Speaker 1: Kiota.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Police interviewing
Speaker 2: techniques have been a controversial topic here and around the globe.
Speaker 2: There have been countless high profile cases where someone has
Speaker 2: been convicted but later exonerated and their interrogations questioned. In
Speaker 2: New Zealand, Tana Pora was wrongfully convicted of murder and
Speaker 2: rape largely based on a confession given during a lengthy
Speaker 2: police interview, and more recently, Harry Matchett had his manslaughter
Speaker 2: conviction quashed after a so called false confession. He spent
Speaker 2: three years behind bars and is now seeking six hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars in compensation. So why do people confess to
Speaker 2: things they didn't do? Today on the Front Page, forensic
Speaker 2: psychologist Rosie Mittweet joins us to discuss the psychology behind
Speaker 2: police interviews. So tell me why might someone confess to
Speaker 2: a crime that they actually didn't commit.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, let's think about what a confession is.
Speaker 3: A confession in a police context and the criminal context
Speaker 3: is when somebody basically admits to the crime. But you
Speaker 3: can get different types of confessions. You can get a
Speaker 3: full confession. You've accused me of X, and I've admitted it,
Speaker 3: and I've got and tell you why and all the
Speaker 3: details that you want. But then you can also get
Speaker 3: tentative confessions. So I'm not telling you that I did it.
Speaker 3: I'm not necessarily saying I didn't do it, but I
Speaker 3: give some information that supports that I did it. So
Speaker 3: I might say something like, well, if you say so,
Speaker 3: then I did or I probably did it. So we've
Speaker 3: got to be careful of that. A full confession or
Speaker 3: a full admission versus a tentative one.
Speaker 2: And in both of those cases, I mean, we have
Speaker 2: seen instances where people have you know, done a full
Speaker 2: confession or a partial confession, or have said probably, you know,
Speaker 2: I may have been there, I probably did that, but
Speaker 2: in fact, years later, things like DNA has you know,
Speaker 2: found out that that is completely not the case. Why
Speaker 2: would someone say, yes, I did it.
Speaker 3: I think that probably in most cases in life, if
Speaker 3: you think outside of the coult room context, I think
Speaker 3: most of us have probably confessed to something that we
Speaker 3: didn't do right. And a good example of that is
Speaker 3: maybe back in the school days, when one of your
Speaker 3: mates is getting into trouble for something and you just
Speaker 3: take the fall for them, or you might protect a
Speaker 3: sibling against your angry parents. Question then becomes like if
Speaker 3: if you think, well, at one time, I did take
Speaker 3: the blame for something where I knew I didn't do it,
Speaker 3: or I apologized for something and I knew I wasn't
Speaker 3: responsible for what I did, but I apologize. So if
Speaker 3: you like that might be an attentative admission of sorts.
Speaker 3: You can just sit back now and downplay that and think, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's something that I did, it was a long time ago,
Speaker 3: and you just cast over it. But if you actually
Speaker 3: stop in pouts and reflect on why did you do that?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Why did you take the blame for something that you
Speaker 3: didn't do. Most typically, if you were to stop and think, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: back at school, I took the fall for my maid,
Speaker 3: Well you might say, well, I did it out of
Speaker 3: loyalty to them than my friend, and I didn't want
Speaker 3: them to get into trouble, whereas the consequences for me
Speaker 3: were less were far less severe. Things like that can
Speaker 3: be quite powerful drivers for why somebody might make an
Speaker 3: admission to something that they didn't do. So there's basically
Speaker 3: mechanisms that we think are why people make false confessions.
Speaker 3: That's one of them that I've already spoken about, a
Speaker 3: voluntary confession, voluntary admission, so you literally volunteer the admission.
Speaker 3: But the other one is confessions can be or retracted.
Speaker 3: Confessions can come about when people say that they were
Speaker 3: placed under pressure and they received inducements.
Speaker 2: So that's the coercive confession or something.
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly coercive. And now we used to think that
Speaker 3: false or false admissions or unreliable admissions would only come
Speaker 3: about by harsh interventions, harsh interviewing styles, so literally beating somebody,
Speaker 3: assaulting them, depriving the depriving them of food, you know,
Speaker 3: for days, electric shock treatment, all sorts of deprivation, and.
Speaker 1: That level of coercion.
Speaker 3: Has high incidents of people agreeing to whatever's put to
Speaker 3: them because they just can't take it anymore.
Speaker 1: And the belief is so they go.
Speaker 3: Into it, denying the offending that as the pressure builds
Speaker 3: and is sustained, they give up and they admit to
Speaker 3: whatever's been put in front of them under the belief
Speaker 3: that that pressure or that coercion will stop having done that.
Speaker 3: And we used to think that it would be brutality
Speaker 3: that would essentially make people confess in that context. What
Speaker 3: we now know, and we've known for a while now
Speaker 3: through research and experience, is that it could be far
Speaker 3: more subtle than that inducement being offered, a bribe being offered.
Speaker 3: If you confess, this interview can stop and or you
Speaker 3: can get to go home and be with your family.
Speaker 3: Inducements like that can make people admit to all sorts
Speaker 3: of things that later they retract.
Speaker 2: When it comes to I suppose police interviews, where does
Speaker 2: the blind blur I guess when it comes to being
Speaker 2: approachable and cordial versus being a bit too matey, when
Speaker 2: does it blur into coerciveness?
Speaker 3: So to speak, Well, you use the word mate It
Speaker 3: should never be matey police interviews.
Speaker 1: Never matey.
Speaker 3: If the police have reason to believe that somebody is
Speaker 3: a suspect for a crime, and that's the reason that
Speaker 3: they're questioning you, it ought to never be matey. That
Speaker 3: the police have their own processes and so they ought
Speaker 3: to be in uniform. Your bill of rights need to
Speaker 3: be read to you. You need to be very clear
Speaker 3: on that, and part of that is you don't need
Speaker 3: to make a statement, and that's important that you can
Speaker 3: speak to your lawyer without delay, that you understand these
Speaker 3: conditions that the police approach should never be matey. It
Speaker 3: needs to be the lines need to be well to
Speaker 3: find that you are there because you are a suspect
Speaker 3: for X offense, So my view being mate being chummy
Speaker 3: that can create problems of reliability.
Speaker 1: Further down the track, how long.
Speaker 2: Do you think is too long when it comes to
Speaker 2: a police interrogation or propose we're calling them police interviews now.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, I read police interviews most weeks of
Speaker 3: my career, not for this purpose, not necessarily because there's
Speaker 3: questions about the reliability of confessions, but just to read
Speaker 3: the evidential interviews that an offender or complainant has made.
Speaker 3: And I have to say that overwhelmingly I see excellent
Speaker 3: police processes in their questioning, and they take great care
Speaker 3: around instructing the suspect around their rights. So what we
Speaker 3: call the Bora rights there the museum full of rights,
Speaker 3: and they have regular breaks. And I don't think an
Speaker 3: interview should go on for hours. It shouldn't go one
Speaker 3: if it's obvious that the suspect is fatigued. But often
Speaker 3: there's obviously an asymmetry of power. If you're in a
Speaker 3: police interview and you could ask somebody, you know, how
Speaker 3: are you Are you going okay?
Speaker 1: You're happy to continue?
Speaker 3: And the person might say yes, yes, I'm happy to continue,
Speaker 3: but that they are doing that, they're saying that to
Speaker 3: try and please the interviewer. I think it's a good
Speaker 3: process for the police to insist on breaks and say, look,
Speaker 3: we'll stop now and offer the person you know, a
Speaker 3: drink or coffee or smoke if they do and just
Speaker 3: have a break. And in my experience, the police are
Speaker 3: quite good at doing that and institutes reasonable breaks. But
Speaker 3: I don't think an interview should go one for hours.
Speaker 3: I don't think it should go on late into the night.
Speaker 3: Definitely shouldn't have gone overnight. Fatigue and the like can
Speaker 3: be an impediment to a good interview.
Speaker 1: Go ahead.
Speaker 4: It's four declamatory sentences followed by a question for a
Speaker 4: total of fifty seven words. Okay, it's look. It obviously
Speaker 4: starts with you the right to remain silent. I know
Speaker 4: you've heard them beforn, and then I think it sounds
Speaker 4: something like, yeah, well the thing, yeah, oh right, do
Speaker 4: you have the right to remain an attorney?
Speaker 1: Did you say that you have the right to be
Speaker 1: an attorney. You do have the right to be an
Speaker 1: attorney if you want to do so.
Speaker 2: You mentioned something. What rights do you have when you
Speaker 2: are being interviewed or interrogated by police? So you have
Speaker 2: the right to remain silent? Is that just not in
Speaker 2: the movies?
Speaker 3: It's definitely not in the movies. So you don't need
Speaker 3: to make a statement. And you can start to make
Speaker 3: a statement and then decide that you want to stop
Speaker 3: making that statement, and that is okay. You can ask
Speaker 3: to speak to a lawyer at any time and without delay,
Speaker 3: and in private. If you're a child, if you are
Speaker 3: sixteen or under, you can have a support person in
Speaker 3: there with you of your choosing. Doesn't need to be
Speaker 3: your parents to be somebody of your choosing.
Speaker 2: When it comes to false confessions, what do you think
Speaker 2: are some really good examples It could be from overseas
Speaker 2: or even here in New Zealand, about how things have
Speaker 2: gone wrong and how they've been fixed.
Speaker 3: Before I even talk about toilples, I'll tell you how
Speaker 3: how I got into the area. But you have to
Speaker 3: remember a couple of things I prefer to call in
Speaker 3: my working practice, I refer to them as retracted confessions,
Speaker 3: not false confessions, because just because a confession is retracted,
Speaker 3: it doesn't mean it's false. And ultimately, you know that
Speaker 3: the court is the decision maker, and it's for the
Speaker 3: courts to decide whether somebody's statement is unreliable not and
Speaker 3: ultimately whether it is false or not if it goes
Speaker 3: that far. That's not the role of an expert in
Speaker 3: somebody such as myself. What I do is I give
Speaker 3: an opinion on it. Then I give an opinion on
Speaker 3: a balance of probabilities. The other thing is that when
Speaker 3: I give an opinion one way another and whether I'm
Speaker 3: saying it is in my opinion reliable or unreliable, the
Speaker 3: opposite side, so whether I'm instructed by the crime or
Speaker 3: the defense, the other side will have the opportunity to
Speaker 3: get their own expert to review my work and give
Speaker 3: their own opinion. And that can even happen as many
Speaker 3: as two, three, four or five experts, you know, in
Speaker 3: a case. So that's I think really important for people
Speaker 3: to understand. It's not that you get one expert and
Speaker 3: they decide. We give an opinion and that's open to
Speaker 3: scrutiny and cross examination. Like it's always the court that
Speaker 3: will make the decisions on that. But look that there's
Speaker 3: been a lot of high profile cases nationally and internationally.
Speaker 3: Probably the highest profile one here in New Zealand is
Speaker 3: the Taina Poorer case where he made various statements that.
Speaker 1: Were found unreliable.
Speaker 3: In the UK, I was always interested in cases from
Speaker 3: the seventies. You've got the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six,
Speaker 3: and these were very high profile cases at the time
Speaker 3: where these individuals were accused of IRA bombings and they
Speaker 3: had very dubious police interviewing, the elicited admissions that were
Speaker 3: then retracted that these people were found guilties and years
Speaker 3: in jail. I think the Birmingham six sixteen years in
Speaker 3: prison always maintained the innocence and then eventually those convictions
Speaker 3: were overturned. But the way I got into this in
Speaker 3: New Zealand was very early on in my career. I
Speaker 3: had a routine assessment looking at the issue of fitness
Speaker 3: to stand trial and this person had been accused of
Speaker 3: child sexual offending. But what was really interesting was he
Speaker 3: turned up to the police station on his own accord
Speaker 3: and he made these disclosures and the police of course
Speaker 3: did what they had to do. And part of their
Speaker 3: investigation is they went to speak to the complainant and
Speaker 3: the complainant said that not only had this never happened,
Speaker 3: she didn't even know who the accused was, had never
Speaker 3: come across him, and of course they checked all of
Speaker 3: that out, that they felt that because he'd made this admission,
Speaker 3: that they had to charge him. And it was early
Speaker 3: in my career, you know, and the circumstances of this
Speaker 3: whole thing concerned me, and I remember speaking to the
Speaker 3: law and said, look, in terms of his fitness to
Speaker 3: stand trial, there are no issues there. He's a bit
Speaker 3: to stand trial, but I'm concerned about the reliability of
Speaker 3: this admission. And that lawyer, who's very good, got his
Speaker 3: own independent expert to look into this issue. And what
Speaker 3: it was found was, you know, this person had boadline
Speaker 3: intellectual functioning, so from memory, I don't think he had
Speaker 3: intellectual disability, that he wasn't far from it. So he
Speaker 3: had cognitive limitations. And basically he was living with some
Speaker 3: friends and they I think there'd been some issues on
Speaker 3: their side in terms of their own offending histories, and
Speaker 3: they had said to him he'd mentioned a girl or
Speaker 3: somebody that he'd seen, and they basically said to him
Speaker 3: that they put the accusations to him and said that
Speaker 3: the right thing for him to do would be for
Speaker 3: him to go and make this admission, and he did
Speaker 3: that to please them, to be part of the friendship circle.
Speaker 3: And it was that case, as I say, very early
Speaker 3: on in my career that got me interested in this
Speaker 3: and that was why I started reading, you know, quite
Speaker 3: extensively about it, and it sort of became an interest
Speaker 3: theory of mine and have been unvoult in furious cases.
Speaker 1: Over the years. Than that. Thanks for joining us, most welcome.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at enzdherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Jane Ye and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 2: our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page
Speaker 2: on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune
Speaker 2: in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.