Ch3: Interrogations and Confessions

the police

the police department was founded after the civil war as industrialization caused people to move to the city and the need for more officers arised

this is why our police department mirrors our military

psychological issues on the job

• pressure and stress

• cynicism and desensitization

• PTSD and risk of

  • already have weapons in their home, don’t reach out for help because they are the help. If they have to see someone, there’s a chance they will be put on desk duty

  • Usually will talk to other police officers. There has been a move to have more support groups

• frequent encounters on the job

  • domestic violence: one of the most common and can be violent/weapons. Typically called to the same place over and over

• mentally ill

  • people who are acting out, displaying symptoms, people and family don’t know what to do

  • difficult for police to deal with because they have been trained to deal with criminals

police procedure: exclusionary rule: Mapp v. Ohio (1961)

• the 4th amendment

• the supreme court had to narrow down the 4th amendment because the government was faking warrants etc

police procedure: The right to remain silent: Miranda v. Arizona (1966)

• the police must warn those arrested

• comprehension of Miranda warning

• 80% of suspects waive their rights

• written at a 10th grade reading level, maybe some can’t understand

police procedure: the right to counsel: Gideon V. Wainwright (1963)

• betts v. Brady (1942) right to counsel only under certain circumstances

• attorney will be provided in felony cases

• applies to only trail and one appeal

the third degree

• prior to 1940s- physical and psychological coercion- beatings, threats

  • Brown v. Mississippi, 1936

    • Said physical harm should not happen

The Reid Technique (Inbau, Reid, Buckley & Jayne)

• “Criminal Interrogations and Confessions”

• Setting up the interrogation room

  • Physical space: Plain chairs, not comfortable, No pictures to look at, You want to be able to invade their space and back off

  • Psychological space; isolation, sensory deprivation, loss of control. Start to think the only way out of this is through the officer

• Procedures 

  • These depend on who’s the suspect and what’s the crime

  • Maximization tactics 

    • Confront, interrupt, disregarded all denials 

    • Overstate seriousness of offense and magnitude of charges  (you are really in trouble) 

    • Make false or exaggerated claims of evidence

      • They have evidence that they don’t, failed the polygraph, etc

  • Minimization tactics

    • Suggest plausible excuses for crime 

    • Use sympathy to gain trust

    • Develop themes: blame the victim or accomplice; spare family or victim; downplay seriousness 

    • Suggest leniency 

Jackson v. Denno (1964)

• The trial judge must make a preliminary determination of the voluntariness of a confession and exclude it if in no circumstance could the confession be deemed voluntary

What constitutes voluntary 

• Completely voluntary

  • turns self in for crime, wasn’t even a suspect 

  • Stopped by police, questioned for specific crime, then confesses

• Gray area

  • confesses after promised a lenient sentence for confession 

  • Confesses after threatened with severe punishment if fails to confess and is convicted

  • Questioned for 24+ hours without sleep, then confess 

    • Courts frown upon long interrogation, but they didn’t put a time limit on it

• Completely Involuntary 

  • Is injured or in pain, denied treatment until confesses

  • Beaten tortured, kept without food or sleep for days, then confesses

False Confessions

• Estimates of 5% of innocent people falsely confess;

• 30% of DNA exonerations involved false confessions

• 92% of police indicate use of false evidence (Kassin 2007, 2014)

• Types of false confessions

• Coerced vs. Voluntary (pressured or freely made)

• Instrumental vs. Internalized (done as a means to a goal or done as a belief)

  • Coerced, Instrumental

    • They are coercing you, but you only confess to stop the interrogation or to end a process

  • Voluntary, Instrumental

    • Someone comes forward to confess, maybe they are trying to save someone, or gain fame

  • Coerced, Authentic (internalized)

    • Confessor becomes persuaded that he or she is guilty

    • This usually doesn’t last long

  • Voluntary, Authentic (internalized) 

    • Confessor is delusional or mentally ill

    • They might believe they did it, delusions are telling them they did it

Factors in known false confession cases 

• Length of interrogation 

  • Courts frown upon lengthy trials, but they never established a time 

• Sleep deprivation and/or lack of food 

  • They can use this as a tool of manipulation

    • “You’re hungry, go ahead and confess, we will get food”

• Suspect is vulnerable 

  • They are a juvenile, mentally ill, low IQ, intellectually disabled

• Presentation of false evidence 

• Interrogator provides details of crime to suspect 

Research on false confessions

• Kassin & Kiechel (1996)

  • 69% signed confession, 28% internalized it, 9% gave details 

• interrogator perception of guilt 

• Deal-making- plea bargaining 

• Videotaping confessions 

  • Not required

  • Lassiter & Irvine (1986; Lassiter & Geers, 2004)

    • Can camera perspective bias jurors’ impression of suspect 

    • When the camera is pointed at the suspect, people find the suspect more guilty, aren’t able to pick up on coercion 

    • When the camera is at the police officer, they pick up on the coercion 

    • In the middle, they are more likely to rightly identify 

Dept of justice guidelines for administering line-ups

• Ask open-ended questions 

• Instruct that suspect may/may not be present

• All foils should be similar and should match the original description

• Record witness confidence at time of line-up

Eyewitnesses: Judicial Instructions to the Jury

• U.S. Supreme Court: Neil v. Biggers (1972)

  • Quality of view 

  • How much attention the suspect paid to culprit

  • Does the original description match the defendant 

  • How much time had past between the crime and attempting an identification

  • Certainty of eyewitness

how frequent do interrogations lead to confessions?

39% and 48% of suspects make full confessions when interrogated by police, and an additional 13–16% of suspects make incriminating statements or partial admissions.

Police officers estimate that they are able to elicit self incriminating statements from 68% of the suspects they interrogate

strength of confessions in the court room

confessions save time of a trial

may be the closest prosecutors can get to a guaranteed conviction

Confessions led to a conviction rate of 73%, significantly higher than the 59% conviction rate produced by eyewitness testimony, the next most powerful type of evidence

even a clearly coerced confession boosted the rate of conviction by 31%.

examined 125 proven false confessions. In this large sample of actual cases, when suspects falsely confessed, then pled not guilty and proceeded to trial, they were convicted 81% of the time

fundamental attribution error

the tendency to attribute other people’s behavior to dispositional causes (traits, personality) and to dismiss the situational pressures acting on the person

who decides if a confession was coerced? what are the juries thoughts?

The judge will be asked to rule on the admissibility of the confession

In some states, jurors are instructed to judge whether the confession was voluntary and to disregard any statements they believe were coerced

although jurors often recognize that many standard interrogation tactics are coercive, they also believe that such tactics will not induce innocent suspects to falsely confess

If there is other compelling evidence that a suspect is guilty (e.g., DNA or fingerprints), jurors are highly tolerant of coercive interrogation tactics

effects of false confessions on other forms of evidence

research indicates that a false confession has the power to corrupt other forms of evidence information that a suspect has already confessed can cause

• eyewitnesses to change the person they identify as the culprit

• forensic scientists to include a suspect as the potential culprit when DNA match is ambiguous

• and can cause alibi witnesses to weaken or withdraw their planned testimony

the report on lawlessness in law enforcement

documented widespread abuses by police and focused attention on the treatment of suspects in police custody

the publicity and legislation led to a shift from overt physical abuse of suspects to covert forms that didn’t leave a physical trace

miranda rights

Miranda v. Arizona 1966, all suspects must be informed of their rights

1. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law

2. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning

3. If you cannot afford an attorney, you have the right to have an attorney appointed to you prior to questioning

4. Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?

stats on Miranda rights

only about 20% of suspects in police custody choose to exercise their Miranda rights. The remaining 80% waive their rights and submit to a full interrogation without an attorney present

Police detectives who want suspects to answer their questions have developed ways of deemphasizing Miranda warnings to increase the probability of a waiver

ex: speaking faster

totality of circumstances

In a series of rulings over the past 50 years, the courts have permitted police to use a variety of creative lies and theatrical tricks to persuade suspects to confess. Police have been permitted to:

• assemble a phony lineup and tell the suspect that a fictional eyewitness identified him

• tell a suspect in a murder case that the victim has pulled through and identified him as the attacker

• have a police informer pose as a prison inmate and promise his cellmate(the suspect) that he would provide protection from violent prisoners in exchange for a confession

• hold a suspect in a cell without visitors or phone calls for 16 days

good cop-bad cop approach

• bad cop: shows his anger with the lying suspect and expresses his belief that the suspect should receive the most severe punishment possible

• good cop: will show the suspect sympathy and understanding

induce the suspect to confess to the good cop when the bad cop leaves the room

Reid technique

four basic strategies

1. the loss of control

2. social isolation

3. certainty of guilt

4. minimization of culpability

1. loss of control

interrogation is built on it. they are in a small sparsely furnished room, where every aspect of the situation is controlled by the interrogator

interrogation is a tightly controlled, psychologically disorienting situation in which the normal rules of social interaction no longer apply

makes the suspect to feel vulnerable, anxious, and off-balance

2. social isolation

almost always interrogated alone, this is to deprive the suspect of emotional support and to minimize contradictory information

3. certainty of guilt

many interrogations begin with a direct accusation that the suspect committed the crime. An innocent suspect will respond to this accusation with denials, but interrogators are trained to challenge, cut off, and dismiss all denials

implies a threat of severe punishment

4. evidence ploys

citing real or fabricated evidence that clearly establishes the suspect’s guilt

if no real evidence exists, police may lie about its evidence

5. minimization of culpability

interrogators offer face-saving justifications or excuses for the crime

it might be suggested to a murder suspect that he killed the victim by accident or in self-defense

shifting blame from the suspect to someone else or to the circumstances surrounding the act, or by redefining the act itself

implies a promise of leniency

false confessions stats

• 26% of known wrongful convictions involve false confessions

• 80% of proven false confessions occurred in murder cases

• another 9% involved rape

• 3% involved arson

who is the most vulnerable to false confessions

the youth. approximately 31% of proven false confessions have been given by suspects under the age of 18

being young has traits like: greater suggestibility, impulsiveness,s and emotional arousability, greater tendency to focus on the present rather than the future

interrogation-related regulatory decline

the process of interrogation results in a breakdown of self-regulation

the techniques are designed to deplete our ability to self-regulate and to impair our ability to think rationally

short-sightedness

a tendency to give priority to the short-term goals of escaping the interrogation room and appeasing the interrogators

instrumental-coerced false confession

most commonly identified type

suspect becomes convinced that the only way to end the interrogation or to receive more lenient treatment is to agree that he committed the crime

instrumental-voluntary false confession

suspect knowingly implicates himself in a crime he did not commit in an effort to achieve some goal

ex: may want to protect someone, or to become famous

internalized-coerced false confessions

as a product of a long or intense questioning, a suspect becomes convinced -at least temporality- that he may have actually committed the crime

internalized-voluntary false confession

when someone suffering from delusions confesses to a crime with little or no pressure form interrogators

Police and Criminal Evidence Act PACE

made it illegal to Rick suspects or lie about evidence as a means of inducing suspects to confess in England

all interviews with suspects conducted at police stations must be audio-recorded so that hey can be evaluated by lawyers

accusatorial and information-gathering interrogation

both increased the likelihood of obtaining a true confession from a guilty suspect

accusatorial methods also significantly increased the likelihood of obtaining a false confession

Human intelligence (HUMINT)

generally conducted by the military, the CIA, and the FBI in an effort to uncover information about national security threats

complication: language barriers

information-gathering approaches have been useful in this domain

SUE (strategic use of evidence)

used in the criminal justice system

emphasizes strategically withholding or revealing known evidence in ways that expose contradictions between a suspect’s claims and the available facts

PEACE model

developed in the UK. stands for one of the five stages in the interrogation process:

• P: Preparation and planning- prior work like studying the case materials and developing a plan

• E: Engage and explain- provide an explanation of the procedure and its purpose

• A: Account- full account of the crime from suspects and pointing out inconsistencies

• C: Closure- summarizing the account of the suspect to encourage further recall and disclosure

• E: Evaluation- interrogators are encouraged to reflect on their performance and to seek feedback

potential solutions for false confessions

• video recording of interrogations

  • jurors can see for themselves and pick up on non-verbal cues and tones

• requiring probable cause for interrogation

  • avoid interrogating innocent people

• time limits on interrogations

  • interrogations leading to false confessions often last longer than 6 hours

  • proposed 3 hours

• appropriate adult for youth

  • might be a lawyer or someone independent of police that is specially trained to fill this role

  • parents are not the best in this role

• instructions to the jury

  • judges give the jury instructions about what evidence to consider and how to evaluate that evidence

• expert testimony

  • by educating the jury about the existence of, the psychology behind, and the risk factors for false confessions