The Central Park Jogger case is one of false confessions to a crime, with a little help from police, which the defendants did not commit. Evidence taken at the crime scene did exclude the defendants, however, because of videotaped confessions they were sentenced to prison for a crime they admitted to committing even though they did not. It was not until many years later did the original perpetrator step forward from prison to admit he was the one who committed the crime with evidence (DNA) and firsthand knowledge of the scene. The five original defendants were released from prison but until serving a lengthy term. There are cues that can be noticed when investigators are conducting preliminary interviews that have a very high rate of …show more content…
There are three processes that are vital to the Reid technique and they are isolation, confrontation and minimization. The isolation is to create anxiety in an individual so that they feel a need to get away. The confrontation process is when the suspect is accused of a crime. Finally the minimization process is when an investigator uses sympathy to help the suspect justify the crime giving them a way to admit to it. Needless to say there are three reasons for people being pessimistic about the ability of others in deciding who is lying and who is telling the truth.
The first reason is that people trust confession is because of self-serving behavior and taking people at their face value (Kassin, 2005). The second reason is that detecting deception is a learned skill not a normal one that most people have. The third and final reason that people trust confession is that will being interrogated people can be coached what to say that aligns with the crime or they may overhear parts about the crime. Because of the amount of false confessions and the trust people put in believing them there needs to be some reform made in interrogation procedures. Three areas in particular need to be looked at and the first is the length of time for the interrogation. Many factors play a role in a person
While people find it hard to believe that anyone would confess to a crime he or she did not commit, there are people who end up making a false confession. In the Central Park Five case, the police managed to get the young boys to admit to the crime with the false promise that they would be allowed to go home if they confessed (Kassin, 2002). For Martin Tankleff, while in an
In the US, police often use the Reid Technique during interrogations. This technique was designed to elicit confessions from suspects. However, this technique can also lead to false confessions. One such case was the case of Michael Crowe, who was accused of murdering his sister. Michael, who was 14 at the time, was questioned by investigators until he eventually confessed to the murder, which he did not commit.
“It is difficult to prove a causal relationship between permissible investigative and interrogatory deception and testimonial deception. Police freely admit to deceiving suspects and defendants. They do not admit to perjury, much less to the rationalization of perjury. There is evidence, however of the acceptability of perjury as a means to the end of conviction. The evidence is limited and fragmentary and is certainly not dispositive” (Skolnick, 1982).
The Reid Technique is an interrogation process that consists of two parts, the interview and a nine-step interrogation. The interview, which is non-accusatory in nature, gives the interviewer a chance to gather information related to the case. The interview
The Reid Technique is a nine step process which majority of the nine steps were employed in the Dassey interrogation. The first step is the confrontation, where the suspect is accused of the crime. The goal here is for the interrogator to present real, or fabricated evidence in order to make the suspect uncomfortable.The police began by saying they reviewed what he had said on the Monday prior and that where they are seeing that Brendan is okay from what he's said. The also state that they already know the truth and that they can tell when he is lying. They restate several times through the interview that they know the truth and they have all the evidence to know what the truth is they just want to hear it from Brendan. Brendan does not say
Wrongful convictions are common in the court-system. In fact, wrongful convictions are not the rare events that you see or hear on televisions shows, but are very common. They stem from some sort of systematic defect that lead to wrongful convictions such as, eyewitness misidentification testimony, unvalidated or improper forensic science, false confessions and incriminating statements, DNA lab errors, false confessions, and informants (2014). Bringing awareness to all these systematic defects, which result in wrongful, is important because it will better adjust the system to avoid making the same mistakes with future cases. However, false confession is not a systematic defect. It does not occur because files were misplaced or a lab technician put one too many drops. False confessions occur because of some of psychological attempt to protect oneself and their family. Thus, the courts responsibility should be to reduce these false confessions.
Determining a false confession proves difficult due to the multitude of dimensions involved. According to Kassin and Wrightsman’s (1985) survey of the literature, there are three main types of false confessions—voluntary, coerced-compliant, and coerced-internalized. Unlike coerced false confessions, voluntary false confessions arise as a result of someone willingly turning themselves into the police with an account of their crime (McCann, 1998). Voluntary false confessions can result from multiple motives, including an internalized need for punishment or to save someone else’s face. In contrast, coerced false confessions directly result from police interrogations. While coerced-compliant confessions are made to avoid interrogation, escape the stressful situation, or achieve some other reward, coerced-internalized confessions emerge when a suspects begins to
To develop an experimental paradigm to study the influence of psychologically based interrogation techniques on true and false confessions.
Information is the lifeblood of a criminal investigation. The ability of investigators to obtain useful and accurate information from eyewitnesses of crimes is crucial to effective law enforcement, yet full and accurate recall is difficult to achieve (Stewart, 1985). Such elicitation of complete and accurate recall from people is important in many aspects of life; specifically, eyewitness recall may determine whether a case is solved. Principle advocates of the cognitive interview (Fisher, Geiselman, Holland & MacKinnon,
In 1962, Criminal Interrogation and Confessions was written by John E. Reid and Fred Inbau. According to Robert Kolker he wrote, the book breaks down the
“It was me. I did it. I’m guilty.” It’s what every interrogator is waiting for and hoping to hear. Any variation will do the job, as either is the heart of each and every confession. The main purpose of an interrogation is to elicit the truth from a suspect that they believe has lied or is guilty of the crime they’re investigating. They are looking for a confession. Confessions are the most damaging and influential piece of evidence of the suspect’s guilt that the state can use against a defendant (Leo, 2009). It makes sense. People instinctively trust confessions. After all, why would someone confess to a crime they did not commit? The mere idea that someone would admit to committing a crime they did not do boggles the mind simply because it just does not seem rational. However, the fact remains that false confessions do happen, and for a multitude of different reasons. This paper will begin with an examination of false confessions in general, then focus on the different types of false confessions, including what leads to their occurrence, and will conclude by discussing ways in which false confessions could be avoided.
The officers that interrogated Cathy Woods used the Reid Model which is a nine step model of interrogation that is used to extract false confessions from suspects (Bennel,Forth,Pozzulo). The Reid model is the most used form of interrogation in the United States but has problems because the way it’s used puts a lot of stress on the suspects to confess to a crime they may not even have committed. For example, having interrogations that are hours even days long and denying suspects food, water and even being able to use the bathroom will make people confess just to end the interrogation, which is what happened to Cathy Woods. Cathy Woods’s false confession falls into the Coerced-compliant category because she confessed to a crime she knew she didn’t commit, but did it anyway to end the interrogation. Cathy Woods also vulnerable to false confessions because of her mental illness. To avoid false confessions such as Cathy Woods there must be safety nets in place that would be able to capture these inadequate interrogations. For instance, Saul Kassin a distinguished Professor of Psychology suggests we record all interrogations and have it reviewed by a judge before a trial starts. This way our chances of catching a false confession goes up and we can avoid people who are innocent from serving harsh
Perhaps the most advantageous aspect of a confession is the closure it gives to everyone involved in the case, especially the victims and their families. Having said that, I still believe that conducting a thorough investigation is the best way to ensure that the right person was held accountable for the crime committed. Investigators should not be dependent on confessions. It would be unjust if an innocent man were incarcerated for a crime he did not commit and the real culprit was able to walk free.
The main technique that police use when interrogating a suspect is the Reid Technique. “The Reid Technique involves three components – factual analysis, interviewing, and interrogation” (James Orlando).
perpetrators so that they may be punished. The virtue of electronic recording of custodial interrogations, and its strength as a public policy, lies not only in its ability to help guard against false confessions, but also in its ability to develop the strongest evidence possible to help convict the guilty.” (The Justice Project. (n.d.)). Arguments in favor of police deceit: