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False confession
A confession to a crime made by a person who did not commit the crime
Fundamental Attribution error
The tendency to attribute other people’s behavior to dispositional causes (e.g., traits of personality) and to dismiss the situational pressures acting on the person.
Miranda Rights
Constitutional guarantees that must be read to all suspects in police custody.
Miranda Rights
Consist of 4 parts:
The right to remain silent along with the warning that anything the suspect says can be used against the suspect in a court of law.
The right to an attorney during police questioning.
The right to a court-appointed attorney for suspects who cannot afford to hire an attorney.
Clarification of these rights if necessary.
Any subsequent confession can be excluded at trial.
What happens if the suspect in custody has not been “Mirandized”?
Only about 20%
About what percentage of suspects in police custody choose to exercise their miranda rights?
Totality of circumstances
A standard by which a decision is based on all the surrounding facts that give context to the case. For example, this standard is used to evaluate the “voluntariness” of a defendant’s confession and to decide whether. a particular workplace behavior constitutes sexual harassment.
Good cop-bad cop approach
Psychololgical interrogation technique used by the police for extracting confessions. 2 interrogators work as a team, one playing the “bad” (angry and intimidating) cop and the other playing the good (sympathetic) cop.
Reid technique
A method of interrogation consisting of 9 steps, which focus on every aspect of the interrogation process, including details about how to set up the interrogation room and what to say to the suspect.
loss of control
social isolation
certainty of guilt
minimization of culpability
What are the 4 basic influence strategies underlying the 9 steps of the Reid technique?
The conditions created to facilitate the interrogation process.
What do the first 2 strategies (loss of control & social isolation) of the Reid technique focus on?
the content & style of communication.
What do the last 2 strategies (certainty of guilt & minimization of culpability) of the Reid technique involve?
Loss of control
1 of 4 basic influence strategies during an interrogation; the interrogator controls the environment & removes the psychological comfort of familiar surroundings, causing the suspect to feel vulnerable, anxious, and off balance.
Social isolation
1 of 4 basic influence strategies during an interrogation; suspects are held alone to deprive them of emotional support & to reduce contradictory information.
Certainty of guilt
1 of 4 basic influence strategies during an interrogation; the suspect is persistently confronted with accusations of guilt & evidence ploys are used to bolster the accusations.
Evidence ploys
Police citations of real or fabricated evidence that clearly establishes the suspect’s guilt, a technique used to strengthen the certainty of guilt strategy in interrogations.
Minimization of culpability
1 of 4 basic influence strategies during an interrogation; to clear the path for an admission of guilt; interrogators offer the suspect face-saving justifications or excuses for the crime.
works by shifting blame from the suspect to someone else or to the circumstances surrounding the act, or be redefining the act itself.
a threat of severe punishment.
Certainty of guilt implies…
A promise of leniency.
minimization of culpability implies…
Suspects may be: young, inexperienced, naive, easily dominated, under the influence of drugs, submissive to authority, of low intelligence, mentally ill, sleep deprived, or simply terrified.
How can suspects be vulnerable?
youth
What is the most dangerous vulnerability in a suspect?
psychological traits such as greater suggestibility, impulsiveness, & emotional arousability, & a greater tendency to focus on the present rather than the future.
What is being young associated with?
The powerful psychological pressures applied to suspects in the proess of interrogation.
What appears to be the primary cause of most false confessions?
Interrogation-related regulatory decline
A breakdown of self-regulation (the ability to control thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in pursuit of goals) as a result of the proess of interrogation.
short-sightedness
A tendency to give priority to the short-term goals of escaping the interrogation room and appeasing the interrogation.
Instrumental false confessions
Confessions offered as a means to an end, to achieve some goal.
Internalized false confessions
Confessions that are the result of a confessors’ genuine but false belief that they may have actually committed the crime.
Instrumental-coerced false confession
A false confession obtained as a result of a long or intense interrogation, when the suspect falsely confesses to a crime to end the interrogation, or because the suspect becomes convinced that confession is the best option.
Instrumental-voluntary false confession
A false confession obtained when the suspect voluntarily admits to a crime that the suspect did not commit; the goal might be to gain notoriety or to protect a friend or family member.
Internalized-coerced false confession
A false confession obtained as a result of a long or intense interrogation during which a suspect becomes convinced, even temporarily of having committed the crime.
Internalized-voluntary false confession
A false confession obtained when someone suffering from delusions confesses to a crime with little or no pressure from interrogators.
Police And Criminal Evidence Act (PACE)
Litigation passed in England in 1986 to regulate interrogation tactics. It prohibited the police from lying to, bullying, threatening, and intimidating the suspects conducted at police stations must be recorded and vulnerable suspects must be accompanied by an “appropriate adult.”
2 types of interrogation methods
Information-gathering methods vs accusatorial methods
Information-gathering methods
establish rapport
use direct, positive confrontation
employ open-ended, exploratory questions
Primary goal is to elicit information
Focus on cognitive cues to deception
Which interrogation method is this?
Accusatorial Methods
Establish control
Use psychological manipulation
Employ close-ended, confirmatory questions
Primary goal is to obtain a confession.
Focus on anxiety cues to deception
Which interrogation method is this?
Accusatorial methods
Which interrogation method singificant increased the likelihood of obtaining a false confession from an inncoent suspect?
HUMINT Interrogations
Human intelligence interrogations which are generally conducted by the military, the CIA, and the FBI in an effort to uncover information about national security threats.
SUE (Strategic Use of Evidence)
Emphasizes strategically withholding or revealing known evidence in ways that expose contradictions between a suspect’s claims and the available facts.
