Police Investigations, Interrogations, and Confessions

Tony Ford update: http://www.tonyegbunaford.com/

Innocence Project

False Confessions Many documented cases of false

confessions resulting in conviction (e.g., Eddie Joe Lloyd; Central Park Jogger case)

Estimated rates vary from 60 to >600 per year in USRates difficult to estimate - only hard evidence for

false confession is DNA testing

Innocence Project tracks cases in which convicted individuals have been exonerated

All three identified by eyewitnesses, and all later exonerated.

One-third of those convicted and later exonerated by DNA were 14-22. They served a combined total of 947 years in prison.

Overview Police interrogations and confessions

Interrogation techniques

Detecting deceptions

False Confessions

Detecting Lying

Peter Reilly• Peter: The polygraph test is giving me some doubts right now.

Disregarding the test, I don’t think I hurt my mother.

• Det.: You’re so damned ashamed of last night that you’re trying to just block it out of your mind.

• Peter: I’m not purposely denying it. If I did it, I wish I knew I’d done it. I’d be more than happy to admit it if I knew it. But I don’t remember it…Have you ever been proven totally wrong? A person, just from nervousness responds that way?

• Det.: No, the polygraph can never be wrong because it is just a recording device, recording from you.

• Peter: But if I did it, and I didn’t realize it, there’s got to be some clue in the house.

• Det.: I’ve got this clue here, the polygraph charts. This is a recording of your mind.

• Peter: Would it definitely be me? Could it be someone else?

• Det.: No way, not from these reactions.

Police Interrogations & Confessions Confessions compelling evidence at trial

Even retracted confessions influence jury verdicts (Kassin & Sukel, 1997)

Jurors view confessions as accurateMajority are valid, but some are false

Personal vs. situational risk factors (Kassin & Gudjonsson, 2004)

Personal: compliance, suggestibility, age, etc.Situational: techniques, time of day, etc.

Police Interrogations & ConfessionsFundamental attribution error: Tendency to overemphasize dispositional explanations for individual’s behavior while minimizing situational causes Most people believe they would never falsely

confess to a crime

Jurors interpret confession as reflection of actual guilt, discount external causes such as coercion.

Hugo Munsterberg was first psychologist to write about false confession .

Review of Legal Cases

Canadian Charter; Miranda v. Arizona (1966):

Police must inform suspects of their legal rights before interrogation

Warnings strengthen protection against self-incrimination during interrogationRight to remain silentAnything they say can be used against themPresence of attorney & free counsel if required

Review of Legal Cases

Interrogation must cease if suspect invokes right to counsel before or during questioning. This is explicitly worded in Miranda forms but not in Charter wording as we will see later.

Miranda specifically notes that rights must be waived “voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently” for confession to be valid.

Review of Legal Cases 1/5 suspects exercise rights – Why? (Leo.

1996)Detectives de-emphasize warningsInnocent suspects want to show they have nothing

to hideGuilty suspects don’t want to appear

uncooperativeSuspects may not fully appreciate they are

waiving rights (Costanzo, 2004)

Warnings may not protect those who need it most: those falsely accused (Kassin & Norwick, 2004)

Review of Legal Cases Issue of appreciation central to valid warning:

Must recognize nature of police questioningMust perceive defense attorney as advocateMust appreciate right to silence

Suspect must understand Charter languageVocabulary may exceed suspects’ reading level (Rogers

et al., 2007)

Mental illness or mental retardation may impact ability to make knowing & voluntary waiver (e.g., Gudjonsson, 2003; Rogers et al., 2007)

Assessing Understanding and Appreciation of RightsInstruments for Assessing Understanding and Appreciation of Miranda Rights (Grisso, 1998; see course text, pp. 152-153 for details)

Assist mental health professionals in evaluating intelligent/valid waiver of rights at time of interrogation○ Comprehension of Miranda Rights○ Comprehension of Miranda Rights-

Recognition○ Comprehension of Miranda Vocabulary○ Function of Rights in Interrogation

The Coercive Nature of Police Interrogations

History of coercive measures:Mid-1900s: whipping suspects to get a confession was

common practice1980s: stun guns used by the NYPD to extract confessionsMore recently: psychological methods such as trickery and

deceit (e.g., lying about evidence).In Canada, courts have recognized as valid confessions that

were acquired, even though the interrogators lied, by suggesting they had substantial evidence against a given suspect when in fact they did not. (R. v. Oickle, 2000 SCC 38)

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Why would someone confess to a crime one didn’t commit?

Innocence Project: One-quarter of the over 225 wrongful convictions overturned by DNA evidence in the U.S. have involved some form of a false confession.

The following factors contribute to or cause false confessions: • Real or perceived intimidation of the suspect by law enforcement

• Use of force by law enforcement during the interrogation, or perceived threat of force

• Compromised reasoning ability of the suspect, due to exhaustion, stress, hunger, substance use, and, in some cases, mental limitations, or limited education

• Devious interrogation techniques, such as untrue statements about the presence of incriminating evidence

• Fear, on the part of the suspect, that failure to confess will yield a harsher punishment

The Reid Model of Interrogation

The Reid model is the most common interrogation method used in Canada

Involves 3 stages:1. Gather evidence2. Conduct a non-

accusatorial interview to assess guilt

3. Conduct an accusatorial interrogation to obtain a confession

Detecting Deception Assumption detectives can distinguish

truthful suspects by relying on verbal or non-verbal cues not supported by evidence

77% of interrogators reported they could detect deception

Police no more accurate than lay people in detecting lies, but are more confident

Even with training, accuracy is only slightly better than chance

Detecting Deception Ekman & O’Sullivan (1991): Only Secret

Service agents performed better than chance

Mann et al. (2004): Police in England detected truth rate better than chance (65%)More experienced officers performed betterJudgments still frequently wrong

Investigative Bias: presumption of guilt can affect manner in which interrogation/investigation proceeds

The Reid Model of Interrogation

Stage 3 involves 9 steps that are used to break down the suspect’s resistance to telling the truth.

The psychology behind this technique is to make the anxiety associated with not confessing to the crime greater than the anxiety related to the consequences of confessing

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Reid Technique of Interrogation “Nine-step’” model of systematic and unfolding

pressure, persuasion, deception and manipulation.

The “Nine-step” method is designed to elicit a confession by:breaking down a suspect’s resistance, causing him

to feel trapped and hopeless, and offering him inducements (i.e., reasons to confess)

that appear to improve his situation by minimizing his culpability if he complies with the interrogator’s demand for confession and, conversely, make his situation worse if he holds to denial .

Typical Interrogation Room

Reid Technique

Reid Technique

Reid Technique

Interrogation techniques Maximization: interrogator uses “scare

tactics” to intimidate suspect to confessEmphasize seriousness of offense/magnitude of

chargesMake false/exaggerated claims about evidence

Minimization: interrogator provides false sense of security Offer face-saving excuses, moral justificationBlame victim or accomplice, downplay

seriousness of charges

False Confessions

A false confession occurs when an individual confesses to a crime they did not commit or exaggerates their involvement in a crime they did commit.

There are three types of false confessions:Voluntary false confessionsCoerced-compliant false confessionsCoerced-internalized false confessions

Voluntary False Confessions

A voluntary false confession occurs without being prompted by the police

Can be the result of a desire for notoriety, an inability to distinguish fact from fantasy, an attempt to protect the real offender, a need to be punished.

Radelet et al. (1992), described one case in which an innocent man confessed to murder to impress his girlfriend and another case in which a woman pleaded guilty just to cover up the fact that she was actually having extramarital sex at the time.

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Voluntary confession cases

Laverne Pavlinac confessed that she and her boyfriend murdered a woman in Oregon in 1990. They were convicted, then released five years later when Keith Hunter Jesperson confessed to a series of murders. She had become obsessed with details of the crime. Her boyfriend confessed to avoid the death penalty. She later said she confessed to get out of an abusive relationship.

John Mark Karr confessed to the murder of  JonBenet Ramsey. He had become obsessed with the details of her murder and was extradited from  Thailand. His story did not match details of the case, and his DNA did not match that found at the crime scene. His wife and brother said he was home in another state at the time of the murder, and had never been to Colorado .

Coerced-Compliant False Confessions

A coerced-compliant false confession occurs in response to a desire to escape further interrogation or to gain a promised reward

The confessor knows that they did not commit the crime

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Coerced-Compliant cases

Michael Crowe confessed to the murder of his younger sister Stephanie Crowe in 1998. Michael, 14 at the time, was targeted by police when he seemed "distant and preoccupied" after Stephanie's body was discovered and the rest of the family grieved. After two days of intense questioning, Michael

admitted to killing Stephanie. The confession was videotaped by police, and appeared to be coerced, at times Michael saying things to the effect of, "I'm only saying this because it's what you want to hear.“ The charges were dropped after DNA testing linked a neighborhood transient to her blood. A TV movie was made out of the story called The Interrogation of Michael Crowe in 2002.

In 1989 a female jogger was beaten senseless, raped and left for dead in New York City's Central Park. Her skull had multiple fractures, her eye socket was crushed, and she lost three quarters of her blood. She survived, but she cannot remember anything about the incident.

Within 48 hours of the attack, solely on the basis of confessions obtained by police, five African- and Hispanic-American boys, 14 to 16 years old, were arrested. The crime scene had shown a horrific act but carried no physical traces at all of the defendants.

Four of the confessions were videotaped and later presented at trial. The tapes were compelling, with each of the defendants describing in vivid--though, in many ways, erroneous--detail how the jogger was attacked and what role he had played.

13 years later, Matias Reyes, who was in jail for three rapes and a murder committed after the jogger attack, volunteered that he was the Central Park assailant and that he had acted alone.

Coerced-Internalized False Confession

A coerced-internalized false confession results from highly suggestive interrogations

The confessor comes to believe that they did commit the crime

Some people are more susceptible to this type of confession (e.g., those with learning disabilities) (Gudjonsson, 1992)

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Marty Tankleff

On September 7, 1988, Martin Tankleff discovered the brutally beaten and stabbed bodies of his mother and father in their home in Belle Terre, New York. Although it was Marty who called 911 to report the discovery and who tried to save his father's life (Seymour Tankleff was still barely alive), Marty quickly became the police's prime suspect.

Marty Tankleff was convicted of murdering his wealthy parents in 1988

His confession was admitted into evidence despite Tankleff's claims that it was improperly coerced. Lead detective informed Tankleff during questioning that

his father had come out of his coma and named Marty as his attacker. He thought “my father never lied to me.” Tankleff wondered whether he could have "blacked out" and, with the encouragement of the detective, confessed to the murders. Recanted right after release.

After 17 years of imprisonment, his conviction was vacated and he was released from prison.

http://www.martytankleff.org/Gui/Content.aspx?Page=Home2

The role of compliance and suggestibility Distinction between compliance and

suggestibility is important:

Compliance: tendency to go along with people in authority Factor in coerced-compliant false confessions

Suggestibility: tendency to internalize information communicated during questioning Related to coerced-internalized confessions

The role of compliance and suggestibilityGudjonsson Compliance Scale (GCS) 20 true-false items measure:

Tendency to comply with requests/obey instructions for instrumental gain

Susceptibility to pressure from others to commit an offense

Gudjonsson’s Suggestibility Scales Measures 2 facets of interrogative suggestibility:

Tendency to yield to misleading questionsTendency to shift answers after receiving negative

feedback

The role of compliance and suggestibility

Children more suggestible than adolescents and adults; suggestibility decreases as age increases (Warren et al., 1991)

Suggestibility possibly related to likelihood of false confession (Gudjonsson, 2003)

e.g., Redlich & Goodman (2003) computer crash paradigm. Adolescents more likely than adults to take responsibility for computer crash.

Suggestibility related to rights comprehension, as those more susceptible to waive rights also at increased risk for false confession (Redlich et al., 2003).

Recommendations for reducing false confessions Innocence Project recommends video

taping entire custodial interrogationCurrent practice in over 500 US jurisdictions

Investigators should evaluate suspect’s post-admission narrative to determine consistency with case facts (Leo & Ofshe, 1998)

Coercive techniques forbidden in England & Wales (Bull & Milne, 2004)

Allow expert testimony about research on false confessions

The Admissibility of Confessions

For confessions to be admitted into court they must:Be given voluntarilyBe given by a person who is

competent

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The Admissibility of Confessions (Continued)

Confessions that are obtained by overtly coercive tactics (e.g., denying the suspect food) will not be admissible in court

More subtle forms of coercion (e.g., exaggerating evidence) are acceptable in Canada (R v. Oickle, 2000)

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