Week 7 Flashcards
False Confession
Police interrogations in the US
In the United States, where the Reid Technique is applied, police interrogations are information gathering in that they seek to confirm the location of events and the timeline in which events occurred. A significant focus of the interrogation is to gain a confession.
Gaining a confession will have a huge impact on a criminal investigation as defendants who confess are more likely to be convicted—the assumption governing a confession during an interrogation is that people don’t confess unless:
they are guilty, or they have been physically coerced.
Physical coercion
This stems from the use of torture in the middle ages and may be referred to as 'enhanced interrogation'. Ultimately, a physically coerced confession undermines the credibility of the confession and places the criminal investigation in jeopardy. In the Brown v. Mississippi case of 1936, the Supreme Court made a path-breaking decision showing the unconstitutionality of coerced confessions. You can read more about this case in A Scottsboro case in Mississippi: The Supreme Court and Brown v. Mississippi (Links to an external site.) (Cortner, 2012).
So …
Physical coercion during custodial interviews is illegal, ruled by the court as unreliable and will ultimately undermine public confidence in the confession.
But … what about psychological coercion?
This may include an interviewer lying about evidence, promising lenient treatment or even implying subtle threats to loved ones. It is problematic because it is far more subtle and has less effect on jury perceptions than physical coercion.
Questioning and interviewing
The image below contains the goals of questioning, interviewing and interrogating. As you view the information, compare the different approaches, their goals and the people involved in each.
Questioning, interviewing and interrogating. Text alternative located after figure caption.
Defining different investigator interactions
Questioning
The goal of questioning is to encourage the person to provide you with reliable information to an alleged offence. Used for:
Witnesses. Victims. Suspects.
Interviewing
The goal of interviewing is to encourage the person to provide you with confirmation of known elements of an alleged offence in a formal setting. Used for:
Suspects. Victims. Suspects.
Interrogating
The goal of interrogating is to acquire a confession regarding an alleged offence. Used for:
Suspects.
REID - identify the staged progressions of interviews
REID:
Specialised techniques for interrogation are taught to police and one of the most common training programs taught in the US and Canada is the Reid Technique.
Detecting deception and false confessions with the Reid technique
When using the Reid Technique, interrogators will rely on the detection of deception during Stage 2, the pre-interrogation interview, where the tone is non-accusatorial. In proceeding this way, investigators attempt to funnel innocent people away from Stage 3, the interrogation.
Behaviour analysis interview and the ability to detect deception
Police investigators take note of a range of cues to determine whether an interviewee is attempting deception. Cues include:
verbal cues like long pauses before a response or qualified and rehearsed responses non-verbal cues such as gaze aversion and a frozen, slouched or groomed posture behavioural attitudes such as anxiety, a lack of concern or a guarded attitude.
3 STAGES
Collection of evidence Pre-interrogation interview Non-accusatorial interview Determine whether the suspect is lying Interrogation Only guilty suspects
MANIPULATING ANXIETY
Guilty suspect’s anxiety:
Fear of consequences of confessing > Fear associated with remaining deceptive
Interrogator’s job is to shift the balance, so that:
Fear associated with remaining deceptive > Fear of consequences of confessing
Do this in two ways:
Increase anxiety associated with remaining deceptive
Decrease fear of consequences of confessing
INTERROGATION: 9 PRINCIPLES
Confront suspect with (fake) evidence. Develop themes to excuse the crime. Interrupt denials. Suspect becomes quiet and withdrawn. Reduce distance. Sympathy and understanding. Offer face-saving explanations. Develop admission into full concession. Suspect writes and signs full concession.
INTERROGATION: 9 PRINCIPLES
Confront suspect with (fake) evidence.
MAXIMISATION
Develop themes to excuse the crime.
MINIMISATION
Interrupt denials.
Suspect becomes quiet and withdrawn.
Reduce distance.
MAXIMISATION
Sympathy and understanding.
MINIMISATION
Offer face-saving explanations.
MINIMISATION
Develop admission into full concession.
Suspect writes and signs full concession
False Confessions
False confessions are elicited in response to a demand for a confession and they can be intentionally fabricated or not based at all on actual knowledge of the facts. There are three types of false confessions:
Voluntary false confessions Coerced-compliant false confessions Coerced-internalised false confessions.
Voluntary false confessions
Voluntary false confessions are offered by innocent people without encouragement from the police. Motives for offering a false confession may include a desire for notoriety, an inability to distinguish fact from fantasy or the need to protect someone else.
Coerced-compliant false confessions
This is where a suspect confesses, even though they are fully aware that they are innocent, usually in response to coercion. There are two factors that influence suspects to confess in this situation:
They are motivated by:
a need to escape an aversive situation a need to avoid an explicit or implied threat the possibility of a promised or implied reward.
Or, compliance. There may be:
perceived short-term benefits of confessing and perceived long-term costs of confessing.
Examples of coerced-compliant false confessions that you can research yourself include the Salem witch trials (1962), Brown v. Mississippi (1962), the Central Park Jogger case (1990) and the Guildford Four (1975).
Coerced-internalised false confessions
Here, the situation is different. The suspect comes to believe that they are guilty when they are in fact innocent—during the course of the interrogation, the suspect will confabulate false details. This may result from manipulation, suggestion and leading questions.
Situations like this often work in the same way as the creation of false memories in psychotherapy, because:
authority may claim to have a privileged insight the subject may be malleable the interrogation might have been conducted in a very isolated place the interrogation may invoke repression or dissociation.
PEACE - identify the staged progressions of interviews
The PEACE Model used by investigators in Australia was developed in 1992 in the UK. This model of interviewing takes a conversational, non-accusatory, non-confrontational approach to acquiring information during an interview. It is designed to gain accurate information so as to reduce the possibility of false confessions resulting from ‘persuasive’ or aggressive interrogation techniques. Its aim is to collect facts to determine a person’s possible involvement in the criminal behaviour under investigation.
The stages of the PEACE Model are:
Preparation and planning: Interviewers are taught to carefully prepare and plan the interview, formulating its aims and objectives.
Engage and explain: Interviewers establish rapport with the interviewee by engaging in conversation.
Account: Police have two methods for obtaining an account from the person being interviewed:
Cognitive interview: used with cooperative witnesses and suspects.
Conversation management: recommended when cooperation is insufficient for the cognitive interview techniques to work.
Closure: The investigator summarises the main points of the interview and gives the interviewee the opportunity to correct or add information.
Evaluate: At the end of the interview, the information gathered is evaluated in the context of its impact on the investigation. To establish rapport with interviewees, interviewers must employ verbal and non-verbal communication techniques.
Read Inside interrogation: The lie, the bluff, and false confessions (Links to an external site.) (Parillo & Kassin, 2011, pp. 327–337) to learn more about the tactics used by interrogators to get that confession.
- Many police are trained the REID Technique and is designed to increase anxiety associated with denial and reduce anxiety associated with confession.
- 2 reasons why innocent people confess when false evidence is presented - 1. act of social compliance 2. create confusion and lead people to doubt themselves.
- Kassin and Kiechel (1996) and Kassin (2005) show this.
- In using the bluff, interrogators pretend to have evidence without additionally asserting that this evidence necessarily implicates the suspect
- the bluff should produce diagnostic outcomes by threatening the actual perpetrator with certain detection, increasing the incentive to cooperate and confess.
- Hypothesis - bluff technique should elicit confessions from perpetrators but not from innocents makes intuitive sense.
- 4 x Experiments testing bluff and tactics with psych students from an urban university.
- study 1 showed that the bluff increased the false confession rate by 66%. Study 2 showed cited that tactic and inference of future exoneration as a reason for false confession. Study 3. replicated the effect of the bluff on cheating/.
- The paradoxical effect of the bluff of innocent participant contributes to recent work indicating that innocence can put those accused at risk for the decisions they make in an interrogation setting.
- these findings are problematic as police and jurers cannot differentiate between innocent and guilty
- The bluff puts innocent people at risk.
Read He’s guilty’: Investigator bias in judgments of truth and deception (Links to an external site.)(Meissner, Christian & Kassin, 2002, pp. 469–480), as they take a critical stance on the ability of interrogators to detect deception.
- police interrogators are so powerful that they elicit coerced-compliant and internalized false confessions.
- research fails to support that people can make judgments on truth and deception
- the implications of falsely inferring deceit in the interrogation room can be quiet costly to an innocent suspect
- SDT test discrimination accuracy and response bias
- Experiment - 45 investigators from Florida and Canada - shown tapes and used self-reporting
- investigators were not able to seperate truth from deception
Recent DNA exonerations have shed light on the problem of people confessing to crimes they did not commit—learn more about false confessions in Police-induced confessions: Risk factors and recommendations (Links to an external site.) (Kassin et al., 2010).
DNA exonerations in the US:
-1999 - 200 individuals were exonerated
- Post-conviction DNA tests and exonerations have offered a window into the causes of wrongful convictions
The problem of False Confession:
- difficult to discover because neither the state nor any organisation keeps record of them and they are not usually publicized.
- confessions may be false when, 1. its later found the crime was not committed, 2. additional evidence shows it was impossible for the suspect to commit the crime, 3. the real perpentrator is found, 4. scientific evidence (DNA or ballistics).
- Drizin and Leo (2004) found 93% of false confessions were made by men, 63% were under the age of 25, 32% were under the age of 18, 16% juviniles and 22% mental inabilities and 10% mental disorder. Incidence rate cannot be determined due to no records and not possible to obtain the primary materials to deem it a false confession.
Police Interrogations in context:
3rd Degree practices of the past - physical abuse and psychological coercive (1930’s)
Current Law Enforcement Objectives and Practices in the US - the purpose of interrogation is therefore not to discern the truth, determine if the suspect committed the crime or evaluate their denials, it is to measure culpability.
Miranda Warnings, Rights and Waivers - requires officers to inform suspects of their right to remain silent and availability of counsel. Studies showed 1. the rights of which the suspect must be information were clearly defined in Miranda but not eh warnings. 2. adults with mental disabilities and adolescents do not understand. They have impairments when understandings the warnings. This is due to poor IQ or mental disabilities. People are more likely to believe that they should waive their rights and tell what they have done, because they are young and do not want to disobey authority. Same with suggestibility. Many states require the presence of a parent or guardian.
Overview of Confession Evidence in the courts:
- Judicial respect for confessions emanates from the power of confession evidence and the critical role that confessions play in solving crimes
- Judicial skepticism of confession evidence stems from historical fact that some law enforcement officers, aware that confession evidence can assure conviction, have abused their powers in the interrogation room.
- Doctrines have been formed in the US Supreme Court - Corroboration Rules - which requires that confessions be corroborated by independent evidence. Corpus Delicti ‘ the body of the crime’ seen in the case of Perry 1819, no body = no case. The corpus delicti rules does not require corroboration that the defendant committed the crime, nor does it demand any proof of the requisite mental state or any other elements of the crime. The rule thus makes it easier in some cases for prosecutors to convict both the guilty and innocent, and in certain cases, may bar the admission of reliable confessions. In theory, the trustworthiness standard is marked improvement on the corpus delicti rule in its ability to prevent false confessions from entering the stream of evidence at trial. Rules Prohibiting Involuntary Confession - The basis for excluding involuntary confessions in Warrickshall was a concern that confessions procured by tortue or others forms of coercion must be prohibited because of the risk that such tactics could cause an innocent person to confess. The rule of nemo tenetur, which was adopted in the colonies and incorporated into the 5th amendment applied only to self-incriminating statements in court, and have never been applied to extrajudical confessions. A 3rd basis for excluding involuntary confessions began to emerge in 1936, to deter unfair and oppressive police practices.
Cases addressed: Maximisation and Minimisation - Miranda vs Arizona, Arizona vs Fulminate
Cases addressed: Trickery and Deception -Leyra vs Demo, Spano vs NY, Miranda vs Arizona, Frazier vs Cupp.
Practices in England - PACE - suspects who are detained must be informed of their legal rights, in a 24 hour period must be allowed continuous rest for 8 hours, young or mentally challenged must be accompanied by an adult, all interviews are electronically recorded.
Police-Induced False Confessions:
Voluntary false confessions
Compliant False Confessions
Internalised False Confessions
Relevant Core Principles of Psychology:
- perceptions are influenced by short term consequences
- people are social and vulnerable to change agents who seek their compliance
- cognitive and neuroscience research (Schacter 2001) includes memory, transience, misattribution effects, suggestibility and bias.
Situation Risk Factors:
Physical Custody and Isolation
Presentations of False Evidence
Maximisation - promises implied but not spoken
Dispositional Risk Factors:
Adolescence and Immaturity
Cognitive and Intellectual Disabilities
Personality and Psychopathology
Innocence Risk Factors:
- findings suggest that people have a naive faith in the power of innocence to set them free.
The consequences of Confession:
- the idea that false confessions will be corrected
- overlook exculpatory evidence or other possible leads
- can taint other evidence and catch the real suspect
- 3 reasons why people cannot identify false confession - 1. generalized common sense leads people to trust confessions the way they trust other behaviours that counter self-interest. 2. people are not typically adept to deception detection. 3. police induced false confession contain content cues presumed to be associated with truthfulness.
Recommendations for Reform:
- Electronic Recording of Interrogations
- Reform interrogation practices
- Custody and interrogation times
- Presentations of false evidence
- Minimization tactics
Protection for the Vulnerable Suspect
- youth and mental disabilities need to be protected with a parent and forensic psychologist
recognise the qualities of deception
Deception or falsehood is an act or statement that misleads, hides the truth, or promotes a belief, concept, or idea that is not true. It is often done for personal gain or advantage. Deception can involve dissimulation, propaganda and sleight of hand as well as distraction, camouflage or concealment.
The REID Technique - can you describe this in comprehensive detail?
When using the REID technique, interrogators will rely on the detection of deception during stage 2 - the pre-interrogation interview, where the tone is non-accursatorial. In proceeding this way, investigators attempt to funnel innocent people aware from stage 3 - the interrogation.
Police will take note of cues to determine whether the interviewee is attempting deception. These cues include - verbal cues, non-verbal cues, behavioural attitudes
3 stages of an investigation:
- collection of evidence
- pre-interrogation interview - non-accusatorial, determine whether the suspect is lying
- interrogation - only guilty suspects
Manipulating anxiety:
- Guilty suspects anxiety - fear of consequences of confessing
- Interrogators job is to shift the balance so that - fear associated with remaining deceptive
- do this in 2 ways - increase anxiety associated with remaining deceptive, decrease fear of consequences of confessing
Interrogation Principles:
1. confront the suspect with fake evidence (maximisation)
2. develop themes to excuse the crime (minimisation)
3. interrupt denials
4. suspect becomes quiet and withdrawn
5. reduce distance (maximisation)
6. sympathy and understanding (minimisation)
7. offer face-saving explanations (minimisation)
8. develop admission into full concession
9. suspect writes and signs full concession
PEACE MODEL
used by investigators in AUS was developed in 1992 in the UK. This model of interviewing takes a conversational, non-accusatory, non-confrontational approach to acquiring information during an interview. It is designed to gain accurate information so as to reduce the possibility of fake confessions resulting from persuasive or aggressive interrogation techniques. Its aim is to collect facts to determine a persons possible involvement in the criminal behaviour under investigation.
P - preparation and planning - interviewers are taught to carefully prepare and plan the interview, formulating its aims and objectives.
E - engage and explain - interviewers establish rapport with the interviewee by engaging in conversation.
A account - police have 2 methods for obtaining an account from the person being interviewed: cognitive interview - used with cooperative witnesses and suspects, conversation management: used with cooperative witnesses and aspects.
C - closure - the investigator summarises the main points of the interview and gives the interviewee the opportunity to correct or add information.
E - evaluate - at the end of the interview, the information gathered is evaluated in the context of its impact on the investigation. To establish rapport with interviewees, interviewers must employ verbal and non-verbal communication techniques.
What is minimisation and maximisation?
Minimisation - Minimization is a legal interrogation tactic in which an interrogator attempts to decrease a suspect’s resistance to confessing by, for example, downplaying the seriousness of the crime.
Maximisation - Examples of maximization techniques include expressing absolute certainty in the suspect’s guilt, shutting down denials, exaggerating the seriousness of the offense, and bluffing about evidence. During an interrogation, an investigator may use multiple forms of minimization and/or maximization
False Confessions
Voluntary False Confessions -
Confessions offered by innocent people without any encouragement. Motives include gaining notoriety, inability to distinguish fact from fantasy, or the need to protect someone else.
Coerced-Complaint False Confessions -
An innocent suspect confesses, well aware that they are innocent. Motives include a need to escape an averse situation, a need to avoid an explicit or implied threat, or the possibility of a promised or implied reward.
Motivated by:
- a need to escape an adversive situation
- a need to avoid an explicit or implied threat
- the possibility of a promised or implied reward
Or compliance - there may be:
- perceived short-term benefits of confessing and
- perceived long-term costs of confessing
Coerced-Internalised False Confessions -
An innocent suspect confesses, and believes that they are guilty. This may be a result of manipulation, suggestion and leading questions throughout the course of the interrogation.
Situations like this often work in the same way as the creation of false memories in psychotherapy because:
- authority may claim to have a privileged insight
- the subject may be malleable
- the interrogation might have been conducted in a very isolated place
- the interrogation may invoke repression or dissociation
