One stop interrogation & interviewing resource

[Firn]

Thanks for ganulv and jmm99 for providing those links. Podcasts have the advantage that one can absorb the content whiled doing a workout, detailed papers enable one to dig deeper*.

... confession typically trumps physical evidence

This runs through both sources. There are certainly a couple of reasons for it, some already mentioned.

1) The wide-spread disbelief among agents (police, prosecutors, judges, jurors) that false confessions exist or do so at a considerable level is a big one. The amount of proven innocent in that sample that were actually convicted in a trial is amazingly high, which seems to indicate that jurors tend to grossly overweight confessions compared to physical evidence.

2) If a confession is obtained relatively early it seems that the effort to collect & evaluate solid physical evidence is greatly reduced. Limited ressources tend to get shifted to other cases. A plausible story gets constructed and conflicting evidence, if collected gets pushed away. The unique quality of DNA tests enables it collapse a plausible story built around a false confession.

3) The PEACE method seems to force the investigator to underweight the power of confessions. An interesting question to more knowledgable guys out there: Does the greater qualitiy and quantity of physical evidence (forensic science, information technology like cellphone location etc, etc...) make the PEACE approach more attractive and efficient relative to REID? If so in which cases?

*Many things in the paper were quite disgusting, sadly a considerable amount concerned processes of the justice system.

[jmm99]

REID tends to rely a bit too much on "folk psychology"; PEACE may rely a bit too much on CSI - which is not always available.

What one calls it is not so important as one being fully committed to the idea that proper planning and preparation prevent pi$$ poor performance.

I don't know what Det. Flores would call his methodology followed in the Jody Arias interrogation. He certainly followed the 7 P's rule (adding patience and persistence).

Jodi Arias Interrogation Tape. Part 1

Jodi Arias Interrogation Tape. Part 2

Jodi Arias Interrogation Tape. Part 3

Jodi Arias Interrogation Tape. Part 4

(Youtube; each over 2 hrs - just short of 9 hrs total; and, yes, I recently watched it all, looking for holes in Flores' methodology).

Note that, after all that, Det. Flores did not get a "full confession". Here's what he did do:

1. He obtained numerous material admissions against interest.

2. He demolished her various fabrications of fact by using forensic evidence.

And, Flores came across to me as a soft-spoken, nice guy. In short, he employed devastating police techniques without walking on the edge of the cliff or inducing a false confession.

A good, shorter article (with more recent references into 2012) is KTC, “Only the Guilty Would Confess to Crimes”
: Understanding the Mystery of False Confessions (Nov 2012), with researcher/expert responses at the end of the article from Saul Kassin, Walter Katz, Karen Franklin, and Larry Barksdale.

Here are some snips from a mock jury panel:

“In any kind of interrogation, anybody with any common sense wouldn’t agree to confessing to a murder. I mean that is…that is absurd."—Mock juror

“Your parents do that to you growing up. I mean your brother is not going to tell on himself. I have never once said, ‘All right, I did it’, when I didn’t do it. Not once. I don’t care how much she told me that he has done told on me, I am in trouble, it would be easier if I would go ahead and admit it.”—Mock juror

“They never even gave him a psych evaluation. Like they just kept battering him in the interrogation room and just on and on and on. I mean anybody is going to be mentally broke down or emotionally broken down after so long.”—Mock juror

“The police probably put him between a rock and a hard place, like, ‘You are going to be convicted anyways. If you go to trial, even though you didn’t do it, you will be convicted. If you are convicted, you will get twenty years. If you tell us you did it, then we can get you eight years.’ So it is more like, ‘Well, I would rather leave for eight years than twenty’.”—Mock juror

“To actually admit to a murder, something had to occur during that interview for him to start following what they wanted him to say. I mean you know if you killed somebody or not, you don’t miss that. You know without a doubt. So what happened during those hours that made him finally say, ‘Okay, yes, I will say I did it’?”—Mock juror

“But the whole confession part just angers me, because obviously if he wouldn’t have confessed and had stood his ground, we probably wouldn’t be here. So I don’t think he was coerced in any, I mean obviously pressured, but forced to say he did it? No.”—Mock juror

“The police say, “We did nothing wrong.” A confession kind of steered them in a different direction, but obviously, there couldn’t have been any physical evidence to tie him to it. So I guess you would have to say, the prosecutors did a very good job and the defense attorneys did a poor job.”—Mock juror

“I think the other thing he has to be careful about too is there are so many precedents and if you start doing this, like you said, because you don’t want to give him too little, because then everybody is going to say, ‘Well, I will just wrongfully say I did this and then five or ten years down the road, I can get $20 million or $5 million’.” – Mock juror

Obviously, some differences of opinion exist.

Another very material point that has to be confronted is whether false confessions are a mountain or a molehill. Consider the millions of criminal cases brought in the US since 1971 (the starting year for the 2004 Drizin & Leo study), as compared to the proven false confession cases (in the hundreds). Of course, if one operates under the rule that it is better for 100 (or more) guilty to go free lest 1 innocent be convicted, then one possibly looks at it as a mountain-sized problem. I see it as a molehill-sized problem.

Finally, the reliability of such studies as Drizin & Leo's, as applied to any individual case without the expert relating those general studies to the facts of the particular case, can reasonably be questioned. E.g., in our own, Michigan v. Jerome Walter Kowalski (2012), Michigan Supreme Court, No. 141932, excluding Dr. Leo's generalized testimony, but allowing more particular testimony by another expert:

We hold that the circuit court did not abuse its discretion by excluding the expert testimony regarding the published literature on false confessions and police interrogations on the basis of its determination that the testimony was not reliable, even though the subject of the proposed testimony is beyond the common knowledge of the average juror.

We also hold, however, that the circuit court abused its discretion by excluding the proffered testimony regarding defendant’s psychological characteristics because it failed to consider this evidence separately from the properly excluded general expert testimony and therefore failed to properly apply both MRE 702 and MRE 403 to that evidence.

For example, even if the expert proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the 'gator followed Imbau-Reid to the letter, that doesn't prove that the particular confession (or admission) was false or coerced. Taking the Arias interrogation as an example, the expert would have to identify certain techniques by Flores which caused Arias to say certain things which she otherwise wouldn't have said - and for the defense attorney to introduce other evidence that what she said then was untrue.

In short, the defense attorney is faced with the difficult task of convincing the jury that she lied then (albeit because of the devil cop), but she is telling the truth now.

Regards

Mike

PS: Giving the last word to John E. Reid & Associates, Inc (its legal note on the Kowalski case):

Recognized As The World Leader In Interview And Interrogation Training. If it doesn't say "The Reid Technique" it's not John E. Reid & Associates, Inc. Celebrating 65 Years of Excellence in Service.

since neither Slap nor I said much about REID in this thread.

[davidbfpo]

Firn in part asked:

The PEACE method seems to force the investigator to underweigh the power of confessions. An interesting question to more knowledgable guys out there: Does the greater quality and quantity of physical evidence (forensic science, information technology like cellphone location etc, etc...) make the PEACE approach more attractive and efficient relative to REID? If so in which cases?

It might help if you peruse this rather clear explanation of the policy and procedure:http://www.sussex.police.uk/policing...viewing-policy

The whole premise of the PEACE method for interviewing suspects is that they will give an account and if they do the account can be tested by referring to the evidence gathered.

[slapout9]

those interested should look to this SWC thread, One stop interrogation resource.

Regards

Mike

Yes, I thought we had covered this ground before. Also a general comment based on my experience. Any technique REID,W/Z,etc. is usually used as a structured way to teach new investigators how to do it, it is a track to run on for learning purposes. After that if the investigator is any good he will begin to alter and adjust the technique based upon his experience, evidence or lack of and his/her success with it's usage. No method is 100% effective or accurate all the time because you are dealing with Human Beings and they can be a bit tricky at times.

[Firn]

Thanks for the replies guys, jmm99 could you perhaps check your forum link? It didn't work for me and I couldn't find something similar in the title in the search function. Maybe thats just me. I will read the material about PEACE later.

In any case I wrote that I thought that the increasing quality and quantity of physical evidence should enable the judicial system to rely less on the power of confessions. The paper starts with a look back to a time when torture was in some cases the norm to solve crimes for which sometimes obviously no physical evidence existed. Especially in those infamous witch trials when somebody accused a 'witch' to have curse a cow. The confession dominanted everything and to get it many cruel methods were employed.

To get to the present day I listened roughly 35 minutes from part 4 and 10 min of part 1, it is certainly surprising to find something like that on youtube. I first had to google the case to get an idea of the evidence which was extracted. The interviewer informs the suspect that they got a great deal of detailed evidence and does conduct a pretty open, yet patient and persistent interview. As jmm99 put it:

1. He obtained numerous material admissions against interest.

2. He demolished her various fabrications of fact by using forensic evidence.

Now my point was that the advances in forensic science & others enabled the interviewer to do the 7p and perform step 1 and 2 with such force. It should be quite a bit easier to handle such interviews well when you get dealt such good cards. Still from my non-existent experience he did a fine job.

BTW: It is quite amazing how the suspect changes stories even in those 35 minutes at the start of part 4, even if we consider how difficult it must be to explain those crushing facts away. I was first surprised that wiki has nothing on cell phone data but her phone was according to her 'discharged' and the rest of the facts solved the time & location issue very precisely. I guess I will switch back to nature and science podcasts for my Tabatas.