
Those scoring high on personality scales assessing compliance and suggestibility.

Question 9

What did Stephenson and Moston find after surveying detectives in London in 1991?

Answer 9

Detectives’ aims in majority of cases was to secure a confession as either main evidence or additional evidence.
Most detectives were sure of guilt of suspect before interview, largely on basis of evaluation of strength of evidence against suspect (confirmation bias).

Question 10

What 3 things does PACE aim to do?

Answer 10

Shift emphasis from getting confession to seeing task as a search for the truth.
To encourage police officers to approach interview with open mind.
To encourage police to be fair.

Question 11

What are the two types of false confessions (Kassin and Kiechel, 1996)?

Answer 11

Voluntary and Coerced.

Question 12

When does a voluntary false confession occur?

Answer 12

It occurs in the absence of any obvious external pressure from others.

Question 13

What are the 7 possible reasons that Kassin and Wrightman suggest for giving a voluntary false confession?

Answer 13

1. Desire for nobriety
2. Individual may feel guilty about previous event in his life and believe he deserves to be punished.
3. Inability to distinguish between fact and imagination.
4. Desire to protect someone else.
5. See no possible way of proving their innocence and wish to reduce severity of punishment
6. Pre-empt further investigation into more serious offences
7. Hide non-criminal facts

Question 14

When does a coerced false confession occur?

Answer 14

When the individual has been persuaded

Question 15

What are the further two break-downs?

Answer 15

Coerced-compliant and Coerced-internalised

Question 16

What did Gudjonsson and Clark (1986) suggest that an individual will come with to an interrogation?

Answer 16

A general cognitive ‘set’ that may be hostile, suspicious or cooperative

Question 17

What will this cognitive ‘set’ influence?

Answer 17

It will influence a suspects’ appraisal of situation, and so affect the suspect’s strategy for coping with interrogation.

Question 18

What factors will the cognitive set be related to?

Answer 18

Intelligence

Level of stress and degree to which suspect has previous experience of police questioning

Question 19

What are the two styles of initial coping responses that Gudjonsson and Clark describe?

Answer 19

1. That the suspect adopts a logical, realistic approach. Actively seek to deal with situation and are actively resistant to interrogator’s persuasion to confess. Active resistance may weaken as interrogation progresses.
2. Suspect adopts passive, helpless stance. Avoid confrontation with interrogator so as to reduce stress. However, may lead to them being increasingly susceptible to interrogator’s persuasive tactics.

Question 20

What difficult decisions does a suspect have to make during questioning, other than just recalling information?

Answer 20

1. Have to decide how confident they are in their memories.
2. What answers to give interrogators (may not be same as suspect’s private knowledge)
3. Whether they trust interrogator.

Question 21

What happens when a suspect makes a coerced-compliant false confession?

Answer 21

The suspect remains aware that their confession and private, internal knowledge of event disagree, but suspect nevertheless comes to agree with interrogator.

Question 22

What happens when a suspect makes a coerced-internalised false confession?

Answer 22

The suspect’s internal account of events actually changes to fall into line with interrogator so that, both publicly and privately, suspect comes to agree with interrogator’s version of events.

Question 23

Why does coerced-compliance happen?

Answer 23

1. To please interrogator
2. To avoid physical harm
3. To avoid further detention and interrogation
4. Strike a deal with interrogator that brings some award for confessing.

Question 24

Why does coerced-internalised happen?

Answer 24

Because the suspect comes to believe that their own memory for events is incorrect and that the police version must be true.
They may develop a memory for having committed the crime OR people may come to falsely believe they committed a crime, even though they have no memory of doing so.

Question 25

What is the notion of interrogative suggestibility (Gudjonsson 1987)?

Answer 25

The extent to which, during intense questioning, people accept information communicated by the questioner and so change their responses.

Question 26

What might trigger the suspect’s suggestibility to misleading information?

Answer 26

Situational stress, low intelligence, low self-esteem, fatigue and memory ability.

Question 27

What study did Kassin and Kiechel (1996) undertake?

Answer 27

A false confessions study where participants were asked to enter data into a computer but were not allowed to press ALT as this would crash the software.
Software was set up to crash and when it did, the participants were accused of pressing the ALT key.
All denied the charge.
Half were confronted with a witness who said they had hit ALT and 65% confessed to doing so.
Half were confronted with a witness who said they hadn’t seen what had happened and only 12% confessed.

Question 28

What study did Horselenburg et al (2006) undertake?

Answer 28

Participants were put in a situation where they could cheat by looking at an exam paper left on a desk while they were alone in a room.
They would know if they looked or not (unlike ALT which could have been an accident)
Small number confessed even though they hadn’t looked.

Question 29

What did Kassin (1997) discover about verbal and nonverbal cues made by the suspect?

Answer 29

That they could be read to determine if they are lying or not.

Question 30

Ekman and O’Sullivan (1991) suggested that even skilled questioners are not …..

Answer 30

.. good at detecting deceit simply on the basis of a suspect’s verbal and non-verbal cues.

Question 31

What are the seven qualities that make a good liar?

Answer 31

1. Having a well prepared story
2. Being original in what is said
3. Thinking quickly when necessary
4. Eloquence in storytelling
5. Having a good memory for what has been previously said.
6. Not experiencing emotions such as fear/guilt while lying
7. Good acting ability

Question 32

What is the Statement Validity Assessment (SVA)?

Answer 32

It is a structural analysis of verbal content

Question 33

What was it originally developed as?

Answer 33

A clinical tool for analysing children’s statements in case of sexual abuse (Undeutsch, 1982)

Question 34

What are the three elements that SVA consists of?

Answer 34

1. A statement is taken in a structured interview
2. Content of statement is judged by forensic psychologist in a criterion-based content analysis (CBCA)
3. CBCA is necessarily subjective - needs to be evaluated against set of questions set in ‘validity checklist’.

Question 35

What is the criteria that might suggest an account is truthful?

Answer 35

1. Account may be unstructured and not presented in chronological time order but still be coherent.
2. There is reference to specific detail about events and people which is embedded in a context (time and space)
3. Reporting of subjective feelings
4. Spontaneous corrections and additional information, admitting a lack of memory (truthful suspects are less concerned about impression management)
5. Reference to offence-specific elements concerning fine details of offence.

Question 36

What are the three things the Statement Validity Checklist assesses?

Answer 36

1. Likelihood of suggestion
2. Influence of others
3. Lack of realism

Question 37

What is theoretical basis of this technique?

Answer 37

That people’s accounts of events actually experienced are qualitatively and quantitively different from fictitious accounts (Undeutsch 1992)

Question 38

What does SVA represent?

Answer 38

An attempt to bring order and rigour to essentially subjective matter of judging veracity and reliability of interviewee’s statement.