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Interrogation

Police-Induced Confessions: Risk Factors and Recommendations

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Abstract

Recent DNA exonerations have helped shed light on the problem of false confessions and the empirical fact that innocent people sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit. Drawing on past and current police practices, laws concerning the admissibility of confession evidence in court, relevant core principles of psychology, and forensic studies involving an array of empirical methodologies, this White Paper summarizes much of what we know about police-induced confessions. AS part of this review, we identify dispositional suspect characteristics (e.g., adolescence; intellectual disability; mental illness, and certain personality traits), interrogation tactics (e.g., excessive interrogation time; presentations of false evidence; minimization), and the phenomenology of innocence (e.g., the tendency to waive Miranda rights) that can influence the reliability of confessions, as well as their effects on judges, juries, and other decision makers. This article concludes with a strong recommendation for the mandatory videotaping of interrogations and considers other possibilities...

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Civilian Approaches To Interrogation

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At the close of the 1963 term, the United States Supreme Court decided two cases involving the relationship between police interrogation of a suspected criminal offender and the sixth amendment right to counsel. In Massiah v. United States,1 it was held that, once indicted, the defendant is entitled to the assistance of counsel, and that incriminating statements elicited from the accused during this period may not be admitted into evidence; subsequently, the Court held in Escobedo v. Illinois' that the accused may not be denied the assistance of counsel during the interrogation stage of a police investigation, even though he has not yet been formally charged.

The sixth amendment to the Federal Constitution provides: "In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right ... to have the assistance of Counsel for his defense."' It is a source of protection to the accused in Federal, and, through the fourteenth amendment, state proceedings as well...

See Also: The Right to Counsel during Police Interrogation: The Aftermath of Escobedo (3944 downloads )

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Behavioral Conformation in the Interrogation Room: On the Dangers of Presuming Guilt

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A two-phased experiment tested the hypothesis that the presumption of guilt that underlies police interrogations activates a process of behavioral confirmation. In Phase I, 52 suspects guilty or innocent of a mock theft were questioned by 52 interrogators led to believe that most suspects were guilty or innocent. Interrogators armed with guilty as opposed to innocent expectations selected more guilt-presumptive questions, used more interrogation techniques, judged the suspect to be guilty, and exerted more pressure to get a confession--particularly when paired with innocent suspects. In Phase II, neutral observers listened to audiotapes of the suspect, interrogator, or both. They perceived suspects in the guilty expectations condition as more defensive--and as somewhat more guilty. Results indicate that a presumption of guilt sets in motion a process of behavioral confirmation by which expectations influence the interrogator's behavior, the suspect's behavior, and ultimately the judgments of neutral observers.

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A Formal System For Understanding Lies And Deceit

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Abstract: Issues around lying and deception arise constantly in ethics and in the practice of conflict resolution, so it would be useful to have clear definitions of the different varieties. This paper starts with a system of Colombetti’s, a set of axioms that treat honest assertive communications using a small number of concepts, mostly intentions and beliefs. His approach is extended to allow for deception and lies, and related forms like insincere offers and requests, or false promises, tricks, manipulations, betrayals, halftruths, talking through one’s hat, and giving one’s word falsely. Some results are the distinction between lying intentionally and intending to lie, the definition of trickery versus deception in general, and a systematization of different kinds of promises and ways of performing them insincerely. The definitions are compared with a plentiful source of deceptions, the Book of Genesis

. 1. Introduction
What counts as a full-scale lie versus simply an evasion? Is a trick different from a betrayal, or a manipulation? These questions...

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“Truth” Drugs in Interrogation

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George Bimmerle

The search for effective aids to interrogation is probably as old as man's need to obtain information from an uncooperative source and as persistent as his impatience to shortcut any tortuous path. In the annals of police investigation, physical coercion has at times been substituted for painstaking and time-consuming inquiry in the belief that direct methods produce quick results. Sir James Stephens, writing in 1883, rationalizes a grisly example of "third degree" practices by the police of India: "It is far pleasanter to sit comfortably in the shade rubbing red pepper in a poor devil's eyes than to go about in the sun hunting up evidence."

More recently, police officials in some countries have turned to drugs for assistance in extracting confessions from accused persons, drugs which are presumed to relax the individual's defenses to the point that he unknowingly reveals truths he has been trying to conceal. This investigative technique, however humanitarian...

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Study Examines Why Innocent Suspects May Confess to a Crime

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Suspects Confess to Avoid a Police Interrogation

The researchers say these results may help explain why some suspects confess to crimes in order to avoid a police interrogation even though they increase their risk of conviction and severe penalties by doing so. The study's authors theorize that innocent suspects so strongly believe that the truth will eventually be borne out, they may perceive the distal consequences facing them conviction, prison, or even a death sentence to be remote and unlikely.

"One of the things we wanted to do in this research was to identify an underlying process at play during interrogations, so it can apply to a variety of police interrogation methods," Madon said. "Our findings have implications for any [police interrogation] method that causes suspects to focus on immediate consequences over future consequences."

Madon sees the results underscoring the need to limit the use of police interrogation...

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Hypnosis in Interrogation

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HYPNOSIS IN INTERROGATION

Edward F. Deshere

The control over a person's behavior ostensibly achieved in hypnosis obviously nominates it for use in the difficult process of interrogation. It is therefore surprising that nobody, as the induction of "Mesmeric trance" has moved from halls of magic into clinics and laboratories, seems to have used it in this way. A search of the professional literature shows at least that no one has chosen to discuss such a use in print, and a fairly extensive inquiry among hypnosis experts from a variety of countries has not turned up anyone who admits to familiarity with applications of the process to interrogation. There is therefore no experimental evidence that can be cited, but it should be possible to reach tentative conclusions about its effectiveness in this field on the basis of theoretical considerations.

The Nature of Hypnosis Experimental analysis has gradually given us a better understanding of hypnosis...

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Unreliable Admissions To Homicide. A Case Of Misdiagnosis Of Amnesia And Misuse Of Abreaction Technique.

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Abstract

BACKGROUND The past decade has witnessed a recognition that unsafe criminal convictions may be occasioned by unreliable confessions.

AIMS To present a case which illustrates the dangers of using abreaction interview techniques in a legal context and demonstrate the relevance of the memory distrust syndrome to an unsafe confession to murder.

METHOD We under took a detailed assessment of a person appealing against his original murder conviction, 'the appellant', and a careful scrutiny of all the relevant papers in the case.

RESULTS The appellant served 25 years in prison before his conviction was quashed as 'unsafe' on the basis of fresh psychological and psychiatric evidence.

CONCLUSIONS Amnesia for an offence had been misdiagnosed, and the use of repeated abreaction interviews had further confused both the appellant and the original court. At the Appeal Court, the advice was that the man had experienced a form of source amnesia which resulted in an unreliable confession.

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Inadvertent Hypnosis During Interrogation: False Confession Due To Dissociative State; Mis-identified Multiple Personality And The Satanic Cult Hypothesis.

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Abstract

Induction of a dissociative state followed by suggestion during interrogation caused a suspect to develop pseudo-memories of raping his daughters and of participation in a baby-murdering Satanic cult. The pseudo-memories coupled with influence from authority figures convinced him of his guilt for 6 months. During this time, the suspect, the witnesses, and all the evidence in the case were studied. No evidence supported an inference of guilt and substantial evidence supported the conclusion that no crime had been committed. An experiment demonstrated the suspect's extreme suggestibility. The conclusion reached was that the cult did not exist and the suspect's confessions were coerced-internalized false confessions. During the investigation, 2 psychologists diagnosed the suspect as suffering from a dissociative disorder similar to multiple personality. Both psychologists were predisposed to find Satanic cult activity. Each concluded that the disorder was due to "programming" by the non-existent Satanic cult... ..

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