Week 9 Reading 3; The psychology of confession evidence Flashcards
Current evidence shows the criminal justice system does not afford adequate protection for innocent people branded as suspects and that there are serious dangers associated with confession evidence. The specific problems are threefold
o A) the police routinely use deception, trickery and psychologically coercive methods of interrogation
o B) these methods may, at times, cause innocent people to confess to crimes they did not commit
o C) the coerced self-incriminating statements are presented in the courtroom; juries do not sufficiently discount the evidence in reaching a verdict
Police interrogations have 2 purposes
o 1. To obtain a full or partial confession
o 2. To elicit information on other evidence relevant to a case
The Inbau et al 1986 manual (reid technique)
o Advises interrogators to dress in vicilian clothing and set aside a bar, soundproof room without familiar sights or sounds and distraction
o Should be 2-3 armless straight-backed chairs to increase tension and diminish the suspects sense of control. Also important in this model to keep control of lighting, temperature etc out of suspects reach and to invade the suspects space
o Recommends a two way mirror be used so another investigator can observe too
o Then, implement a 9 step procedure designed to overcome the resistance of reluctant suspects
1. Confront suspect with their guilt
2. Develops psychological themes to excuse or justify the crime
3.. Interrupt all statements of denial
4. Overcome the suspects factual, moral and emotional objection of the charges
5. Ensure the increasingly passibe suspect doesn’t tune out
6. Show sympathy and understanding
7. Offer the suspect a face-saving alternative explanation for their guilty actions
8. Get the suspect to recount the details of the crime
9. Convert that statement into a written confession
o Argue it is poissble with verbal and non-verbal cues to distinguish truth-tellers from liars
o Eg. An innocent suspect will give concise answers as they have no fear of being trapped, they’ll sit upright but not rigid and face the interrogator whilst a guilty suspect will not make direct eye-contact, will be overly polite etc No evidence to support this
o Maximisation
; the interrogator uses scare tactics designed to intimidate a suspect believed to be guilty
This is achieved by overstating the seriousness of the offence and the magnitude of the charges and even by making false or exaggerated claims about the evidence
o Minimisation
; is a soft-sell technique in qhich the detective tries to lull a suspect into a false sense of security by offering sympathy, tolerance, face-saving excuses etc
o It’s hard to know how often these techniques are used or their impact on guilty/innocent suspects
Communicating Promises and Threats by Pragmatic Implication
o To minise the risk people confess to crimes they didn’t commit, the courts will reject confessions elicited by threats and hard punishment or promises of leniency in sentencing
o Although recently showsn courts tend not to exclude confessions for those which positive and negative contingencies are merely implied.
o Eg. James Jacson was misled by police to think the victims blood was on his pants, his shoes matched the footprints on the crimescene and that his fingerprints were on the murder weapon and there had been an eyewitness. Jackson was lead to believe if he confessed the court would view his case favourably he confessed and later retracted it saying he was coerced. The court however, accepted his confession saying whilst it was elicited by deception he hadn’t been physically retrained, offered leniency or threatnened so it would stand
o Researchers however have found that people tend to read between the lines and not on what was written or said, so he would have taken the inferred leniency promoted by minimisation whilst maximisation implies a threat of severe punishment
o To test this, researchers read a transcript of a murder suspects interrogation. Depending on the condiiotn, detectives made an explicit promise of lenience, threatened the suspect with a harsh sentence, used minimisation by blaming the victim or used maximisation by claiming to have found fingerprints. There was a fifth control group which heard a transcript with none of these techniques. Participants read the transcript then estematied the sentence the suspect would get.
Findings showed that maximisation raised sentencing expectations, as in the explicit threat group
Findings also showed minimisation lowered sentencing expectations which lead participants to anticipate leniency as in the explicit promise group
* So, Maximisation communicates an implicit threat of punishment which minimisation offers implied leniency
The Miranda Controversy
o In the US, police must give Miranda rights for interrogations
o Miranda critics suggests that confession and conviction rates have dropped significantly as a result of warning and waiver requirements, triggering the release of dangerous criminals
o Whilst Miranda defenders suggest that the declines in these conviction rates are insubstantial as 4 out of 5 suspects waive their rights and submit to questioning and that the costs to law enforcement are outweighted by the social benefits of increasing public awareness of constitutional rights
Validity of Confession Evidence
o Two types of erroneous outcomes can arise from confessions;
o 1. False negative (when guilty suspects fail to confess
o 2. False positives (when suspects who are innocent confess)
o The false positive error is a more serous problem, so it’s important to know what increases the risk of a false confession
Trickery and Deception; arguably these factors should affect innocent suspects and such individuals wouldn’t confess to crimes they didn’t commit – but this is untrue!
Difficult to assess prevalence of false confessions
* For two reasons
o 1. A confession may be true even if it is coerced
o A confession may be false even when the defendant is convicted and imprisoned
* So to assess if a confession is false, independent evidence is needed
* Three types of false confession
o Voluntary
o Coerced-compliant
o Coerced-internalised
Voluntary False Confessions
o No external pressure but a confession is made
Can occur to protect a friend/relative (often with juvenile offenders)
Pathological need for fame, acceptance, recognition
Or self punishment
* Eg. Radelet et al ., 1992 describes an innocent man who confessed to a murder to impress his gf or where a soman pleaded guilty to avoid her affair being discovered
Coerced-Compliant False Confessions
o Confess after intense interrogation pressures
o Within this category also need to consider the types of social influence ; internalisation or internalisation
Compliance = a change to one’s oublic behaviour for instrumental purposes (eg. Acshes conformity studies or milgrims shock study)
Internalisation = private acceptance of the beliefs espoused by others (eg. Sheriffs autokinetic studies or group norms in moscovici’s studies)
o These occur when suspects confess to escape or avoid an aversive interrogation or to fain a promised reward ; this is an example of compliance and the suspect privately knows they’re innocent
These are easy to explain as a suspect believes the short term benefits of confession outweight the long-term costs
Suspects perception of evidence strength against them is a significant predictor of whether he or she will confess
Those who are predisposed to exhibit compliance are likely more vulnerable to this. Eg. Gudjonsonn 1989 who constructed a self-report measure to assess compliance tendency, then administeres the test to 20 criminal suspects who refused to confess and 20 who confessed and later retracted this. Confessors had higher scores of self-reported compliance
Coerced-Internalised False Confessions
o Those in which an innocent person becomes suggestive to methods of interrogation and comes to believe they committed the crime
o Gudjonsson 1984 devised a memory related instrument ot assess indvidiual differences in interrogative suggestibility. The test involves reading a narrative paragraph to the participant who free recalls the story and answers 20 memory questions including 15 that are subtly misleading. After bign told they made several erros the participant is retested for the purpose presumably of getting a higher level of accuracy Measure the extend tow hich participants exhibit a general shift in memory as well as the tendency to yield themisleading questions in the first and second tests
o Those who score highly on the interrogative suggestibility test also tend to exhibit poor memory, high anxiety, low self-esteem and a lack of assertiveness
o Criminal suspects who confessed and later retracted their confession had higher scores than those who maintained their innocence (and interestingly scored lower than the general population)
o Suggestibility scores increase as a function of prolonged sleep deprivation, a state that often plagues suepcts who are interrogated late at night
o Not common type of confession but do occur.
Eg. Peter Reilly who retunred home one night to find his mum murdered, he called the police and was interrogated with a polygraph. Was told he had failed the interrogator idnivating he was guilty even though he didn’t remember the event. Transcrips show Reilly went from denial to confusion to self doubt and then conversion before signing a full confession
Later evidence then revealed he couldn’t have committed the crime
o Two factors in common in all these types of false confessions;
1. A suspect is vulnerable – that is their memory is malleable by virtue of their youth, interpersonal trust, vaivete, suggestibility, lack of intelligence, stress, fatigue, alcohol, drug use etc
2. The presentation of false evidence such as a rigged polygraph or forensive tests, police comments, eyewitness identifications etc
o Supported by false and implanted memory evidence
Eliciting False confession in the Lab
o Kassin and Kiechel 1996 created a two factor hypothesis; that the presentation of false evidence can lead individuals who are vulnerable to confess to an act they did not commit, internalise that confession and confabulate details consisten tiwht that belief
o Key-pad study (already in previous reading)
Perception of Voluntariness and Coercion
o Skolnick and Leo 1992 had police officers and college students respond to a brief vignette describing a sucpect who was confronted with false forensic evidence. The result was tha t 94% of police offers compared to 36% of students thought the tactic was fair. When the ploy was supplemented with a fabricated scientific report, the officers continued to see the situation as fair but student endorsement rate dropped to 17%
Discounting of Coerced Confessions
o Fundamental attribution error; people neglect the role of situational factors and make dispositional attributions for a persons action
o People make dispositional attributions quickly and then tend not to change/adjust them due to a lack of cognitive capacity or motivation
o Positive coercion bias =
Videotaped Confessions in the Courtroom;
o Videotaping an interrogation can reduce/deter coercive police conduct and provide a more complete record for the judge and jury
o The point of view bias;
Research shows a camera angle that focused squarly on the suspect is not unbiased. Studies show people make causal attributions to factors that are visually salienct, so those who see only the suspect are more likely to judge a situation as less coervive than twhen focussed on the interrogator. By directing visual attention to the accused suspect, the camera can lead jurors to underestimate the amount of pressure actually exerted by the hidden detective
