Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you should know from house Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Uh and Noel.
Speaker 1: I guess producer nol is over there, which makes this
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. Jerry's on the beach. Good for her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm Jelly. Yeah, it'd be nice to be on
Speaker 1: the beach right now. Surewood podcasting on the beach. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jerry's a beach person for sure. In uh, is she okay?
Speaker 1: She was flip pops like in the dead of winter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, the beach person which got nice feet done.
Speaker 1: Can I say that I fired for saying that. I
Speaker 1: don't think so. If you said it, like alone in
Speaker 1: a room or something she didn't feel like she could leave,
Speaker 1: you'd probably get fired for that. But yeah, saying it
Speaker 1: on the podcast to everybody's probably in the clear. Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll find out. I mean, she edits these so she'll
Speaker 1: say thanks. Jucker's there you go, So, Chuck, have you
Speaker 1: ever been interrogated by the police. No, that's good. No,
Speaker 1: it's a good way to be I was shaking down
Speaker 1: on the street once, but they didn't ask us any
Speaker 1: questions stopping frisk Yeah, in New York. In Athens, m
Speaker 1: just walk into the car after being out, threw us
Speaker 1: all against the wall. Fristus been left. I'm sure it
Speaker 1: was a real cop. Yeah, they were cops. Man. I
Speaker 1: was like, what's going on? Huh, I don't even know.
Speaker 1: I still don't know what happened. Well, I guess they
Speaker 1: were just stopping and frisking. A little known fact. Athens,
Speaker 1: George is the real home of stopping frisk Well, five
Speaker 1: minutes after it happened, we didn't care. You know, these
Speaker 1: are college days. Yeah. Now, though you must be burning
Speaker 1: with a sense of injustice over the whole thing. Well,
Speaker 1: I ask you if you've ever been interrogated by the police,
Speaker 1: because we're about to talk about police interrogation, so it
Speaker 1: seems appropriate. And before we get started, I have some
Speaker 1: side reading that I think might interest some people. Um,
Speaker 1: there is a New Yorker article called the Interview. Um,
Speaker 1: there's one called Joe Arty was the Happiest Man on
Speaker 1: Death Row. It's in Westward. Uh, there's something called Brooklyn's Baddest,
Speaker 1: which was in GQ. And then lastly, uh, looking left
Speaker 1: or right doesn't indicate your lying in Smithsonian. So all
Speaker 1: those articles are awesome, and they all have something to
Speaker 1: do with this police interrogation, which is it turns out
Speaker 1: becoming an increasingly controversial subject. Yeah, and I think this
Speaker 1: probably brings our police suite to a close or close
Speaker 1: to it, don't you think. I think so every time.
Speaker 1: I know, and I didn't even know this existed, and
Speaker 1: then I saw it and it turned out to be
Speaker 1: one of the more interesting ones, I think. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of falls into this um law enforcement category,
Speaker 1: into the subcategory of are largely debunked armchair psychology jical
Speaker 1: or armchair psychology techniques like polygraph Yeah, we did that, fingerprints,
Speaker 1: they did that, truth serum we did that. Yeah. Like
Speaker 1: there's all these episodes that we've done out there about
Speaker 1: just law enforcement techniques. We're doing them. We were like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, this is this should not be the way
Speaker 1: it is. And apparently police interrogations similar. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: bit of a shakedown. So let's talk about this. Like
Speaker 1: in in the United States, there is um a long
Speaker 1: and storied history of rather intense interrogation. I think you
Speaker 1: know this this comes before the United States too. We
Speaker 1: did a medieval torture episode as well. There were plenty
Speaker 1: of interrogations going on. We did the Spanish inquisition that
Speaker 1: was pre United States. Yeah, I would I would say
Speaker 1: that falls into the banner though, of our police and
Speaker 1: crime interrogation. Yeah right, so, um, the United States, though,
Speaker 1: has well carried on the torch of basically beating suspects
Speaker 1: up to get confessions. This is where the term the
Speaker 1: third degree comes from. Actually, Like when somebody's like, hey,
Speaker 1: why do you give me the third degree? They may
Speaker 1: or may not know it, but they're they're speaking about
Speaker 1: interrogation techniques that CAPS used to use. Yeah, those third
Speaker 1: degree techniques, a lot of them were involved deprivation, like
Speaker 1: or you know the one where they shine the bright
Speaker 1: light in your face. That's old school. Yeah, that's an
Speaker 1: old movie trope. But you know, no access to food
Speaker 1: and water, Um, long periods of isolation, we might beat
Speaker 1: up a little bit, we might threaten you. That's the
Speaker 1: third degree, right and then uh, starting in about the thirties,
Speaker 1: the public started to say, I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is such a good idea because I might end up
Speaker 1: in a police interrogation one day, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to get beat up and then the I guess the
Speaker 1: straw that started to break the camel's back came in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven in the case Brown versus Mississippi, where
Speaker 1: Brown said, uh, your thug cops tied me up to
Speaker 1: a tree and with me more than once, not just
Speaker 1: whip me more than once. Strung me up in a tree,
Speaker 1: to whip me more than once has happened repeatedly, and
Speaker 1: I don't think that the confession they got should stand.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court said, we agree with you. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was he and his two buddies were accused of murdering. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were tenant farmers murdering their boss basically, And of
Speaker 1: course they were black guys and the boss was a
Speaker 1: white guy, so they were pretty determined. Then well, we'll
Speaker 1: see over and over. A lot of these cases of
Speaker 1: coerced false confessions h are mainly because someone really wants
Speaker 1: to tab somebody as the criminal. Well, yeah, for a
Speaker 1: lot of different reasons. There can be a sense of injustice.
Speaker 1: There can be a genuine conviction that this person is guilty, um,
Speaker 1: and then there can be the you know, the case
Speaker 1: clearance um percentage that a cop needs to keep up.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of reasons why a cop might
Speaker 1: say you need to confess. Yeah. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of them too that I've seen documentaries on, at least
Speaker 1: because of the public, Like, hey man, we really need
Speaker 1: to finger somebody for this, because people are scared, and
Speaker 1: who better than this person who might not be too
Speaker 1: smart or might but might be kind of poor and
Speaker 1: can't afford and doesn't you know, representation doesn't know what's
Speaker 1: going on. So let's just run them up, run them up,
Speaker 1: ring them up. Sure, run them up a flagpole, right,
Speaker 1: and see if it sticks to the wall. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: despite the fact that it is not easy to get
Speaker 1: someone to confess, uh, they estimate between forty two of
Speaker 1: suspects do confess and that's the one thing you don't
Speaker 1: want to do, and up still do it. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we should say supposedly up to um eight percent of
Speaker 1: suspects in in the United States wave their right to
Speaker 1: silence and counsel. Yeah that's just wait, that's just agreeing
Speaker 1: to be interrogated, right, not necessarily confessing. Yeah. So, but
Speaker 1: you can get around the whole idea of a false
Speaker 1: confession or of being coerced into confessing or whatever, just
Speaker 1: by remaining silent, not being like part demand your lawyer.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're gonna give you some tips, um, not
Speaker 1: how to get away with a crime, but some tips
Speaker 1: on if you if you are rounded up and put
Speaker 1: in a room, there are some things you can do.
Speaker 1: This is a public service announcement with guitars. By the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, they confessions that were involuntary. Um, they consider
Speaker 1: it involuntary, not just if you were beaten and threatened,
Speaker 1: but if you were all the deprivation third degree techniques
Speaker 1: were no longer allowed, like even if you couldn't use
Speaker 1: the bathroom, or if you've been promised something in return
Speaker 1: for confessing, or we'll go easy on you, buddy, or
Speaker 1: if you'd even just been threatened, that counts as coercion too,
Speaker 1: And so in about the fifties, UM, the United States said, Hey,
Speaker 1: this kindler, kinder, gentler interrogation technique thing is is starting
Speaker 1: to work out. Let's put a bow on the whole
Speaker 1: thing and say that for a confession to be admissible,
Speaker 1: the the confess or has to sign it yeah and
Speaker 1: say yeah, I didn't, I didn't do anything under coercion.
Speaker 1: This is my own, full free confession. And here's my
Speaker 1: signature and UM, which helped but certainly didn't stop false confessions. Right.
Speaker 1: So the thing is is UM law enforcement replaced the
Speaker 1: physical coercion with what amounts to plainly is psychological manipulation.
Speaker 1: And it's predicated on the idea that you when you
Speaker 1: are saying you didn't do something and you're guilty, you
Speaker 1: are going to become stressed out. And then the that
Speaker 1: stress is derived from anxiety over knowing you're guilty and
Speaker 1: having to lie, because when you're being interrogated, you're denying
Speaker 1: that you're guilty. The cops don't just say, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: well thanks for coming by. If they think you're guilty,
Speaker 1: they or they want to think you're guilty, They're going
Speaker 1: to keep pressing you. Like interrogations aren't necessarily brief things, right,
Speaker 1: So the more they press you, the more stressed you
Speaker 1: should get. And the more stressed you get under this
Speaker 1: idea of UM interrogation technique, the obviously the more obvious
Speaker 1: it is that you're guilty, which means the more they
Speaker 1: press So this feedback loop starts, right, Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: they're basically relying on a few basic human things inherent
Speaker 1: to humans, tendencies, inherent to humans. Um. One is you're
Speaker 1: gonna probably open up more to someone who is like you, uh,
Speaker 1: to their If you start talking, it's gonna be hard
Speaker 1: to stop. And three if you're if you're telling the truth,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be harder to lie. Right. So they kind
Speaker 1: of prey on that with some age old techniques like
Speaker 1: the good Cop, Bad Cop. Right you you uh, If
Speaker 1: you feel like you're being persecuted, but then you're also
Speaker 1: being rescued by somebody else, you're going to identify with
Speaker 1: the rescuer, trust them. That's a classic move. And here's
Speaker 1: the thing like that, a lot of this stuff, like
Speaker 1: the good cop part um, is predicated on this complete
Speaker 1: and utter deception that that cop understands where you're coming
Speaker 1: from and sympathizes with you. That cop does not sympathize
Speaker 1: with you. That cop may understand where you come from,
Speaker 1: but he or she probably despises that and they are
Speaker 1: not your friend. But the whole one of the whole
Speaker 1: points of um of interrogation is for the cop to
Speaker 1: pretend like they're they're right there with you, they understand
Speaker 1: where you're coming from, they feel for you. This is
Speaker 1: just you're jammed up and I want to help you
Speaker 1: get out of it. Oh yeah, you see. I mean
Speaker 1: if if all this sounds super familiar from every TV
Speaker 1: show or movie you've ever seen, is because they it's
Speaker 1: been written so much that it's almost like they don't
Speaker 1: need to do their own Like writers don't even need
Speaker 1: to do their own research into how this is the
Speaker 1: right because it's just how it is in the movies.
Speaker 1: When it is in the movies is how it is
Speaker 1: in real life. When I was reading this, I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen that before. I've seen that technique before. Like
Speaker 1: it made me actually researching this article made me appreciate
Speaker 1: that there are some TV cop show writers out there
Speaker 1: who like really do their homework, like The Wire, like
Speaker 1: every it was a little more nuance like Law and Order. Um,
Speaker 1: what is it? Uh? I don't watch those the one
Speaker 1: vincent and offer you. I don't know. Oh, I can't
Speaker 1: remember what it's called criminal minds something like that. It's
Speaker 1: not it. Um like it's a little more overt, right,
Speaker 1: but it's all the all the factors are there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another one of the tried and true techniques is maximization.
Speaker 1: That's when they try to scare you. Um, if you've
Speaker 1: ever heard like, oh you're you're pretty Josh, they're gonna
Speaker 1: love you in prisoner. I hear that almost every day.
Speaker 1: That is a classic maximization or just you know, they're
Speaker 1: going to throw the book at you for what you've
Speaker 1: done your unless you, you know, start playing along, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get the max exactly. Um. They may also go
Speaker 1: the exact opposite route, which is minimization, which is to
Speaker 1: create the idea that society will will commiserate with you
Speaker 1: because anybody in your position would have done the same thing,
Speaker 1: you know, like that that little lady was asking for
Speaker 1: her person to be taken, you know, in this day
Speaker 1: and age, in this economy, that kind of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: Polygraph was used for a while, and they still used that,
Speaker 1: but most times, um, if you listen to our show
Speaker 1: on polygraphs, they're not admissible in court. So a man
Speaker 1: named John Reid, he was a polygraph analyst, said, you
Speaker 1: know what, there's a lot of things that happen during
Speaker 1: a polygraph exam that we can use without the machine
Speaker 1: just to root out the truth or lies. Yeah. Basically,
Speaker 1: John Reid said, Hey, I've noticed through all of my
Speaker 1: experience all of these things that a person who is
Speaker 1: guilty or who confesses at least goes through. And here
Speaker 1: are some ways to like really make this more efficient,
Speaker 1: to make them react more strongly, to get them to
Speaker 1: confess faster, more forcefully. And he came up with order
Speaker 1: called the Read Technique. Nine steps of the Read Technique,
Speaker 1: registered trademark of Johnny Reidon Associates. Yeah, really, because Johnny
Speaker 1: Reidon Associates is like this business that's still very much around. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I need to say that, but
Speaker 1: it is their technique. Yeah, and they trained the CIA,
Speaker 1: the FBI, the local law enforcement there, like the in
Speaker 1: the United States, the Red technique is the gold standard
Speaker 1: for police interrogation. The problem is it is also being
Speaker 1: increasingly proven to be based on basically armchair psychology and
Speaker 1: not science. It's say, it's going through the same thing
Speaker 1: right now that like a lot of the forensic sciences
Speaker 1: are going through. There's like based on intuition that doesn't
Speaker 1: really hold up to scrutiny. And I should say the
Speaker 1: Read technique has not been across the board debunked, and
Speaker 1: it makes sense in a lot of ways, but there
Speaker 1: are studies out there that have said, like this doesn't
Speaker 1: really this doesn't really hold up. Yeah, he defends it. Uh,
Speaker 1: he says, it's very sound technique, but false confession comes
Speaker 1: from improper use and bad police work. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: not it's not necessarily like the read people are treated
Speaker 1: like they're you know, they're out to get anybody and everybody.
Speaker 1: The red technique is criticized because the whole foundation that's
Speaker 1: built on is the presumption of guilt, and it has
Speaker 1: been shown to prove or produce false um confessions. And
Speaker 1: we'll get to the read technique in a minute, but
Speaker 1: after this message, we're gonna talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: some of the earlier, h earlier parts of the process.
Speaker 1: All right, if you sit down in a in a
Speaker 1: room to get interrogated by the cops, one thing that
Speaker 1: they're probably gonna start doing is lying to you and
Speaker 1: saying we have evidence that they may not have. We
Speaker 1: have witnesses that put you at the scene that don't exist. Basically,
Speaker 1: with a few exceptions, cops can lie and say whatever
Speaker 1: they want in there, and that is going to make
Speaker 1: someone nervous. Even though you were you know, surgical gloves
Speaker 1: when you broke into that house. If they say your
Speaker 1: fingers are all over the place. You're gonna start second
Speaker 1: guessing yourself and get nervous. Yeah, and even if like
Speaker 1: you weren't in that house ever, and you know that
Speaker 1: you weren't in that house, you're gonna start to wonder
Speaker 1: if maybe you suffer from blackouts and do horrible things
Speaker 1: like this cop is saying, Wow, you're blacked out. Um,
Speaker 1: and yeah, the courts of upheld the cops right to deceive. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I've read about a study that found that of
Speaker 1: six dirty detectives in the U. S. And Canada that
Speaker 1: were pulled, say they use false evidence ploys where they're
Speaker 1: saying surprises, Yeah, you would guess. I mean maybe the
Speaker 1: other eight percent were just like they didn't even look
Speaker 1: at what they were saying, you know, but yeah, they
Speaker 1: you can and they do say we have your fingerprints,
Speaker 1: we have a witness, we have d n A. They
Speaker 1: can completely lie about what they have and that they
Speaker 1: have it on you to get you to confess. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. You can't say, well that cops said he
Speaker 1: had evidence doesn't matter. And the whole legal basis for
Speaker 1: this idea for the cops being letting the cops deceive
Speaker 1: is this UH longstanding notion that no innocent person would
Speaker 1: ever sign a confession even if they were lied to
Speaker 1: about physical evidence of their guilt being at the scene
Speaker 1: of the crime, because there they know they're not guilty.
Speaker 1: The problem is that long standing idea is coming under
Speaker 1: more and more scrutinous is being found to be not
Speaker 1: the case. Like people, it's been shown people will when
Speaker 1: lied to in situations like that, they will confess to
Speaker 1: things that they did not do. I know it seems
Speaker 1: crazy for people like you and me, UM, because I
Speaker 1: know I would never do that, but you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not mentally challenged or I'm not poor, and I haven't
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of reasons why someone might
Speaker 1: falsely confess. Yeah, and I think though also it's not
Speaker 1: just necessarily like going how you are going into it. Like, Yes,
Speaker 1: the a lot of the like mentally ill people UM
Speaker 1: make up a decent amount of UM false confessions. Same
Speaker 1: with UM, mentally handicapped, cognitively impaired people, UM, people of
Speaker 1: low socioeconomic status. There are a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of factors that set you up to be more likely
Speaker 1: to have a false or give a false confession. Knowing
Speaker 1: your rights, but if you took if we took you
Speaker 1: and ran you through a long enough um interrogation with
Speaker 1: people who knew what they were doing. Yeah, they who
Speaker 1: knows what you would sign? I'd be all right, we'll
Speaker 1: see because I understand this all. I know my rights.
Speaker 1: I have a very strong mind. You would probably say
Speaker 1: I want a lawyer. Well, yeah, I just ended all.
Speaker 1: And then I'd be like, m I don't know any lawyers.
Speaker 1: Do you know a lawyer? Have an entertainment attorney? Does
Speaker 1: that count? Um? They know lawyers? Yeah, exactly. This is
Speaker 1: the whole network. So um, once they bring you in
Speaker 1: the room, the room itself h and this is all
Speaker 1: from Read's manual. He wrote a manual nineteen sixty two
Speaker 1: with a Northwestern law professor named fred In Mao called
Speaker 1: Criminal Interrogation and Confessions. I imagine every writer in Hollywood
Speaker 1: has a copy of that on their shelf. Um. But
Speaker 1: the room that you see on TV, that's what there.
Speaker 1: They suggest you know. Nothing on the walls, a very
Speaker 1: plain desk, a very un comfortable chair on one side,
Speaker 1: two chairs on the other for the detectives. Um, that
Speaker 1: one way mirror that's gonna serve a purpose of letting
Speaker 1: people spy on you and just to make you nervous,
Speaker 1: even if there's no one on the other side, and
Speaker 1: put you out of reach from this one. I didn't
Speaker 1: really uh, I had never really noticed. But out of
Speaker 1: reachs from just light switches and maybe the the a
Speaker 1: c uh what do you call those thermostat thermostatic just
Speaker 1: to make you feel powerless. It's all a mind game
Speaker 1: to make you feel helpless. So far seems pretty intuitive,
Speaker 1: pretty logical, Like if you can't flip the lights on
Speaker 1: and off, it's not something I would think that I
Speaker 1: would want to do right then, but maybe knowing seeing
Speaker 1: that it was that far away, Yeah, woid just give
Speaker 1: me this reinforced the idea that like, I couldn't even
Speaker 1: if I wanted to, because it's all the way over there.
Speaker 1: That's probably a small detective in between me and that,
Speaker 1: like exactly, but it makes sense. But I point that
Speaker 1: out because that's that's the read technique. Stuff like that,
Speaker 1: keep the light switches away from the criminal because it'll
Speaker 1: make him feel helpless. Does It sounds a little hinky,
Speaker 1: but it it makes sense in a way. That is
Speaker 1: the red technique encapsulated. So let's continue, Chuck, So that
Speaker 1: was that's just the room that they suggest there there
Speaker 1: if you follow the re technique to a t, and
Speaker 1: this is one of the saving graces of it. Um,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to do what's an initial interview. And if
Speaker 1: you're the detective and you go into in an initial
Speaker 1: interview of an interrogation, you are the red technique tasks
Speaker 1: you with going in without a presumption of guilt. Yet
Speaker 1: that's the point of the initial interview, is you're supposed
Speaker 1: to be sizing your guy up and determining for yourself
Speaker 1: as a seasoned investigator, whether you think initially they're guilty
Speaker 1: or innocent. I'm sure that happens some Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: another study that found that it's often skipped as well. UM,
Speaker 1: and that's they just start like hammering right away. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're throwing out the the the potential for this um,
Speaker 1: this person to be treated as possibly innocent. Right, you're
Speaker 1: not sizing up. You're going in assuming they're guilty. So
Speaker 1: but if you if you do go through that initial interview,
Speaker 1: the other point of it is that you're supposed to
Speaker 1: be creating a baseline yea, which I think is that
Speaker 1: showed up in the polygraph one too, which isn't surprising
Speaker 1: because John Reid was a polygraph expert for a while too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you've been gratiated yourself, you know, in the first
Speaker 1: few minutes by this point, like, uh, if if you're
Speaker 1: if you're in Philadelphia and your suspect has on like
Speaker 1: a Phillies cap, you might talk about the game last night,
Speaker 1: right exactly, And that that throws back to, um, the
Speaker 1: suspect being more likely can you trust someone that shares
Speaker 1: their same views that they feel they can identify with,
Speaker 1: So the detective will do whatever they can to make
Speaker 1: it seem like, oh, you're a Catholic, I'm a Catholic too,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, you know. Yeah, And so once
Speaker 1: you've got a little bit of rapport going on is
Speaker 1: when you're gonna set your baseline. And I thought this
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting. You don't and I'm gonna start looking
Speaker 1: for this on cop shows to see if they don't
Speaker 1: overtly talk about it, if they're just how good they
Speaker 1: are with their you know, uh, with their acting, because
Speaker 1: if they're looking at the eyes, um, then they're gonna
Speaker 1: be accurate. Because that's one of the ways supposedly you
Speaker 1: can create a baseline um, you're gonna ask some some
Speaker 1: questions that require memory recall, and you're gonna ask other
Speaker 1: questions that require more creativity, and you're gonna look at
Speaker 1: where their eyes go. Supposedly, if your eyes moved to
Speaker 1: the right, that is just recall, because you're I guess,
Speaker 1: looking in the direction of your memory center of your brain.
Speaker 1: If it's more creative, you might look to the left.
Speaker 1: And then then you're gonna use these later on to
Speaker 1: see if your suspect is creatively making up a lie,
Speaker 1: they might look to the left, or if they're just
Speaker 1: truthfully recalling something, they might look to the right. Is
Speaker 1: that bunk? Yes, all right. It's very dangerous too, because
Speaker 1: they that is incredibly widespread. It's a popular misconception. If
Speaker 1: you ask anybody if you move your eyes a certain
Speaker 1: way doesn't indicate your lying, most people are gonna say, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it totally does. I can't remember if it's right or left,
Speaker 1: but if you look a certain way, it means you're lying.
Speaker 1: So that's a longstanding thing that's based actually on a
Speaker 1: self help philosophy from the seventies that's nothing to do
Speaker 1: with science. And actually Richard Wiseman, who we um incorrectly
Speaker 1: said did some research that proved that ghosts exist in
Speaker 1: our ghost episode. That guy, he's done someones to debunk this.
Speaker 1: He did a couple of studies and in one of
Speaker 1: the studies he found, um he he used footage of
Speaker 1: people who were holding press conferences searching for lost relatives.
Speaker 1: But the person pleaing for their relatives return was later
Speaker 1: convicted of like killing or kidnapping their their relatives, so
Speaker 1: they were obviously lying. They were committing a huge lie
Speaker 1: in front of the public, and he found that they
Speaker 1: were just as likely to look to the left or
Speaker 1: the right. There was no correlation whatsoever. Yeah, I'm sure
Speaker 1: there are facial cues of pantomimes if you're Christopher walking,
Speaker 1: but um, it all depends on the person to write.
Speaker 1: Like you could be really good at line or really
Speaker 1: good at throwing people off with facial cues. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: the idea that your eyes move in a certain direction
Speaker 1: at all because you're coming up with a lie or
Speaker 1: because you're remembering something might not It doesn't mean anything necessarily. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we also did one of micro expressions. This is a
Speaker 1: culmination of a lot of shows, I'm realized. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: really is. Yeah, So Um. That was another one. You
Speaker 1: you've got the baseline set. You're watching the eyes even
Speaker 1: though you really shouldn't be. Um. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: you're you're seeing what your suspect appears like when they're
Speaker 1: stressed or I'm sorry, when they're relaxed. And and the
Speaker 1: reason you're creating this baseline of what they act like
Speaker 1: when they're relaxed is because if you ask them questions
Speaker 1: and they answer them and appear relaxed, then supposedly they're
Speaker 1: telling the truth. A in this is predicated on some
Speaker 1: faulty ideas, because here's the problem. Anxiety is not necessarily
Speaker 1: linked to lying. Like, yes, you may appear anxious if
Speaker 1: you're lying, but that doesn't mean that if you're anxious,
Speaker 1: you're lying, right. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would do that. I would do the Chuck Chuck technique.
Speaker 1: Would be the fast thing, like I would set him up.
Speaker 1: I'll calm and be like, Hey, do you watch the
Speaker 1: game last night? Yeah? How cool? Why did you kill it?
Speaker 1: Old lady? Yeah? You like the Phillies? Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a pretty good game. How do you think they're gonna
Speaker 1: go far? Yeah? Did you kill your wife and boom.
Speaker 1: That was pretty good. You almost said yes, yeah, really
Speaker 1: and you didn't kill your wife? No, I meanez, that
Speaker 1: was thrilling. The chuck technique. I I like the Colombo.
Speaker 1: What's that? Oh, well, you're just like that's that's great.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you like the Phillies. I just want to
Speaker 1: thank you for coming by. That's it was good to
Speaker 1: meet you. Write if we if we need anything, can
Speaker 1: we call you? And they're like yeah, they're so relieved
Speaker 1: that they get to eat, and then you, oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: One more thing, Why did you kill your wife? That
Speaker 1: Colombo did? Yeah, here's a little better at it than
Speaker 1: I was. He would say, there's there's just there's one
Speaker 1: of the things just not making sense to me. If
Speaker 1: you didn't kill your wife, why were you found standing
Speaker 1: over with the knife? Yeah, so that's how Colombo would
Speaker 1: catch him off guard, like really get them to let
Speaker 1: their guard down. Yeah. I like that. So you said,
Speaker 1: he I know what Colombo was. I was about to
Speaker 1: say he went on and killed his wife. But that
Speaker 1: was Robert Blake. Yeah, that was Barretta. What was his technique?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I never watched Barretta check your gun
Speaker 1: with the maitre D. And then isn't that what he did? Know?
Speaker 1: What did you do? I think he left his gun
Speaker 1: with the matred D. Supposed that's what he said he did,
Speaker 1: Like you know, I'm here table for two, here's my
Speaker 1: coat and here's my gun. Yeah, well you hang onto
Speaker 1: that for me? Will you be my alibi? Um? I
Speaker 1: think we're at the read technique now, right we are.
Speaker 1: So the the other stuff was from the book that's
Speaker 1: based on the read technique criminal interrogation and confessions. But
Speaker 1: now we are at the actual read technique, the nine
Speaker 1: point technique that is designed to maximize um discomfort which
Speaker 1: leads to more frequent confessions. Yeah, and it's actually it's
Speaker 1: illegal and a lot of European countries for children, um,
Speaker 1: which which it should because that's another risk factor going
Speaker 1: in that can produce false confessions is age, of course,
Speaker 1: and we'll get to some of those later. Those are
Speaker 1: kind of uh maddening when you read about like a
Speaker 1: fourteen year old it's interrogated without their parents for like
Speaker 1: a full day, but it happens. So step number one
Speaker 1: and the read technique is the confrontation. Uh. And this
Speaker 1: is after the initial interview you have, you're going to
Speaker 1: present the facts of the case. You're gonna tell them
Speaker 1: about the evidence, um, what they're faced with, the all
Speaker 1: the evidence against them, even if you're making some of
Speaker 1: it up. You might want to invade their personals based
Speaker 1: at this time if you're Matthew McConaughey, uh, and then
Speaker 1: you start looking for things like fidgety, uh, suspect they
Speaker 1: look in their lips, are they like muscle with their hair, um,
Speaker 1: And then if you're an investigator, you might say, all right,
Speaker 1: I've got this guy just where I want him. That
Speaker 1: guy ran his fingers through his hair, he's guilty, exactly.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of part of the part of the
Speaker 1: issue that a lot of critics of the re technique
Speaker 1: bring up, um, is that basically, if you stripped non
Speaker 1: verbal stuff out, then you've got some sound stuff there. Right.
Speaker 1: The biggest problem is when you're trying to read nonverbal
Speaker 1: cues because there's it's not rooted in science. Its rooted
Speaker 1: in armchair psychology and pop science totally. So the idea
Speaker 1: that somebody's fidgeting meanings they're guilty and they're lying. Not
Speaker 1: necessarily they could be fidgeting because any human being would
Speaker 1: be really uncomfortable when placed in that situation and interrogated
Speaker 1: by cops who are experts at it. Right. Uh So,
Speaker 1: step number two is theme development, and you're gonna be
Speaker 1: a little more soothing here with a softer voice. And
Speaker 1: this is when you come up with some some theories
Speaker 1: and a story maybe of why they committed this crime,
Speaker 1: Like you know, you just couldn't go on any longer. Know,
Speaker 1: when your best friend at sex with your wife. You
Speaker 1: just couldn't live with that, could you. And if the
Speaker 1: suspect latches onto that and some verbal or nonverbal ways
Speaker 1: and they'll continue they don't, then they'll just create another theme. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the the detective will basically just kind of while
Speaker 1: they're creating the story for the for the suspect to
Speaker 1: latch onto, they're also actively listening to the suspect to
Speaker 1: see if the suspect will latch onto it in any way,
Speaker 1: shape or form, and if they don't, they try another one.
Speaker 1: If they do, then they start to kind of beat
Speaker 1: that one up and that leads alternatives, which actually comes later.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, one of the main techniques of
Speaker 1: the read technique is stopping denials. But I didn't do it, Josh, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you I was. But imagine my finger on
Speaker 1: Chuck's lips right now. That's why you would never do that. Now,
Speaker 1: you stopped the Niles because it creates a sense of hopelessness,
Speaker 1: like the like, don't you feel hopeless with my fingers
Speaker 1: on your lips? So hopeless you have no idea? Uh,
Speaker 1: it makes you feel hopeless that you don't even have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to to reason with this cop. You can't
Speaker 1: defend yourself, not at all, so you have a sense
Speaker 1: of hopelessness. Plus, the other upside if you're an interrogator
Speaker 1: is that you're keeping the person from talking, meaning they
Speaker 1: also can't ask for counsel. Then I don't see why
Speaker 1: people don't just do that the first thing, over and
Speaker 1: over say I need a lawyer, I need a lawyer,
Speaker 1: I need a lawyer. I read this article in I
Speaker 1: think this stranger aren't the oddest Seattle. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a great article. It was kind of um.
Speaker 1: It was just kind of misleading, like the author really
Speaker 1: wanted you to to sympathize with the guy who was
Speaker 1: guilty and really revealed that he really was pretty guilty
Speaker 1: towards the end, but it had this this really great
Speaker 1: explanation for why people don't ask for a lawyer in
Speaker 1: this article. Yes, and I've seen it before, but this
Speaker 1: article really got the point across that this guy was, like,
Speaker 1: I mean, he'd done some stuff before, like I think
Speaker 1: like he um, he was, he dabbled in drugs and
Speaker 1: like ran an illegal like poker game and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: like mouthfeasance. Yeah, and he so enough so that he
Speaker 1: was like he knew he was technically guilty in the
Speaker 1: eyes of the law, but not for this thing that
Speaker 1: they wanted him on. Um, so he was he had
Speaker 1: that guilt to begin with. And then these cops saying like,
Speaker 1: you're gonna really look guilty if you if you ask
Speaker 1: for a lawyer. That's one. And then the other aspect
Speaker 1: was if you lawyer up, we can't help you. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen that one. If you talk to us, that's
Speaker 1: the only way we can help you get out of
Speaker 1: this jam. We want to get jam like we we
Speaker 1: know we might we would have done the same thing
Speaker 1: you did. Yeah, but the cops never want to get
Speaker 1: you out of a jam. No, that's not what they're
Speaker 1: trying to do, and so what they were saying was
Speaker 1: like if you clam up this, like, who knows what's
Speaker 1: going to happen to you. They were doing all sorts
Speaker 1: of really effective psychological manipulation. And the guy they were
Speaker 1: talking to was a lawyer's son. And this guy who
Speaker 1: like forty years old, a lawyer's son, so he'd known
Speaker 1: his whole life to ask for a lawyer. And even
Speaker 1: this guy didn't immediately ask for a lawyer because these
Speaker 1: cops got him. You know, I probably wouldn't either. Actually,
Speaker 1: if I was if I was arrested today after work
Speaker 1: and obviously completely innocent of anything, would that be mind blowing?
Speaker 1: If that happened and I was completely innocent, I would.
Speaker 1: I would at first My first instinct would probably be
Speaker 1: like I need a lawyer and I didn't do anything, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like why why curred that expense? Well, I think that's
Speaker 1: another aspect of the initial um, initial consultation, that initial
Speaker 1: discussion where it's like, oh, it's all friendly, we're talking
Speaker 1: about the phillies. Why would you need a lawyer for that? Right,
Speaker 1: I retract my statement, I get it now, but you
Speaker 1: should stick to your original statement no matter what, Like
Speaker 1: you have a right to counsel, and there's no reason
Speaker 1: you should not invoke it. Your your punishment is not
Speaker 1: going to be worse for asking for a lawyer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you should open up. You sound like one of those
Speaker 1: legal commercials called Josh Clark. That reminds me we should
Speaker 1: do and we should mention the A c l U
Speaker 1: episode that was a pretty good in too. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: this thing is just so many tangential podcasts. So the
Speaker 1: stopping denials, that's a big part of the read technique.
Speaker 1: And then, um, there's something that's similar that John Reid noticed,
Speaker 1: but it is a little nuance. There's a difference, uh,
Speaker 1: and that's objections to to to read. Denials were different
Speaker 1: than object actions, and objections were something to be treated
Speaker 1: differently as a result. Yeah, an objection that example they
Speaker 1: gave here was like I would never rape somebody because
Speaker 1: my sister was raped and it destroyed our family. Of
Speaker 1: course I wouldn't do something like that, right. So to
Speaker 1: a cop, that's not a denial. A denial is like
Speaker 1: I didn't do that. I didn't do that that that's
Speaker 1: not me. You got the wrong guy. Those are denials,
Speaker 1: and the cop would try to stop you from completing
Speaker 1: those sentences. That objection you just said is a denial,
Speaker 1: but it's encapsulated with um, a reason, yeah, a justification,
Speaker 1: something to it. Do you remember when you used to
Speaker 1: take multiple choice tests in high school they always said
Speaker 1: that if you don't know the answer, usually the one
Speaker 1: with the most verbiage, the one with the most words,
Speaker 1: is the right one. I never heard that's true. That
Speaker 1: works out. It's not good at taking tests either. Well, no, wonder,
Speaker 1: we need to get in the way back machine. You
Speaker 1: can go take some more multiple test tests. Knowing that now,
Speaker 1: But the the I think that's kind of the same
Speaker 1: prem us for an objection. It's like, it's not just
Speaker 1: a denial, it's there's more to it. And the fact
Speaker 1: that somebody put that much more thought into it means
Speaker 1: that there's something to that. So a cop will take
Speaker 1: that and cultivate it and try to turn that around,
Speaker 1: and they would say, we, I know you love your sister,
Speaker 1: and you know you you stood by her while she
Speaker 1: was raped, so of course this wouldn't be like a
Speaker 1: recurring thing. This is just a one time thing that
Speaker 1: you did and you were out of your head or whatever,
Speaker 1: because you care about your sisters, so you would never
Speaker 1: do this all the time or something. And so all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you're you're kind of like you're giving
Speaker 1: the suspect like a something to latch onto, something for
Speaker 1: them to to basically re enter society to an extent,
Speaker 1: because at this moment, especially if they're guilty, they are
Speaker 1: totally on the ounce with society, and the sole representative
Speaker 1: of society and who's speaking with them right now is
Speaker 1: the cop that's interrogated them, and everybody wants to be included,
Speaker 1: and if you don't, then your associopath and they're gonna
Speaker 1: get you anyway. They're well, yeah, but they're gonna have
Speaker 1: a hard time through interrogation. So number five is getting
Speaker 1: the suspects attention. Is I don't know these the real
Speaker 1: titles or is this just the liberties of the author
Speaker 1: of this article? I don't know what We'll call it
Speaker 1: getting the suspects attention. And uh, this is when you
Speaker 1: pretend to be the ally of the suspect um because
Speaker 1: at this point they're probably looking for a way out,
Speaker 1: and that's when you might go, hey, man, I get it.
Speaker 1: If I call it my best friend having sex with
Speaker 1: my wife, I'd kill him too. I understand where you're
Speaker 1: coming from, and uh, maybe a little pad on the shoulder,
Speaker 1: a little rub on, a little rub on the back,
Speaker 1: or maybe a pad on the back and just some
Speaker 1: reassurance like I get to where you're coming from. Man,
Speaker 1: it could have could happen to any of us, and
Speaker 1: you're in big trouble at that point. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: probably going on like throughout. Yeah, and of themes run
Speaker 1: These all overlap quite a bit. But if if there's
Speaker 1: an objection that you've noticed that you're working, you've turned
Speaker 1: around and you're working that objection with an extra layer
Speaker 1: of compassion and commiseration. Uh, can I guess really kind
Speaker 1: of start to ensnare the suspect a lot more. It's
Speaker 1: weird because I'm I'm repulsed by a lot of this,
Speaker 1: but I'm also very impressed by like what I've seen
Speaker 1: on TV. What you can tell is someone who's really
Speaker 1: good at it. Oh yeah, it's an effective it's like
Speaker 1: an art form. There's UM. I believe something like eight
Speaker 1: percent or seventies six percent of UM suspects who are
Speaker 1: interrogated in this manner. When you take out people who
Speaker 1: UM invoke their miranda rights, uh confess like it has
Speaker 1: an enormous confession rate, and there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: who the vast majority the study I saw or the
Speaker 1: number I saw six of those confessions are from guilty people.
Speaker 1: That something like point zero four percent are false confessions.
Speaker 1: The problem is there's still such a thing as false confessions.
Speaker 1: There's no safeguards. It's just it just so happens that,
Speaker 1: like the false confessions are in that small of an amount. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that percentage isn't high. But if you think about
Speaker 1: how many people are interrogated, that's like several hundred per
Speaker 1: year in the US, up to several hundred per year.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of people. Yeah, And it's not like
Speaker 1: that that those people just it gets found out at
Speaker 1: trial or somewhere down the road that they're innocent. Like,
Speaker 1: those people may spend the rest of their lives in jail.
Speaker 1: At the worst case, they may be executed, which has
Speaker 1: probably happened in the history of the US, although it
Speaker 1: hasn't been um irrefutably proven yet. Yeah, and you can
Speaker 1: listen to how the Innocence Project works. From June, we
Speaker 1: interviewed Paula is On. Oh, yeah, that's right. I wish
Speaker 1: i'd known a lot more about the Innocence Project back
Speaker 1: when we did that episode, Like I kind of got
Speaker 1: it and understood it. But just over the last few years, Um,
Speaker 1: I've kind of I understand it even more. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: wish I would have known better than It's still a
Speaker 1: good episode. We talked to Paul Paul is on Yeah
Speaker 1: she's a real pro. Yeah no it's not, is it? Okay,
Speaker 1: that's how rumors get made. Well, I just liked her
Speaker 1: like more after you said that. Oh yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: love Steve's on. Um, all right, and back to the
Speaker 1: red technique. At this point number six, the suspect might
Speaker 1: lose resolve, And uh, this seemed really obvious to me.
Speaker 1: If the suspect is has his shoulders hunched, or is
Speaker 1: got his head in his hands, or is crying, then
Speaker 1: you've got them just where you want them as an interrogator, right,
Speaker 1: you were going to get your confession, whether it's a
Speaker 1: false confession or not. That's not guaranteed by these outward signs. Again,
Speaker 1: if you strip away the non terrible stuff from the
Speaker 1: re technique, it's it's pretty pretty good stuff. And apparently
Speaker 1: this is where you really want to regain their attention.
Speaker 1: Like if they start crying, like forced them to look
Speaker 1: you in the eye. Uh, because I guess that works.
Speaker 1: That increases the stress level. Um. So remember we talked
Speaker 1: about that theme development. It's like here, here's what happened,
Speaker 1: you know, and they object to that, and then you
Speaker 1: take that objection, you turn it around and they start
Speaker 1: to latch onto that theme couched in that objection. You
Speaker 1: take that next, and as you're developing it, it becomes
Speaker 1: one of two or more alternatives. But basically you're taking
Speaker 1: the theme that the person latched onto and you're making
Speaker 1: that the minimal um example. It's almost like a good
Speaker 1: cop bad cop version of reasons why you did it? Exactly,
Speaker 1: So it's it's, um, you you you shot that lady
Speaker 1: in the back because she was a horrible person. Nobody
Speaker 1: is going to think that you did it because you
Speaker 1: just wanted the insurance money, exactly that anybody in your
Speaker 1: position would have done this, And everyone's gonna understand this
Speaker 1: is why you did it, not this horrible reason. This reason,
Speaker 1: this reason society can live with. Maybe you'll go to
Speaker 1: jail for a year, two, who knows, but when you
Speaker 1: come out, everybody's gonna say, hey, that Bernie guy is okay,
Speaker 1: I would have shot that old lady in the back too. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not Hey, that Bernie guy needs to burn in
Speaker 1: hell for the rest of his life because it killed
Speaker 1: some poor old lady for her insurance money. You know.
Speaker 1: So with the cops sitting there saying, here's what we're saying,
Speaker 1: you're agreeing to. Here's this horrible interpretation that I can't control.
Speaker 1: But this I've created and sculpted with your help. So
Speaker 1: let's throw this horrible, big thing away and this thing
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem nearly as bad is what the press
Speaker 1: will hear. I will start to put it on paper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but here's what you're not thinking about what you're doing,
Speaker 1: is it's the same in both cases. If you're confessing
Speaker 1: to a murderer and you are just at a point
Speaker 1: to where you're you think, man, that sounds way better
Speaker 1: in a newspaper than this other thing. And also it's
Speaker 1: coming out of the mouth of this detective that is
Speaker 1: um that is appearing to commiserate with you, that has
Speaker 1: empathized with you, that maybe told you on the side
Speaker 1: like hey, I hated that old lady too, and I'm
Speaker 1: glad you did it the cop can totally say that
Speaker 1: and and to win the trust of the suspect. So
Speaker 1: all of these factors combine all of a sudden. You
Speaker 1: have a story, you have a narrative, you're working out
Speaker 1: with the cops. You may not even realize that that's
Speaker 1: what's going on. And then the cops going to say,
Speaker 1: I have a piece of paper and a pen here,
Speaker 1: and I want you to write down what we just
Speaker 1: talked about. I want you to write down your confession. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: they're gonna bring someone else in there first, Well, there's
Speaker 1: probably already someone else in there. They may bring a
Speaker 1: third person, new person in there, uh, to try and
Speaker 1: force them to retell their story, which they probably won't
Speaker 1: want to do. Uh. And that's when you can introduce like, hey,
Speaker 1: you don't want to tell the story again to this
Speaker 1: new detective. I know you're tired, just here to take
Speaker 1: the spend exactly, don't stab me with it. By this time,
Speaker 1: the person will likely want to do just about anything
Speaker 1: to get out of that room and from writing and
Speaker 1: signing this this confession their salvation. On the other end,
Speaker 1: there's a light at the end of the tunnel, even
Speaker 1: if it's possibly jail Yeah, they can get out of
Speaker 1: this room. They can get out of this horrible interrogation. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They may promise like a hot meal, like something as
Speaker 1: simple as that can can get someone to sign a
Speaker 1: confession at the end of a long, long day. So
Speaker 1: you've got the written confession, you haven't signed. Uh. They
Speaker 1: probably have to sign an additional waiver that says I
Speaker 1: didn't write this under coercion or else. They'll include that
Speaker 1: in the confession, and you have basically what amounts to
Speaker 1: a slam dunk conviction in court. And that is the
Speaker 1: red technique. Uh. And we're gonna talk about some real
Speaker 1: cases of interrogation right after this break, all right, Chuck.
Speaker 1: So that's the red technique that your purpose super effective. Um,
Speaker 1: and it has been used in plenty of cases. Like
Speaker 1: we said, the number that I saw was like point
Speaker 1: zero per point zero four of confessions or false confessions, um,
Speaker 1: which is extraordinarily small, which means that a lot of
Speaker 1: truly bad guys get caught through the red the red technique, right. Um.
Speaker 1: And there's this one in this article on how stuff works, um,
Speaker 1: how police interrogation works, and it's with a woman named
Speaker 1: Nicole Michelle Frederick it's between her and a detective named
Speaker 1: Victor Lauria, and it takes place in Detroit in September
Speaker 1: two thousand three, and um Nicole Michelle Frederick was the
Speaker 1: step mom to a two year old daughter, and the
Speaker 1: two year old daughter had shown up in the hospital,
Speaker 1: I believe, unresponsive with bruises all over her body had
Speaker 1: clearly been physically abused, and the step mom was saying,
Speaker 1: she falls down a lot, like I don't think anybody
Speaker 1: heard her, Like, she just gets bruised like that, and uh,
Speaker 1: it certainly wasn't me. But not only was it not me,
Speaker 1: I don't think it was anybody. The little girl just
Speaker 1: falls down, she does it to herself. And with that,
Speaker 1: Detective Lauria took her to be blaming the victim that
Speaker 1: she was trying to go free. By blaming this little
Speaker 1: girl for being clumsy, momsy and difficult, yes, which a
Speaker 1: detective can then latch onto is reprehensible as that sounds, uh,
Speaker 1: by trying to get some empathy going like, hey, I
Speaker 1: get it, you know, like this is a tough baby, yes,
Speaker 1: and it's I'm sure it's trying, and it's very off
Speaker 1: cult so all of a sudden, uh, detective Lauria has
Speaker 1: has this I guess this theme, this justification that was
Speaker 1: set up by the suspect, and he starts to play
Speaker 1: it out. He's saying, like this, this girl, she was
Speaker 1: a difficult baby. She's crying. You lose your head for
Speaker 1: a minute and you get a little rough, and you know,
Speaker 1: it could happen to anybody, and um uh ms. Frederick says, no,
Speaker 1: that's not right at all. Nobody hurt this kid. I
Speaker 1: don't understand why you don't believe me. You seem to
Speaker 1: be not listening to me, which is from what I understand.
Speaker 1: That's you're in the danger zone right there, and your
Speaker 1: a derogation. If somebody's saying, if they're pressing back their
Speaker 1: own reality on the you, the detective, you're not in
Speaker 1: control right then they are, so uh. Laurias started to
Speaker 1: look for another theme, and it was along the same lines,
Speaker 1: but rather than losing your head for a minute, it
Speaker 1: was a split second. Something happened in the flash of
Speaker 1: him minute or flash of a second, and she perked
Speaker 1: up a little. Yeah, she started to latch onto that one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then he knew he had her, you know, in
Speaker 1: a pretty tough spot and Um. She started nodding her head.
Speaker 1: He sets up the alternative and said, you know what,
Speaker 1: if you don't explain this thing, every he's gonna everyone's
Speaker 1: gonna just assume that you're this awful, abusive person. Um.
Speaker 1: I think people might understand more though, because everyone's been there.
Speaker 1: If we paint, you know, if if it was just
Speaker 1: a split second thing and he lost control, people are
Speaker 1: going to get that. So those are the alternatives. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, and then it came uh, it came
Speaker 1: out that the her daughter had had had brain damage,
Speaker 1: it was likely not gonna die. And then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, the suspects started saying, oh I I they're
Speaker 1: gonna get me for murder. Yeah. Well, he pointed out
Speaker 1: to her, He's like, by the way, you haven't even
Speaker 1: asked about the condition of your daughter. And she was like, no,
Speaker 1: I haven't totally have and he's like, no, you really haven't,
Speaker 1: and she's like, well how is she He's like, she's
Speaker 1: not gonna make it, and that's when she goes, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be tried for murder. And she was and
Speaker 1: found guilty. Um, she she confessed, I believe right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she admitted to shaking, shaking a baby and then said
Speaker 1: out loud, I killed the little girl. I killed her
Speaker 1: right So, Um, she was convicted of killing her two
Speaker 1: year old stepdaughter. And last I saw, I found an
Speaker 1: appeal in two thousand five that was denied. That was
Speaker 1: the last I saw of her after her conviction. So
Speaker 1: it does work, and Detective Lauria followed all of these steps,
Speaker 1: um and got a bad guy in this case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of times it goes down just
Speaker 1: like it should. But it is super controversial, which we've
Speaker 1: talked about some and you mentioned at the beginning. One
Speaker 1: of the biggest problems is it's guilt presumptive. Is they
Speaker 1: go in there thinking, all right, this person's the goal
Speaker 1: of the of the interrogation is to get a confession,
Speaker 1: not to find out whether or not someone did something.
Speaker 1: In most in many cases, they go in there thinking
Speaker 1: this person is guilty. And if you're going in there
Speaker 1: thinking you're guilty, even if you don't mean to, you're
Speaker 1: gonna start to filter out any reasons why they might
Speaker 1: be innocent, even if they're good reasons and valid reasons.
Speaker 1: And that ain't no good, No, it's not that's um.
Speaker 1: That's well it's pretty huge flaw really, even if it
Speaker 1: does result on only point zero four percent of false confessions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you also mentioned that, Um, the whole purpose of
Speaker 1: the interrogation is to make someone stressed and uncomfortable. And
Speaker 1: then when you notice people behaving stressed and uncomfortable, that's
Speaker 1: the presumption an indicator of guilt Supposedly, when it's like
Speaker 1: you said, would you call a feedback loop, So you know,
Speaker 1: I want to make you stressed and uncomfortable, you're being
Speaker 1: stressed and uncomfortable, that means you're guilty. Yeah, it's an
Speaker 1: odd you to approach things. It's coercion. Um. And then
Speaker 1: there's also been a lot of people to point out
Speaker 1: that a lot of these techniques are the same thing
Speaker 1: that are used in brainwashing, which we did a show
Speaker 1: on July two thousand nine, did a brainwashing show invading
Speaker 1: a personal space, not allowing the person to speak, um,
Speaker 1: using contrasting alternatives to have them come to uh, make
Speaker 1: them feel like they're making a decision or that they
Speaker 1: have a choice or some sort of power. I think
Speaker 1: you brainwashed me in that episode two, right, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: did a little role play. Yeah, it was awesome. Man,
Speaker 1: I turned you into a prep that was five years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then um position and confession as a means of escape.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was like the last step I think
Speaker 1: before resolution was to say like just like denounce your
Speaker 1: family or whatever and you will be saved or something.
Speaker 1: Right in this case, it signed this thing and man,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get that hot meal and that cigarette. I
Speaker 1: promised you. The thing is is like we said, it's uh.
Speaker 1: It does produce false confessions. And I saw somewhere that
Speaker 1: of people who have been exonerated with DNA evidence, UM
Speaker 1: gave a false confession. So people go to jail for
Speaker 1: years for this kind of thing. Well, here's a few
Speaker 1: of the more famous cases. Peter Riley in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 1: It's an eighteen year old who is whose mother was murdered. UM,
Speaker 1: I think no siblings and no father, so like the
Speaker 1: only parent he'd ever known, And after eight hours of
Speaker 1: interrogation by Connecticut police, he confessed to brutally murdering her.
Speaker 1: Murdering her and UH was convicted on manslaughter based on
Speaker 1: the confessional loan was no evidence, no motive. Medical findings
Speaker 1: suggested that there were at least two attackers and UH
Speaker 1: the town really got behind him, apparently, and like, so
Speaker 1: this kid didn't do this, He's not that kind of guy.
Speaker 1: And let's have bake sales and raise money. And Arthur Miller,
Speaker 1: the famous playwright, lived in the town and he championed
Speaker 1: it because he did a lot of work with a
Speaker 1: c l U. And Um. Eventually new evidence came out
Speaker 1: that exonerated him and he was set free after three
Speaker 1: years in prison. Three years not too bad. It's better
Speaker 1: than Earl Washington Jr. Who in nineteen eighty two he
Speaker 1: was described as in police everybody, I'm using scare quotes here.
Speaker 1: He was described by psychologists as mildly retarded. He had
Speaker 1: an i Q of sixty nine, which is a whole
Speaker 1: other kettle of fish that mean anything anyway, But um,
Speaker 1: he confessed to raping and murdering a nineteen year old
Speaker 1: woman under interrogation. He was convicted on the confessional loan
Speaker 1: right just on the confession. A lot of these are,
Speaker 1: and spent eighteen years in prison, some of them on
Speaker 1: death row, and was apparently rescued from the um executioner
Speaker 1: with like nine days to go. Yeah, But at the
Speaker 1: same time, like, as a jury, what are you to
Speaker 1: do when someone says I did this, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean hopefully you don't know, maybe maybe add some other evidence.
Speaker 1: I agree. The thing is is Earl Washington's UM thing.
Speaker 1: He he was somebody else was caught doing it using DNA.
Speaker 1: That's that's been a huge change to this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: It's at least exonerated people like free and clear. But
Speaker 1: that's that brings up another problem with false confessions. Not
Speaker 1: only do innocent people go to jail, guilty people stay free,
Speaker 1: and they accumulate more victims over time, you know, like, um,
Speaker 1: how how how many more children would that that lady
Speaker 1: in Detroit have abused if like she gotten off or something,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean like the and the guy who
Speaker 1: created UM the read technique actually had a false confession
Speaker 1: and wrongful conviction under his belt, a guy. If you
Speaker 1: read the article um the uh the interview in the
Speaker 1: New Yorker, the first thing he talks about is this
Speaker 1: guy in the fifties who was in jail for twenty
Speaker 1: years for murdering his wife even though he didn't do it,
Speaker 1: who was um interrogated by John Reid himself. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the guy who actually did do it went on
Speaker 1: to rape pregnant women and UM commit all these other
Speaker 1: horrible crimes that he wouldn't have he wouldn't have done
Speaker 1: had he been caught the first time, or had the
Speaker 1: cups still been looking for him. Wow. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a huge point. I mean, like, it's not just innocent
Speaker 1: people in prison, it's guilty people out still. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you really want to see uh this all firsthand, I
Speaker 1: highly recommend the documentary from Ken burn Sarah Burns and
Speaker 1: David McMahon, The Central Park Five. And this is the
Speaker 1: famous story in of five young African American men who
Speaker 1: were set up the river for a rape in Central
Speaker 1: Park and they did not do it. And uh, it's
Speaker 1: a great documentary and it's it just summarizes how you
Speaker 1: can get a false confession very nicely and it all
Speaker 1: plays out and you see these interviews and get really
Speaker 1: angry and uh, but that was definitely a case of UM,
Speaker 1: sort of like with the Atlanta child murders. Like people
Speaker 1: are scared to go into Central Park now and we've
Speaker 1: got these five use who aren't so smart and they're poor,
Speaker 1: and we can we think they did it and I
Speaker 1: don't care what the evidence says. We need to finger
Speaker 1: them for the crime and put them all over the
Speaker 1: news so people will feel safe again. But they were
Speaker 1: eventually exonerated thanks to DNA again. Um. And they spent
Speaker 1: depending on which guy, between six years and twelve years
Speaker 1: in prison. And really great documentary and I think it's
Speaker 1: on Netflix. It is it is. Have you seen it? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good one. Um. So chuck this. We've basically
Speaker 1: been talking mostly about the Red technique, that there are alternatives.
Speaker 1: There's some law enforcement agencies have lost faith in, um,
Speaker 1: the red technique. Uh. And in Britain, apparently in there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of false confess since that came to light
Speaker 1: and the British government said, we need to figure something
Speaker 1: else out. So they created a Blue Ribbon task force
Speaker 1: and said, come up with an alternative to the re technique,
Speaker 1: which ironically is a technique in the re technique. But
Speaker 1: what they came up with was called peace, which this
Speaker 1: is the worst acronym of all time, but preparation and planning,
Speaker 1: engage and explain, account closure evaluate clearly spells peace. Yes, Um.
Speaker 1: So they came up with it after a couple of years,
Speaker 1: and by two thousand and one it was pretty widespread
Speaker 1: but the peace technique is predicated on the idea that
Speaker 1: you're not going after a confession. This technique, like you
Speaker 1: as a an investigator an interrogator, you're going in to
Speaker 1: just get the whole story out and as much detail
Speaker 1: as possible, and you're not going after a confession. You're
Speaker 1: not accusing the person of the crime, being polite and
Speaker 1: you're here's another thing, and a lot of people think
Speaker 1: that this will cure false confessions almost in and of itself,
Speaker 1: videotaping the confession from beginning to end. And so what
Speaker 1: the cops do is they interview the the suspect. They say, well,
Speaker 1: what about this, here's a discrepancy, what about this? And
Speaker 1: they're not being accusatory, they're just putting everything out there
Speaker 1: and letting this person explain it in front of the
Speaker 1: video tape or in front of the video camera. And
Speaker 1: then the tape is shown to a jury and the
Speaker 1: jury apparently decides whether the person is lying or not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And this is all built on the what I think
Speaker 1: is a pretty rock solid theory that it is really
Speaker 1: hard to lie and lie and lie and keep it
Speaker 1: all straight and keep it all and that that congruous
Speaker 1: line that's believable. At some point, if you keep talking
Speaker 1: and you're lying a bunch, you're gonna mess up. And
Speaker 1: that's what they prey on, especially if you've just spent
Speaker 1: the last eight hours like drinking cruddy coffee and eating
Speaker 1: a few ho hoes and being asked questions by interrogators,
Speaker 1: even if they're being polite like yeah, you're you're gonna
Speaker 1: have a really hard time keeping up with what you've
Speaker 1: already said. Yeah, Like you've got to be a real
Speaker 1: skilled sociopath to lie for hours and hours and hours. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then they'll bring him again and again. A week later,
Speaker 1: let's say, you know, let's have some more tea and
Speaker 1: let's sit down and talk and uh, a week later,
Speaker 1: you might forget some of the things you said. And um,
Speaker 1: and the cops have the video and they're writing down
Speaker 1: all the details. Seems pretty solid to me. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: good on you, Brittain. And um, there are some people
Speaker 1: here in the US trying to teach it the cops here,
Speaker 1: but apparently it's just like word of mouth and the
Speaker 1: particular jurisdiction has to be down with it and support it,
Speaker 1: and it's just not super widespread here. Yeah. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: the read technique isn't the force of law. It's just
Speaker 1: the gold standard. It's the one that everybody uses and there, like,
Speaker 1: I want to be like the cops on the shows. Well, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: I want to do the piece technique. Um, the in
Speaker 1: can it? I found a completely different technique too. It's
Speaker 1: called the Mr. Big technique. Have you heard of it?
Speaker 1: It's it's extremely involved. Basically, you the suspect, will meet
Speaker 1: an undercover cop who's posing as a criminal while you're
Speaker 1: out and about and free and easy or whatever, maybe
Speaker 1: while you're being booked whatever, and you guys are gonna
Speaker 1: become friends and over the course of the next several months,
Speaker 1: this undercover cop is going to gain your trust and
Speaker 1: get you to ultimately confess. That's just how little crime
Speaker 1: there is. They're like, so would you cut down your
Speaker 1: neighbors street? Right exactly? Like they can spend like three
Speaker 1: months on a single confession, you know. Yeah. But it's
Speaker 1: called the Mr. Big technique, and it actually the reason
Speaker 1: it's called Mr biggess Uh. In its ideal form, you, um,
Speaker 1: the suspect are become like kind of criminal compatriots with
Speaker 1: this this undercover cop who then introduces you to Mr Big,
Speaker 1: this crime boss who wants you to step up to
Speaker 1: the next crime level. But it's gonna you to talk
Speaker 1: about this murder that you did or whatever, and then
Speaker 1: you confess it and you're being secretly taped and you
Speaker 1: don't know it, and you've just entrapped yourself. Man, I
Speaker 1: love Canada, Mr I might have to move there, man,
Speaker 1: yea A you're gonna stick around after a Toronto or
Speaker 1: Vancouver one country. So we said earlier we were gonna
Speaker 1: give some tips. I think we'd be remiss if we didn't. Um.
Speaker 1: They seem a little silly, but they recommend you just
Speaker 1: don't talk. You don't talk, they said. Imagine the words
Speaker 1: I invoke my rights to remain silent painted on the
Speaker 1: wall and stare at them. Uh, ask for counsel, ask
Speaker 1: for a lawyer. And then the number five thing they
Speaker 1: say to do is cultivate hatred for your interrogator. Who
Speaker 1: who's that from Peace Help Beagle or something weird like that.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it's for recommendations for animal rights activists who
Speaker 1: get arrested. So yeah, he seems kind of basic to me.
Speaker 1: It is, but I think it's one of those things
Speaker 1: where they can't easily go out the window when you're
Speaker 1: in that situation, you know. Yeah, and again, if you're
Speaker 1: in the United States and you invoke your right to council,
Speaker 1: that's that like the cops are they have to stop,
Speaker 1: and if they don't, that's a that's a big problem.
Speaker 1: I kind of perversely want to know how I would
Speaker 1: hold up. I know it's no laughing matter and I
Speaker 1: shouldn't joke around about it, but I would like to
Speaker 1: be interrogated just to see. Uh so, Uh, I guess
Speaker 1: that's If you want to learn some more about UM
Speaker 1: police interrogation, check out this article police interrogation on how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. It's a good one UM and
Speaker 1: you can find that by using the search bar, of course.
Speaker 1: And since I said that, it's time for listener mail,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this Jittery Joe's Oh yeah coffee. Hey guys,
Speaker 1: So Paul as well my wife Catsy now are big
Speaker 1: fancy y'alls, and uh we've been listening for years. This
Speaker 1: summer we took a two month honeymoon to Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: It was a blast. Your podcasts kept the sane. Thanks
Speaker 1: for that. You've sent you a postcard from uh Angkor
Speaker 1: Watt and Cambodia. Uh. It was bought there, written in Borneo,
Speaker 1: and mailed from Malaysia, so it was well traveled. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we live in Athens and love to hear your stories
Speaker 1: about Athens. We actually live in five Points on the
Speaker 1: Shortcut road where Chuck told about his mystery creepy old
Speaker 1: Lady ghost story. I drive by there every day and
Speaker 1: I always keep an eye out for her. But my
Speaker 1: day jobs with Jittery Joe's Coffee Roasters, a local Athens institution,
Speaker 1: And um, he brought a huge box of coffee and
Speaker 1: shirts and hats and hand delivered it to the office.
Speaker 1: And uh, I think he was surprised to know that
Speaker 1: I remember when Jittery Joe's first opened, because he was like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that was before my time. I think he I didn't
Speaker 1: think I was as old as I was. But I
Speaker 1: remember Jittery Joe's opening up. It was a big deals,
Speaker 1: like the first kind of good indie coffee house in Athens.
Speaker 1: I didn't know they were the first, but I'm not
Speaker 1: surprised the first one I remember at least. But he
Speaker 1: suggests the Sumatra Wahana. He said it's unlike any coffee
Speaker 1: I've ever had, people either love it or hate it.
Speaker 1: So um, that is from Mike Lord and you can
Speaker 1: just look up Jittery Joe's online. I'm sure you can
Speaker 1: order this stuff. Yeah, you definitely can. Thanks for the coffee, Mike,
Speaker 1: it's good. Yes, and thank you to your wife Cassidy
Speaker 1: for all the support. Uh. If you want to give
Speaker 1: Chuck and Eye free stuff, we are happy to accept it.
Speaker 1: You can get in touch with us to ask for
Speaker 1: our physical mailing address and we'll give it to you. Okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have to say showing up at the office and
Speaker 1: announced was a little weird, but since you had a
Speaker 1: huge box of coffee, h it was all forgetting. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so your comparing gifts, it's like yeah, yeah, it's social lubricant. Yeah, gifts, sorry,
Speaker 1: especially good one. It's like Jittery Joe's coffee. You can
Speaker 1: get in touch with us via Twitter at s Y
Speaker 1: s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com.
Speaker 1: So I Stuff you should Know. You can send us
Speaker 1: an email at stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com and as always joined us at home on the
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