Interrogations and Confessions
• The power of a confession
◦Police must find criminal and gather evidence sufficient
enough to secure convictions
◦Goal of questioning: elicit a confession
◦Study showed that between 39-48% of suspects make full
confessions when interrogated by police and 13-16&
additionally make incriminating statements or partial
admissions
◦Police officers estimate they are able to elicit self
incriminating statements from 68% of the suspects they
interrogate
◦Confessions save time - trials can be avoided because of a
guilty plea
▪Gathering and analyzing evidence, witnesses
questioning can be streamlined or circumvented
◦Additional evidence becomes less critical
◦Closest prosecutors can get to a guaranteed conviction
◦Juries almost always convict defendants who have
confessed to committing a crime
◦Jurors find it hard to discount or ignore a confession even if it
is false or coerced or coupled with little evidence
◦Fundamental Attribution Error: tendency to attribute other
people's behavior to dispositional causes (traits, personality)
and to dismiss the situational pressures acting on the
person.
◦When analyzing another person's behavior we tend to
underestimate the power of situational forces.
◦If a judge rules that a confession is admissible it is presented
to the jury with other evidence
◦IF there is strong incriminating evidence in addition to a
confession, jurors are willing to discount or ignore the impact
of high pressure interrogation techniques.
◦A false confession has the power to corrupt other forms of
evidence
▪Can have an insidious effect of bolstering the credibility
of evidence that would otherwise be unpersuasive.
• Evolution of interrogation techniques
◦Guilty suspects usually resist confession their crimes
◦Techniques have moved from direct physical violence to
covert physical abuse that leaves no trace to psychological
means of coercion.
◦Prior to 1930, police used beatings and brutality to extract
confessions
▪Beating with fists, gun grips, rubber hoses, blackjacks,
burning the skin with cigarettes, electric shock,
dragging or lifting by hair
◦1931: The Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement
documented the widespread abuses and focused the
attention on these issues.
◦Turned from overt physical abuse to non traceable physical
abuse
▪Pushing head into toilet, holding by the feet hanging
upside down over a stairwell, phone books stacked on
heads, stand upright for hours, face pressed against a
dead body in the morgue
◦Physical abuse coupled with deprivation, isolation and
intimidation
▪Sleep deprivation, withholding food, water and toilet
▪Isolation in a cold, dark cell
◦Since 1961: confessions have been ruled as inadmissible if
judged to be result of physical force, sleep/food deprivation,
prolonged isolation, threats of violence, clear promises.
◦1966: Miranda v. Arizona: All suspects must be informed of
their constitutional rights to remain silent and have an
attorney present during questioning, if they have not been
mirandized, their confession can be excluded
▪Have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can
abd will be used against you in the court of law
▪Have the right to an attorney during questioning
▪If you cannot afford an attorney, you have the right to
have one appointed to you prior to questioning
▪Do you understand the rights?
◦Only about 20% in custody choose to exercise their miranda
rights, while 80% waive their rights and submit to a full
interrogation without an attorney
◦Limitations:
▪Tone of officer, truly innocent suspects waive their
rights because they feel they have nothing to hide and
guilty suspects may not want to appear uncooperative,
most suspects are not in the right calm or clear headed
thinking when they are taken into custody or realize
they are waiving their rights
◦Totality of Circumstances: surrounding the confession
◦Regarding rulings in the last 50 years, Police are 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 had pulled through and identified him,
have a police informer pose as a prison inmate and promise
the suspect he would provide protection in exchange for a
confession, hold a suspect in a cell without visits or phone
calls for 16 days
◦Difficult for the judge to take word of defendant if police deny
allegations
• Inside the Modern Interrogation Room
◦Police rely on purely psychological techniques for
confessions
◦Good Cop/Bad Cop Approach: induce the suspect to confess
to the good cop when the bad cop leaves the room
▪Bad Cop: Shows his anger with the suspect and his
belief is that he should receive the most severe
punishment possible, can even scold the good cop for
wasting time
▪Good Cop: Shows sympathy and understanding
◦Reid Technique: nine steps of interrogation with 4 basic
influence strategies
▪Conditions to facilitate the interrogation process
▪Loss of control and Social isolation
▪Content and Style of Communication
▪Certainty of guilt and Minimization of culpability
◦Loss of control: interrogation is built on this. Suspects are
interrogated in small, sparsely furnished rooms, where every
aspect of the situation is controlled by the interrogator
▪Remove the psychological comfort of familiar
surroundings and communicate that the suspect has
lost control
▪Tightly controlled, psychologically disorienting situation
in which the normal social interaction rules no longer
apply
▪Loss of control leads to suspect feeling vulnerable,
anxious and off balance
◦Social Isolation: interrogated alone almost always to deprive
the suspect of emotional support and to minimize
contradictory information
▪Having a friend or ally could fortify resistance to
persuasion or just more challenges for the interrogator
◦Certainty of guilt: interrogations usually begin with direct
accusation that the suspect committed the crime
▪Innocent suspect will respond to this with denials, but
interrogators will cut this of or dismiss or challenge
▪“You did it” “We know you did it”
◦Evidence Ploys: Cite real or fabricated evidence that
establishes the suspect's guilt (ex: eyewitness places
suspect at the scene)
▪No evidence exists, police may lie about existence
◦Minimization of culpability: clear the path for an admission of
guilty, interrogators offer face saving justifications or excuses
for the crime
▪Shifting the blame from the suspect to someone else
▪Implication is that the actions were reasonable and the
consequences won't be that serious
▪Ex: suggested to murder suspect that he killed the
victim by accident or self-defence
• Problem of False Confessions
◦Thomas Sawyer Case
◦Prevalence
▪Some claim during trial or after that their confessions
were actually false - result of intimidation, deception,
fatigue or abuse
▪DNA usually exposes false confessions
▪26% of wrongful convictions involve false confessions
▪80% of proven false confessions occur in murder
cases, 9% in rape and 3% arson
▪Overrepresentation is because DNA is necessary for
those crimes and pressure of solving cases for violent
crimes
◦Suspect vulnerability
▪Police don't usually screen for vulnerability
▪Most dangerous is youth
▪31% of proven false confessions were under 18 year
olds
▪Being young associated with psychological traits:
greater suggestibility, impulsiveness, and emotional
arousability, greater tendency to focus on present
rather than the future
▪Key brain structures like limbic system and prefrontal
cortex are not fully developed until your 20s
▪Juveniles are more susceptible to manipulation in
interrogation room
◦Interrogation-related regulatory decline: process of
interrogation results in a breakdown of self regulation - ability
to control our thoughts, emotions and behaviors in pursuit of
our goals
▪Interrogation techniques are designed to deplete our
ability to self regulate and to impair our ability to think
rationally
◦Short sightedness - give priority to the short term goals of
escaping the interrogation room and appeasing the
interrogators
◦Innocents tend to believe their innocence will be obvious in
the courtroom, they may be less concerned about making an
admission because they have nothing to hide
• Types of false confessions
◦Instrumental or internalized false confessions
▪Instrumental: offered as a means to an end, to achieve
some goal (often to bring an end to a highly aversive
interrogation
▪Internalized: result of confessors genuine but false
belief that they may have actually committed the crime
◦Voluntary or coerced false confessions
▪Coerced: produced by intense psychological
(occasional physical) pressure from interrogators
▪Voluntary: are given freely by the confessor
◦Instrumental-coerced false confession: the suspect
confesses to a crime that he knows he did not commit as a
result of a long or intense interrogation
▪This is most common
▪They believe this is the only way to end or receive
lenient treatment
▪Sometimes they believe that the compelling evidence
will lead others to believe he is guilty even if he is not
▪If they agree they think they will be released and can
figure it all out later to prove their innocence
◦Instrumental-voluntary false confession: knowingly
implicates himself in a crime he did not commit in an effort to
achieve a goal, like to protect someone else
◦Internalized-coerced false confession: a suspect becomes
convinced at least for that period of time that they may have
committed the crime as the product of a long or intense
interrogation
▪Do not develop false memories but comes to believe
they have no memory of doing so like blacking out or
repressing them
◦Internalized-voluntary false confession: someone suffering
from delusions confesses to a crime with little or no pressure
from interrogators
• Should interrogators be allowed to lie
◦Police are legally permitted to use false evidence to induce a
confession like saying they found DNA or fingerprinted or a
witness ID`d them when they did not
◦1986: Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) made it
illegal to trick or lie to suspects about evidence for a
confession in England. All interviews must be audio recorded
so lawyers, judges and jurors can evaluate them
▪This has seemed to not harm the ability of the police to
elicit true confessions
▪Issue is that there could have been off the record
conversations
◦Police lying may undermine public confidence and reduce
willingness of citizens to cooperate
◦Approval of lying may remove inhibitions against lying in
other important context, such as testifying in court
• HUMINT, SUE and PEACE
◦Accusatorial interrogations: use of confrontation, accusations
and psychological manipulation to obtain a confession
▪Significantly increased the likelihood of obtaining a
false confession from an innocent suspect
◦Coercive interrogation methods may lead a suspect to shut
down ot simple accept the version of events suggested by
the interrogator
◦Using both accusatorial and information gathering methods
increase the likelihood of obtaining a true confession from a
guilty suspect
◦Human Intelligence Interrogations (HUMINT): effort to
uncover information about national security threats that differ
from criminal interrogations.
▪Uncover information about people involved in terrorist
networks and potential future attacks against the US
▪Complication: interrogator and suspect are likely to be
from different cultures and speak different languages
◦Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE): emphasizes strategically
withholding or revealing known evidence in ways that
expose contradictions between a suspect's claims and the
available facts.
▪Suggests specific tacts for dividing how and when to
disclose evidence about the crime
◦PEACE Model of Interrogation: developed in the UK to train
police
▪P: Preparation and planning: prior to interrogation,
involved studying the case materials and developing a
plan to guide the process
▪E: Engage and explain: building rapport with the
suspect and providing an explanation of the
interrogation procedure and its purpose
▪A: Account: Techniques are used to elicit a full account
of the crime from suspects who are actually guilty.
Potining and challenging inconsistencies and
contradictions in the suspects account of events.
▪C: Closure: Interrogator summarizes the account of the
suspect to encourage further recall and disclosure.
Follow up procedures are clarified
▪E: Evaluation: After the interrogation, they are
encouraged to reflect on their performance and seek
feedback
• Solutions to False Confessions
◦Video Recordings
▪Voluntary video recording of interrogations
▪Creates permanent, objective and reviewable record of
the interrogation that can be evaluated by judges,
lawyers, jurors and experts
▪2014: US DOJ issued a rule requiring the FBI and
federal law enforcement agencies to record
interrogations of felony suspects
▪Psychological issue concerns the impact of recorded
confessions on who views them
▪Jurors do not see recordings in their entirety
▪Recap usually only shows the clearest
admission of guilt that was obtainable
▪Some interrogators do not turn on the
camera until after the suspect has
confessed and it is clear
▪Cameras point of view which can show
psychological bias
▪If the camera is only aimed at the suspect,
viewers cannot focus their attention on the
interrogators.
▪People who are more visually salient are
viewed more influential
▪Suspect only camera could cause viewed to
discount the situational pressures of the
interrogation
▪Equal-focus camera perspective: shows
both suspect and interrogator, better
enables jurors to assess the voluntariness
of the confession and coerciveness of
interrogation
▪Video reduces necessity for note taking and gives
more time to focus on the case and suspect
▪Replay portions of the interrogation to check
information, reduce defence claiming coercion, reduce
amount of time interrogators spend in court defending
their interrogation
▪Police are usually more careful to avoid questionable
behavior
◦Requiring probable cause for interrogations
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