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Interrogations and Confessions

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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The Case for Excluding the Criminal Confessions of the Mentally Ill

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I. INTRODUCTION

Edgar Allen Poe ends his thrilling story, "The Tell-Tale Heart," with a madman's confession, a plot device that provides the story with appropriate closure: the murderer is caught and justice can take place. At its endpoint, the story no longer holds secrets, for we can imagine the rest. The "dreadfully nervous" narrator will be tried in court for killing an old man because of the old man's "pale blue eye, with a film over it" (555). He had "loved" the old man (555), but the "vulture eye" had made the narrator "furious" and had "chilled the very marrow in [his] bones" (557). The confession and the dismembered body beneath the planks will provide the jury with incontrovertible proof of the narrator's guilt, and he will be sentenced to the gallows. Yet, even in fiction, a confession is not as simple as it may appear....

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Interrogations 2013: Safeguarding against False Confessions

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Abstract

False confessions contributed to 40 of the first 250 DNA exonerations. Recognizing that even one wrongful conviction is too many, police, professors, and expert witnesses are interested in what went wrong in those cases, and what can be done to avoid similar mistakes in the future. There is general agreement that a straightforward set of procedural safeguards, already regularly used by many detectives, can protect against future wrongful convictions.Introduction Historically, there has been considerable debate about the causes of wrongful convictions, in part because there was not full agreement about whether the defendants were truly innocent. To learn from cases of wrongful convictions, it is important to identify cases where there is now wide agreement that the persons are actually innocent. Here, the focus is on cases where people were exonerated based on post-conviction DNA tests.We can learn from what went wrong in these cases.Recently, Professor Brandon Garrett focused on confession statements obtained from suspects in police...

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Criminal Law – Silence as an Admission of Guilt

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Criminal Law-Silence as an Admission of Guilt

The defendant was indicted for robbery, being accused of taking four dollars and ten cents from the person of Oscar Glenn by force and against his will. At the county jail, the night after the robbery, the eight or ten prisoners, among whom was the defendant, were lined up for Glenn's inspection. Glenn pointed out the defendant as the one who had robbed him. The defendant remained silent, and made no denial of the accusation that he was the identical person who committed the robbery. Testimony of this fact was admitted at the trial, over the defendant's objection. He was convicted, and appealed, claiming among other things, the admission of the above testimony as error. Held, that silence in the face of pertinent and direct accusation of crime partakes of the nature of a confession, and is admissible as a circumstance to be...

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Confessions and Admissions

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EVER since the terms "confession and admission" were coined for evidentiary use, courts have attempted to draw clear distinctions between them, and all too frequently, judicial opinions have mirrored slavish obedience to the authority of mechanical definitions. For the sake of clarity, a succinct, well-put definition may serve a utilitarian purpose in establishing ready comprehension of a segment of human experience, but, when detached from actual fact, and the many variables that fact situations produce, this same definition may stifle the imagination and inhibit appreciation of practical considerations. Stock definitions of admissions and confessions lead one to believe that the distinguishing characteristics are sharply outlined, and if one were to accept this impression as an absolute verity, problems of admissibility would rarely beg solution. It may be unfortunate that experience dictates otherwise, but it will readily be seen that a workable rule of admissibility will require...

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Police Induced Confessions: Risk Factors and Recommendations

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Abstract

Recent DNA exonerations have shed light on the problem that people sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit. Drawing on police practices, laws concerning the admissibility of confession evidence, core principles of psychology, and forensic studies involving multiple methodologies, this White Paper summarizes what is known about police-induced confessions. In this review, we identify suspect characteristics (e.g., adolescence; intellectual disability; mental illness; and certain personality traits), interrogation tactics (e.g., excessive interrogation time; presentations of false evidence; and minimization), and the phenomenology of innocence (e.g., the tendency to waive Miranda rights) that influence confessions as well as their effects on judges and juries. This article concludes with a strong recommendation for the mandatory electronic recording of interrogations and considers other possibilities for the reform of interrogation practices and the protection of vulnerable suspect populations. In recent years, a disturbing number of high-profile cases, such as the Central Park ...

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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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Interrogations and Confessions

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Introduction

Interrogations

The writings of the late Professor Fred Inbau of Northwestern University continue to have a significant influence on the tactics and strategy of police interrogations. Professor Inbau argued throughout his career that detective novels, films, and television had misled the public into believing that the police solve most crimes by relying on scientific evidence or eyewitness testimony. He pointed out that in a significant number of cases, this type of evidence is unavailable and that the police are forced to rely on confessions. Professor Inbau illustrates the importance of confessions by pointing to the hypothetical example of discovering the dead body of a female who appears to have been the victim of a criminal assault. There is no indication of a forced entry into her home, and the police investigation fails to yield DNA, fingerprints, clothing fibers, or witnesses. Law enforcement officers question everyone who may have had a motive to kill

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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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The Effect of Interrogation Length and Perceived Crime Seriousness on Confession Decisions

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Abstract:

This research tested whether an interrogation’s length and a crime’s perceived seriousness influenced the extent to which suspects made short-sighted confession decisions. Participants (N = 118) were questioned about 20 criminal and unethical behaviors and were required to admit or deny each. Admissions and denials were paired with either a proximal or distal consequence. Results showed that the tendency for the proximal consequence to influence admissions more strongly than the distal consequence was greater during the second half of the interview than during the first. Moreover, this tendency was greater for less serious than more serious crimes....

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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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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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Essay: Storytelling Without Fear? Confession in Law & Literature

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Mea culpa belongs to a man and his God. It is a plea that cannot be exacted from free men by human authority.

Abe Fortas 1

I have only one thing to fear in this enterprise; that isn't to say too much or to say untruths; it's rather not to say everything, and to silence truths.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau 2   I want to talk about a certain kind of narrative that has long held a particularly problematic status in the law. As a kind of prologue to my remarks, let me mention the record of a criminal case that I stumbled upon in the Yale Law Library. It is from 1819 in Manchester, Vermont, where the disappearance of the cantankerous Russell Colvin led to an accusation that his feuding neighbors, Stephen and Jesse Boorn, had murdered him - to which, after their conviction, they eventually confessed, only to have it discovered that

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Distinguishing Between True and False Confessions

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The impact of a confession on a jury in a capital case is so powerful that a defense attorney who does not attempt to suppress it risks charges of providing inadequate counsel. While there are legal safeguards afforded a defendant at trial to refute the voluntariness or trustworthiness of a professed confession, a false confession should be recognized long before it is entered into evidence against an innocent defendant. Ultimately there responsibility of determining whether a confession is true or false falls upon the investigator who obtained it.A widely known critic of police interrogation addressed an audience and stated that in his years of reviewing confessions he has seen both non-coerced reliable confessions and confessions from innocent people who were convinced by the police that they were guilty. He went on to state that if he distributed ten of those confessions to everyone in the audience and had them place the confessions into two piles, five of which were true confessions and five of which were false...

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