Speaker 1: Hi everyone. In our feed you've probably heard the podcast
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions, hosted by Laura and I Writer
Speaker 1: and Steve Drizzen, where they dive into the stories of
Speaker 1: innocent people who have been subject to tactics that elicit
Speaker 1: false confessions. As it turns out, these tactics are actually
Speaker 1: rooted in junk science, just like bite mark evidence, blood
Speaker 1: stained pattern analysis, and so many others that we have covered.
Speaker 1: In this show, we want to make it clear that
Speaker 1: false confessions are another link in this chain of the
Speaker 1: junk science epidemic. For some of our more avid listeners,
Speaker 1: this will be something of a refresher for what you've
Speaker 1: already heard about how of wrongful convictions are based on
Speaker 1: false confessions. But in today's episode, we're going to unpack
Speaker 1: the story not of an individual case, but the story
Speaker 1: of how the junk science that's behind false confessions employed
Speaker 1: in the interrogation room. Here's our show. It's a crisp
Speaker 1: fall morning and you're on your way to the first
Speaker 1: class of the day, psychology one on one. Just a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago, you started as a freshman at this
Speaker 1: small college in Massachusetts, and so far psych is your
Speaker 1: favorite class. You walk into your classroom and start taking
Speaker 1: off your jacket while your teacher makes some announcements. He says,
Speaker 1: the psychology department is conducting an experiment. Participation is completely optional,
Speaker 1: but anyone who decides to participate will receive extra credit.
Speaker 1: You're already doing really well in this class, so the
Speaker 1: extra credit doesn't matter to you that much. But you're
Speaker 1: curious to see what a psychological experiment will be like,
Speaker 1: so you sign up. The next week, you show up
Speaker 1: to the room where the experiment will be conducted. When
Speaker 1: you get there, there's already another student waiting outside who
Speaker 1: says she's also here for the experiment. It's not long
Speaker 1: before a professor comes out into the hall to greet you,
Speaker 1: and he's well, very professor looking. He wears a tweed
Speaker 1: jacket and his hair is slightly gray. The professor tells
Speaker 1: you in a very authoritative tone, to sit in front
Speaker 1: of the computer. He then motions for the other student
Speaker 1: to sit in the chair next to you. On the
Speaker 1: table in front of her, there's a piece of paper
Speaker 1: with letters printed on it. Then the professor takes his
Speaker 1: seat across from you both. He says, welcome, thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us today. This experiment will test reaction times. One
Speaker 1: student will read from a list of letters well, the
Speaker 1: other will type out the letters that she calls out.
Speaker 1: It's actually a very simple experiment. He pauses for a moment,
Speaker 1: then looks you in the eye. Just one thing before
Speaker 1: we begin, be very careful not to hit the alt key.
Speaker 1: You see, it's right there next to the space bar.
Speaker 1: The computer program we are using today is a little
Speaker 1: bit finicky, and hitting that alt key will cause the
Speaker 1: computerative crash, and if that happens, will lose all of
Speaker 1: our data, and we wouldn't want that to happen. It's
Speaker 1: not quite the experiment you were expecting, but it sounds
Speaker 1: like it will be, I guess kind of fun. You
Speaker 1: sit up straight, fingers hovering over the keyboard. The professor says,
Speaker 1: let's get ready and begin. The student next to you
Speaker 1: starts reading off letters B, A, J, B, T, S K.
Speaker 1: The letters come quickly, but you keep up. You think
Speaker 1: of this as a game, and you want to win.
Speaker 1: Your laser focused on the task in front of you.
Speaker 1: But then the screen suddenly glitches and then it goes black.
Speaker 1: You sit there, frozen, staring at the blank screen. The
Speaker 1: professor running the experiment sees the confused look on your
Speaker 1: face and jumps up from his seat. He looks pissed.
Speaker 1: He walks over to your side of the table, looks
Speaker 1: at the blank screen and says, did you hit the
Speaker 1: alt key? No? I didn't. I don't know why this happened.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you one more time. The professor says,
Speaker 1: did you hit the alt key? I said no, I
Speaker 1: really don't think I did. You're getting flustered, and the
Speaker 1: professor is clearly angry. What a strange reaction. He stands
Speaker 1: over you and picks up the keyboard and click some keys,
Speaker 1: and thing happens. You did hit the alt key. I
Speaker 1: know you did. He turns to the student who was
Speaker 1: reading the letters and asked her if she saw what happened.
Speaker 1: She says, I hate to say it, but I did
Speaker 1: see you hit the alt key. The professor storms over
Speaker 1: to his seat and starts writing furiously on his pad
Speaker 1: of paper. You're confused, and you feel really bad, like
Speaker 1: you've messed up the whole experiment. You didn't mean to.
Speaker 1: You thought it was going well. But if the other
Speaker 1: students said you did it, I mean the computer did crash.
Speaker 1: You must have hit it by accident. The professor rips
Speaker 1: off the top page of his writing pad and pushes
Speaker 1: it towards you. Sine this, he says. You read what
Speaker 1: the professor has scribbled down. It says, I hit the
Speaker 1: alt key and caused the computer program to crash. Data
Speaker 1: was lost. Uh. I really don't think I hit it, professor,
Speaker 1: you say. The professor is now fuming. He practically slams
Speaker 1: the pen down on the table in front of you.
Speaker 1: Sign it. The leader of this experiment will call you
Speaker 1: later today. You think this guy is pretty piste. I'll
Speaker 1: just talk it through the organizer of the experiment. When
Speaker 1: he calls, you, pick up the pen and sign the paper.
Speaker 1: Just then, another student walks into the room. The professor
Speaker 1: says to her, we'll have to reschedule our appointment. As
Speaker 1: he leaves the room to get his appointment book, mumbling
Speaker 1: something angry to himself, the new student in the room
Speaker 1: raises her eyebrows at you. She whispers, Hey, what happened?
Speaker 1: She must have heard all of the yelling. I hit
Speaker 1: a key on the computer that I wasn't supposed to,
Speaker 1: and I guess I crashed the computer, you say. The
Speaker 1: professor comes back, He books a new appointment with the
Speaker 1: girl who walks in. When she leaves, he sits down
Speaker 1: and takes a deep breath and says, it's okay. I
Speaker 1: didn't mean to get so upset. Show me exactly what
Speaker 1: happened when you hit the alt key. You put your
Speaker 1: hands on the keyboard, and you say, well, when I
Speaker 1: was going to hit the A button, I I hit
Speaker 1: the alt key with the side of my hand by accident.
Speaker 1: The professor writes down a note on a pad of paper,
Speaker 1: then looks up. Okay, great, his demeanor totally changed. He
Speaker 1: suddenly common seems to be even cheery. That's the end
Speaker 1: of the experiment. Thank you so much for participating, and
Speaker 1: let me explain everything. He tells you that the experiment
Speaker 1: was really not for testing reaction times, but to study weather.
Speaker 1: Presenting someone with phony evidence and then accusing them can
Speaker 1: lead that person to admit to doing something that they
Speaker 1: did not do. Turns out, everyone else that was in
Speaker 1: that room with you, the student reading out the letters,
Speaker 1: the one that later asked you what happened, they were
Speaker 1: all in on the experiment. The professor tells you that
Speaker 1: you did not in fact hit the old key, but
Speaker 1: you certainly aren't the only person to falsely admit that
Speaker 1: you did. The story you just heard is based on
Speaker 1: an experiment that was conducted by psychology professor Saulcasting at
Speaker 1: Williams College. Now. He did the experiment to better understand
Speaker 1: why people confess the crimes they did not commit. You
Speaker 1: might be thinking, well, admitting to hitting an alt key
Speaker 1: sounds like a sort of low stake scenario. It's nothing
Speaker 1: like admitting to a rape or a murder, and that's
Speaker 1: precisely the point. In the low state scenario of Casson's experiment.
Speaker 1: It seems like there would be less of a reason
Speaker 1: to lie. So the experiment actually underscores how a combination
Speaker 1: of applying pressure and false and culplatory evidence can cause
Speaker 1: someone to doubt themselves to the point of admitting to
Speaker 1: something they did not do, even in a low stress situation.
Speaker 1: So it logically follows that when the stakes are as
Speaker 1: high as being accused of something like rape or murder,
Speaker 1: the stress and vulnerability increases, as does the likelihood that
Speaker 1: someone will falsely confess. Often when I tell people about
Speaker 1: course confessions, they say, I would never confess to something
Speaker 1: I didn't do. But if you were able to relate
Speaker 1: to the student in this experiment. If you could just
Speaker 1: imagine yourself second guessing your own actions in that scenario,
Speaker 1: then it's likely that you too are susceptible to the
Speaker 1: tactics that are often employed by law enforcement to obtain
Speaker 1: a confession, regardless of whether you are innocent or guilty.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Duben's civil rights and criminal defense attorney and
Speaker 1: innocence ambassador to the Innocence Project in New York. Today,
Speaker 1: on Wrongful Conviction Junk Science, we examine the psychology behind
Speaker 1: commerce confessions. Interrogation techniques that detectives use when questioning a
Speaker 1: suspect are in fact very efficient and extremely effective. They
Speaker 1: routinely result in getting people to confess the committing crimes,
Speaker 1: and that presents a really unique dilemma for detectives investigating
Speaker 1: those crimes. They know that once they get someone in
Speaker 1: that windowless room of a police precinct, they will oftentimes
Speaker 1: be able to get them to confess, which means those
Speaker 1: detectives better have real evidence, not merely a gut feeling
Speaker 1: or a hunch, real proof tying a suspect to a
Speaker 1: crime before subjecting them to the crucible of an interrogation
Speaker 1: because while this process is great at getting guilty people
Speaker 1: to confess to crimes they committed, it is also great
Speaker 1: for getting innocent people to confess the crimes they did
Speaker 1: not commit. When three dozen former Brooklyn Navy yard workers
Speaker 1: found themselves irreparably poisoned by the asbestos they used in
Speaker 1: the construction of the battleships that won World War Two,
Speaker 1: Perry Whites and Arthur Luxembourg literally putting everything on the
Speaker 1: line to successfully represent them. Since then, they have championed
Speaker 1: the rights of over fifty thousand regular Americans injured through
Speaker 1: the negligence and malfeasance of mainly large corporations. Their ability
Speaker 1: to level the playing field against seemingly insurmountable odds has
Speaker 1: led them to litigate against opponents as diverse as Big
Speaker 1: Pharma all the way to those responsible for rendering the
Speaker 1: water of Flint, Michigan undrinkable. Whites and Luxembourg ticket personally
Speaker 1: when there's a miscarriage of justice anywhere, and therefore they
Speaker 1: feel a sense of responsibility to support Bronto conviction podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can learn more about them by visiting Whites lux
Speaker 1: dot com. That's w e I t Z l u
Speaker 1: X dot Com. Course, confessions have been a part of
Speaker 1: our criminal justice system for a long time. Take, for example,
Speaker 1: the case of Stephen born in eighteen nineteen. Detectives found
Speaker 1: three big bones in Steven's backyard and Vermont. The police
Speaker 1: alleged that the bones belonged to his brother in law,
Speaker 1: who had gone missing and was presumed to have been murdered.
Speaker 1: The police told Stephen, the only way you're going to
Speaker 1: avoid the death penalty is to confess and stand trial,
Speaker 1: and so Stephen confessed. He put his fate in the
Speaker 1: hands of a jury who declared him guilty of murdering
Speaker 1: his brother in law. Stephen was convicted and sentenced to death.
Speaker 1: Luckily for him, before his execution date, his brother in
Speaker 1: law was found alive and well hanging out in New Jersey,
Speaker 1: and those bones they found in Stephen's backyard turns out
Speaker 1: there were animal bones all along. He was lucky to
Speaker 1: escape the gallows. And still, even after so many false confessions,
Speaker 1: just like Stephen Bournes, the confession of a suspect continues
Speaker 1: to be seen as the gold standard and evidence of
Speaker 1: a person's guilt. Jurors can never seem to wrap their
Speaker 1: heads around the fact that someone might confess to a
Speaker 1: crime they didn't commit, and the tactic for obtaining a
Speaker 1: confession from a suspect only got better. In seven a
Speaker 1: detective named John Reid began to de still the methods
Speaker 1: and principles of interrogations into a scientific procedure designed to
Speaker 1: increase the likelihood that a suspect would confess. John Reid
Speaker 1: was a polygraph expert for the Chicago Police when he
Speaker 1: began to develop his nine step process, called the Read technique.
Speaker 1: He claimed that his technique could diagnose truth and deception.
Speaker 1: The Red technique spread throughout the country and is still
Speaker 1: popular today. According to the Reading Associate's website, over half
Speaker 1: a million law enforcement and security officers have attended their
Speaker 1: training programs. And while John Reid's technique indeed increase the
Speaker 1: likelihood of securing a confession from crime suspects, not much
Speaker 1: had been done to understand whether these tactics produced confessions
Speaker 1: that were actually accurate and truthful. That is until Saul
Speaker 1: Casson began conducting his computer crash experiments at Williams College.
Speaker 1: Dr Casson's experiment tested for some of the variables that
Speaker 1: are often used during the Red technique. The first variable
Speaker 1: is vulnerability. Casson made his test subjects feel vulnerable by
Speaker 1: putting them in the mildly stressful situation of having them
Speaker 1: type letters at a rapid pace. Another variable was false
Speaker 1: incriminating evidence. When students in the experiment were told that
Speaker 1: someone saw them hit the alt key, they were much
Speaker 1: more likely to sign a confession. In fact, of the
Speaker 1: students who were asked to type at a fast pace
Speaker 1: and then we're told that someone saw them hit the
Speaker 1: alt key, a hundred percent of them confess. Although none
Speaker 1: of them actually hit the alt key, they all admitted
Speaker 1: to the crime when presented with false incriminating evidence. On
Speaker 1: top of that, six of students who were presented with
Speaker 1: false incriminating evidence actually believed in their own guilt. This
Speaker 1: was measured by how many of the students said I
Speaker 1: hit the key when that third student, remember the one
Speaker 1: that enters the room for their quote unquote appointment, seemingly
Speaker 1: more neutral party comes into the room and says, hey,
Speaker 1: what happened. Finally, thirty five percent of the students actually
Speaker 1: internalized their guilt to such a degree that they made
Speaker 1: up details about it by saying, for example, oh, I
Speaker 1: hit the alt key with the side of my hand.
Speaker 1: The fact is that none of these students had hit
Speaker 1: the alt key, yet under these controlled conditions, they confessed
Speaker 1: to something they didn't do. Inducing vulnerability and presenting false,
Speaker 1: incriminating evidence are the cornerstones of the read technique. What
Speaker 1: Dr Casson's experiment shows is that interrogation techniques like John
Speaker 1: Reid's are a recipe for causing innocent people to admit
Speaker 1: to things that they did not do. You can flip
Speaker 1: a coin and be as accurate determining whether somebody is
Speaker 1: telling the truth or not as a trained police officer,
Speaker 1: and trained police officers are no more effective at that
Speaker 1: than your average person. And in fact, there have been
Speaker 1: numerous psychological studies and nothing correlates to being able to
Speaker 1: do that to any degree of scientific validity. And that's
Speaker 1: really where the junk science of this technique comes in,
Speaker 1: because the reality is you can't tell whether or not
Speaker 1: somebody is lying by verbal and nonverbal behavior. So with
Speaker 1: us today we have the amazing David Rudolph. David is
Speaker 1: a phenomenal, phenomenal criminal defense attorneys, civil rights attorney, criminal
Speaker 1: justice reform avage, and the list goes on and on.
Speaker 1: He is a friend of mine, a personal hero of mine,
Speaker 1: and many of you have probably seen him in the
Speaker 1: Netflix series The Staircase, which followed the trials of his
Speaker 1: client Michael Peterson, who was accused of murdering his wife. Now,
Speaker 1: David has worked on countless wrongful conviction cases and cases
Speaker 1: in which people have found themselves sitting in an interrogation
Speaker 1: room getting broken down by detectives. And he is someone
Speaker 1: who has studied course confessions and really dug into how
Speaker 1: the psychological techniques used by these interrogators can result in
Speaker 1: a wrongful conviction. So, David, I want to dive right
Speaker 1: into the read technique. What is it and how is
Speaker 1: it different than say, uh, standard police interview When you're
Speaker 1: trying to elicit information, what you're really doing is interviewing,
Speaker 1: not interrogating. You're asking open ended questions, You're you're following
Speaker 1: up on things, not for the purpose of confronting the person,
Speaker 1: but rather for the purpose of finding out what actually happened.
Speaker 1: And that's not designed to get a confession. The re
Speaker 1: technique is simply a protocol for how to interrogate someone.
Speaker 1: And this is important who you already believe is guilty. Uh,
Speaker 1: you don't use the re technique in order to elicit information.
Speaker 1: You only use the re technique in order to secure
Speaker 1: admissions and then ultimately a confession. Okay, so let's talk
Speaker 1: about that for a second, because you said something interesting,
Speaker 1: and that is that the interrogator will actually use this
Speaker 1: technique on the person they believe to be the guilty suspect.
Speaker 1: They might not have any physical evidence to prove that,
Speaker 1: but they have a hunch, or there's zeroing in on
Speaker 1: someone because of tunnel vision, whatever the case, maybe they
Speaker 1: think this is their guy, um, and they bring that
Speaker 1: person in for questioning. And they're not simply trying to
Speaker 1: find out the truth, right, They're sole objective when they
Speaker 1: employed this technique is to get a confession. Absolutely, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's intuition plus arrogance. You know that. That's my
Speaker 1: recipe for how this all starts. You have a police
Speaker 1: officer who's done a hundred five hundred thousand investigations and
Speaker 1: they know who they like for the crime. You know,
Speaker 1: if it's a wife who's dead, they like the husband immediately.
Speaker 1: If the husband has a mistress, well that that's the clincher.
Speaker 1: So there's all these sort of preconceptions and then the
Speaker 1: arrogance is that they know because they've done it so
Speaker 1: many times. And you know, part of what we ought
Speaker 1: to recognize here is that when you're doing that, you're
Speaker 1: obviously already thinking the person is guilty, and so confirmation
Speaker 1: bias is going to start leaking in. And this is
Speaker 1: especially true where and it's ironic, where there's not much
Speaker 1: other evidence. Picture this situation. So there's a vicious crime,
Speaker 1: just an awful uproar in the community, and this police
Speaker 1: officer believes, legitimately believes that this other person is the purpose,
Speaker 1: but there's no evidence. The pressure to get that person
Speaker 1: to confess becomes enormous because if you don't, then there's
Speaker 1: no case. And so ironically enough, there's much more pressure
Speaker 1: to get a false confession when there's no evidence. So
Speaker 1: that means there's much more pressure to get a false
Speaker 1: confession when the person is innocent. So David walk us
Speaker 1: through this technique. Let's say you have a husband suspected
Speaker 1: of killing his wife. Police ask him to come down
Speaker 1: to the station. What's the first thing that happens. What
Speaker 1: you do in the re technique is first you isolate
Speaker 1: the person. You put the person in an uncomfortable position.
Speaker 1: You shut them off from any support system, and you
Speaker 1: make them anxious so that they're more susceptible to the
Speaker 1: other techniques that are going to follow. And so the
Speaker 1: person is feeling vulnerable. And when you feel vulnerable, you're
Speaker 1: much more likely to give in too pressure, particularly if
Speaker 1: you're all alone in a strange place, surrounded by imposing
Speaker 1: authority figures who have guns. I don't think there's very
Speaker 1: many people who wouldn't feel a bit of panic at
Speaker 1: that situation, just psychological panic. So it's a whole notion
Speaker 1: of creating a situation where you are uncomfortable that you
Speaker 1: want to get out of, and then creating a situation
Speaker 1: where the only way out is to say what those
Speaker 1: bullies want you to say. You know, I'm imagining the
Speaker 1: guy in our hypothetical who is probably just overcome with
Speaker 1: grief from having just lost his wife, and then the
Speaker 1: last place he wants to be is where he ends up,
Speaker 1: you know, in some dank room at a police station,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, got no windows, it's always got
Speaker 1: those uncomfortable chairs, and they leave them to cool as heels, right,
Speaker 1: and he sits there by himself for a while and
Speaker 1: then the detectives come in and the questions start and
Speaker 1: tell our our listeners what techniques the interrogators used to
Speaker 1: sort of capitalize on his vulnerability. What you do during
Speaker 1: the interview phase is you ask a series of questions,
Speaker 1: some of which are called behavior provoking questions, and there
Speaker 1: are questions that are designed, at least in the officer's mind,
Speaker 1: to provoke responses that they can then use to determine
Speaker 1: whether the person is telling the truth or not. So,
Speaker 1: you know, it might be questions like why would somebody
Speaker 1: be saying that you were at the crime scene if
Speaker 1: you really weren't, Or what do you think should happen
Speaker 1: to the person who did this? You know, when you
Speaker 1: ask a husband, why would your own friends be saying
Speaker 1: that they think that you might have done this? And
Speaker 1: you're thinking to yourself, well, you know, maybe some of
Speaker 1: my friends saw that time when you know, my wife
Speaker 1: and I got into an argument over the car or
Speaker 1: whatever it is. And so you're just trying to come
Speaker 1: up with some explanation because the officers asking you for one,
Speaker 1: and you you minimize it because it wasn't a big deal,
Speaker 1: and so you talk about it and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden that then becomes to take off point. Well,
Speaker 1: that wasn't the only time that you had an argument, wasn't. No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't the only time we had an argument. Well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of the other times you had arguments.
Speaker 1: And the idea is that if you ask enough of
Speaker 1: these behavior inducing questions, you as a trained police officer
Speaker 1: looking at verbal and nonverbal cues, you know, hesitation, how
Speaker 1: their eyes are looking, that you can tell if they're
Speaker 1: lying or not. A lot of us have this notion
Speaker 1: that investigators have this heightened ability to tell if someone
Speaker 1: is lying or not, and that's just not the case.
Speaker 1: We know that there's no science to back up that
Speaker 1: an officer can tell if you are or not telling
Speaker 1: the truth. But that doesn't help the person sitting in
Speaker 1: that interrogation chair. Any answer you give is subject to confirmation, bias,
Speaker 1: and interpretation. And that's why this whole thing is junk science.
Speaker 1: There's no there's no logic to it, there's no there's
Speaker 1: no basis for it. It's simply, let me ask a
Speaker 1: couple of hard questions and see if the person is
Speaker 1: getting nervous or more nervous. Okay, so now the cop
Speaker 1: is certain, at least in in his or her mind,
Speaker 1: that the person in front of them committed the crime,
Speaker 1: even though there's no proof to back that hunch up.
Speaker 1: So what's the next step now? The goal is to
Speaker 1: get the confession, especially as I said earlier, when there's
Speaker 1: no other evidence. So the tone of the whole conversation changes.
Speaker 1: It now turns sharp, and all of a sudden, the
Speaker 1: officer says, listen, you know we've been talking for a while,
Speaker 1: and I just have to tell you. We know you're guilty.
Speaker 1: The person says, well, no, I'm not, and and the
Speaker 1: officer says, well, don't don't bother lyne to me about it.
Speaker 1: So the person says, no, I didn't do it. Well,
Speaker 1: then can you explain why your d n A is
Speaker 1: on the knife? The officer says, you know, maybe it
Speaker 1: was so horrible that you've blotted out of your memory.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe that's why you don't remember it. But
Speaker 1: but how do you explain that that DNA is on
Speaker 1: that knife? And there is no DNA on the knife?
Speaker 1: But the officer is now a lying to the person
Speaker 1: in order to induce the person to be sort of
Speaker 1: incredulous about his own guilt or innocence. Uh, And and
Speaker 1: so there are cases where people actually become convinced people
Speaker 1: are innocent, become convinced that, yeah, maybe I actually did this,
Speaker 1: or yeah I did this, and the person knows they didn't.
Speaker 1: But yet if they're told that they did, at some
Speaker 1: point they become convinced that they must have done it.
Speaker 1: Why else would this person be saying that? And I
Speaker 1: think the most important point here is that a lot
Speaker 1: of people think that the police can't lie to them,
Speaker 1: and and in fact, in most countries they can't. In
Speaker 1: the Great Britain, the cops cannot lie to you about
Speaker 1: the evidence. But our Supreme Court has said, oh no,
Speaker 1: it's fine for you to lie to a suspect about
Speaker 1: the evidence, because after all, he or she knows if
Speaker 1: he's innocent, that it can't be true. Well, that ignores
Speaker 1: the psychology of it. The truth of the matter is
Speaker 1: that cops are allowed to lie during interrogations everywhere in
Speaker 1: the United States, because the United States Supreme Court has
Speaker 1: said that's not a violation of due process, and it's outrageous.
Speaker 1: Why should they be able to lie to you about
Speaker 1: something as serious as a crime and the evidence of
Speaker 1: a crime. I'm not aware of any other English speaking
Speaker 1: country where that's okay. It's not okay in Canada, it's
Speaker 1: not okay in Great Britain, it's not okay in Australia
Speaker 1: or New Zealand. We are the only country I'm aware
Speaker 1: of where that's permissible. And that's a big, big problem
Speaker 1: that needs to be corrected. I mean, look, I try
Speaker 1: to put myself in these people's shoes all the time,
Speaker 1: and I think about what it would be like if
Speaker 1: an officer said to me that my friend claimed that
Speaker 1: I murdered someone when I didn't, and that there's DNA
Speaker 1: evidence against me. I mean, I would feel just totally screwed,
Speaker 1: you know, scared alone. And you know, after these interrogators
Speaker 1: confront the suspect, they say we have this evidence. They
Speaker 1: might even tell them that they have witnesses that have
Speaker 1: identified them at the scene. They give all of this false,
Speaker 1: incriminating evidence. This is um constant psychological pressure being applied
Speaker 1: to a suspect, and it is increasing their vulnerability. Okay,
Speaker 1: the suspect gets more and more scared, more upset, and
Speaker 1: the detective starts talking about the series consequences, and the
Speaker 1: suspect is starting to get convinced that, you know, they're
Speaker 1: going to go to prison for something they didn't do,
Speaker 1: so tell us what what typically happens next. What happens
Speaker 1: is the police go into minimization, moral justifications excuses for
Speaker 1: the potential behavior. So they say things like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we can understand how this might have happened. I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you may have been provoked, maybe this was
Speaker 1: in self defense. From from the minimization, they go to
Speaker 1: two other techniques, and I'll call them active encouragement and
Speaker 1: alternative theories. So active encouragement is they're trying to sort
Speaker 1: of say, you know, we're just trying to help you here.
Speaker 1: It's gonna look a lot better for you if you
Speaker 1: explain that this was just because your uncle made you
Speaker 1: do it. Then if the d A and the jury
Speaker 1: thinks you did discuss, you're a monster. You're telling them
Speaker 1: that he's gonna do. You're gonna be charged based on
Speaker 1: this evidence, and now you're providing this lifeline if you will.
Speaker 1: I've had situations where people have been told, if you
Speaker 1: don't confess, you're going to get life. If you do confess,
Speaker 1: will treat you as a juvenile offender. So what's happening
Speaker 1: here is that the person is told you don't really
Speaker 1: have any any good or attractive options. Right. They're often told,
Speaker 1: as you said, you're going to get life in prison
Speaker 1: or even the death sentence if you don't confess. And
Speaker 1: the interrogators tell them that confessing will at least get
Speaker 1: them the better of two horrible options. Right, You'll get
Speaker 1: life instead of the death penalty. It doesn't really leave
Speaker 1: the innocent person with much of a choice, does it.
Speaker 1: To top it all off, Josh, if you're innocent, and
Speaker 1: all you wanna do is get out of that room,
Speaker 1: you know, you've now been in there for two hours,
Speaker 1: three hours, four hours, they haven't accepted any of your denials,
Speaker 1: and now you just wanted to stop. And what you
Speaker 1: think to yourself if you're innocent, is if I just
Speaker 1: agree with what they're saying, If I just agree with
Speaker 1: what they're saying, this is gonna stop. And when I
Speaker 1: get out of here, you know, I can explain why
Speaker 1: this happened, and I and everyone's gonna understand that I'm
Speaker 1: innocent because that's what the evidence is going to show. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, it just becomes the path of least resistance.
Speaker 1: The other piece you need to understand is it's not
Speaker 1: just a person saying I'm guilty, because that's just the
Speaker 1: first step, right, because a jury has got to be
Speaker 1: able to believe it. The confession has to sound convincing.
Speaker 1: You know. If all it was was the person said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I did it, I don't think a jury is going
Speaker 1: to give that a whole lot of weight. But when
Speaker 1: the person's confession includes details that only the perpetrator could know, well,
Speaker 1: the perpetrator and the police. Once it has those details,
Speaker 1: it becomes persuasive evidence. It's not just why would an
Speaker 1: innocent person confess? It's how would an innocent person know
Speaker 1: these things? And that's where the power comes in, you know.
Speaker 1: It's the details about where the attack occurred, how it occurred,
Speaker 1: what weapon was used, how long it took, what time
Speaker 1: it occurred. All of these are fed into the person,
Speaker 1: you know, with leading questions. So do you remember it
Speaker 1: was about nine pm when you finally entered the house,
Speaker 1: you know, and when you went into the house, Uh,
Speaker 1: do you remember that the first place you went was
Speaker 1: into the kitchen and and that's where you found the knife. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's all these leading questions that if you're innocent
Speaker 1: and you're trying to get out of there. You're accepting
Speaker 1: you don't even have to say it, You just say
Speaker 1: yeah or m hmm, and those then get incorporated into
Speaker 1: a written statement. Uh. And you've already gone so far
Speaker 1: as to say all this, so you figure what the
Speaker 1: hell out sign it, and then your life is over.
Speaker 1: So David, what can we do here? Um, the system
Speaker 1: keeps on churning out false confessions? How do we get
Speaker 1: this to stop? Stop using this particular technique. It's an
Speaker 1: enormously effective technique to get guilty people to confess. We
Speaker 1: can all agree on that. The problem is, it's also
Speaker 1: an enormously effective technique to get innocent people to confess.
Speaker 1: I think certain law enforcement officials in this country might
Speaker 1: resist that because they'll think, well, if we don't use this,
Speaker 1: then we are losing this critical tool for getting suspects
Speaker 1: to confess. And if we don't have this, then we're
Speaker 1: not going to be able to convict someone who committed
Speaker 1: a crime. But that's not really the case, right because
Speaker 1: there are other more reliable techniques out there. So tell
Speaker 1: us about some other ways that detectives can obtain a
Speaker 1: confession that doesn't employ or doesn't include employing the read technique.
Speaker 1: In Great Britain, they use a completely different method and
Speaker 1: it's called the peace method p E A c E.
Speaker 1: And you don't try to force the conversation in any
Speaker 1: particular way. You're simply conducting a really thorough interrogation or
Speaker 1: interview that has been planned out in advance. You know
Speaker 1: exactly what you're gonna ask, you know what you want
Speaker 1: to talk about, you know what you want to ask
Speaker 1: questions about, you know what evidence there is, and so
Speaker 1: you can judge the validity of what the person is
Speaker 1: saying by the actual evidence, not by false evidence. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's a completely different technique, and it is not
Speaker 1: something that results in the kinds of false confessions that
Speaker 1: you see in the United States. If there's other evidence, uh,
Speaker 1: then you don't necessarily need the confession. You All you
Speaker 1: may need are some inconsistencies in the person's statement to
Speaker 1: sort of nail the case down. And if there is
Speaker 1: no other evidence, why would you try to get a
Speaker 1: confession where the confession may very well not be accurate. Now,
Speaker 1: another part of the problem here that we touched on
Speaker 1: a bit is not just the false confession, but also
Speaker 1: how convincing it ends up being when it is presented
Speaker 1: to a jury. Is there any insight into what other
Speaker 1: countries do in that regard? You know, in the United States,
Speaker 1: a jury has to come back with either guilty or
Speaker 1: not guilty, and not guilty sort of implies innocence. Uh.
Speaker 1: In Scotland, UH, there's a verdict called not proven uh.
Speaker 1: And I think the verdicts in in every country should
Speaker 1: be either proven or not proven, because if that was
Speaker 1: the verdict, the presumption of innocence becomes less um less
Speaker 1: important in a sense, because the focuses on did the
Speaker 1: state prove its case? Right, Because a journey might be thinking, shit,
Speaker 1: if I say not guilty, what I'm really saying is
Speaker 1: that the person absolutely didn't do it. And what I
Speaker 1: really want to say is that who knows the person
Speaker 1: may have done it, but the prosecution just didn't prove
Speaker 1: their case. So if you include this other sort of
Speaker 1: line item or this notion that they have in Scotland
Speaker 1: not proven on the verdict form, it would actually be
Speaker 1: a way to protect the presumption of innocence exactly. I
Speaker 1: think that that that would go a long way towards
Speaker 1: focusing juror's attention on the actual question. These seem to
Speaker 1: be really big changes that are going to take a
Speaker 1: lot of time and effort to accomplish. We like to
Speaker 1: be able to provide our listeners with some insight into
Speaker 1: what they can be doing to help change the system.
Speaker 1: So what would you tell our listeners they can be
Speaker 1: doing to help effectuate change, especially when it comes to
Speaker 1: wrongful um confessions or coerce confessions. Please go sit on juries,
Speaker 1: talk to talk to your fellow jurors, and and talk
Speaker 1: to your friends and neighbors and co workers about these issues.
Speaker 1: When you hear somebody's confess uh to a crime, go
Speaker 1: and talk with other people and explain that it may
Speaker 1: not be what it seems, because that's how this changes.
Speaker 1: It changes from the bottom up, not from the top down.
Speaker 1: What I want for all of you to take away
Speaker 1: from today's episode is some practical advice out You might
Speaker 1: be thinking, I'll never be in this situation. This would
Speaker 1: never happen to me. I'm sure that most people that
Speaker 1: have ended up being interrogated by the police thought the
Speaker 1: exact same thing. It's not gonna happen to me until
Speaker 1: it does. Unfortunately, your innocence is not a safeguard against
Speaker 1: being incarcerated. As we discussed in this episode, innocent people
Speaker 1: are often more likely to falsely confess than the actual
Speaker 1: perpetrator of a crime for a few reasons. First, they
Speaker 1: think that because they're innocent, they don't need a lawyer.
Speaker 1: They'll just go in there, speak to the cops, tell
Speaker 1: them the truth, and that will be that. The problem
Speaker 1: is that interrogators who are following the red technique don't
Speaker 1: take the words you say at face value. Instead, they
Speaker 1: look behind the words and look for reasons why those
Speaker 1: words support your guilt. Remember, most of the time, they
Speaker 1: have decided that you were probably involved before you even
Speaker 1: get in that room. That is why you were being
Speaker 1: interrogated in the first place. Another reason why many innocent
Speaker 1: people confess is because none of us are immune from
Speaker 1: the effects of the psychological warfare administered under conditions that
Speaker 1: are simply the perfect storm for vulnerability. And believe me,
Speaker 1: it happens to the toughest among us I have seen it.
Speaker 1: It is simply too difficult to withstand that type of
Speaker 1: pressure until the day comes when we are able to
Speaker 1: enact the type of reform that David talked about, things
Speaker 1: like preventing law enforcement from lying to suspects about the
Speaker 1: existence of evidence tying them to the crime. The reality
Speaker 1: is that we all need to protect ourselves. Preventing false
Speaker 1: confessions starts with an understanding of the tactics investigators use.
Speaker 1: You are now armed with that knowledge, and it should
Speaker 1: always end with if God forbid you ever find yourself
Speaker 1: being interrogated, is my name is Christopher Ochoa, John Restivo,
Speaker 1: Sante Triple Clementia Geary, and I want a lawyer, and
Speaker 1: you don't answer a single question after that. Next week
Speaker 1: we'll explore the junk signs of roadside drug testing with
Speaker 1: Greg glaud. Wrongful Conviction Junk Science is a production of
Speaker 1: Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 1: Thanks to our executive producer Jason Flom and the team,
Speaker 1: it's Signal Company number One executive producer Kevin Wardis and
Speaker 1: senior producers Kara Cornhaber and Brit Spangler. Our music was
Speaker 1: composed by j Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram
Speaker 1: at dubin Dot. Josh followed the Wrongful Conviction podcast on
Speaker 1: Facebook and on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Twitter
Speaker 1: at wrong Conviction