Speaker 1: Hi everyone. In our feed you've probably heard the podcast
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions, hosted by Laura and I Wrider
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 bitemark evidence, bloodstain pattern analysis,
Speaker 1: and so many others that we have covered in this show,
Speaker 1: we want to make it clear that false confessions are
Speaker 1: another link in this chain of the junk science epidemic.
Speaker 1: For some of our more avid listeners, this will be
Speaker 1: something of a refresher for what you've already heard about
Speaker 1: how twenty five percent 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 is
Speaker 1: employed in the interrogation room. Here's our show. It's a
Speaker 1: crisp fall morning and you're on your way to the
Speaker 1: first class of the day, psychology one on one. Just
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago, you started as a freshman at
Speaker 1: this small college in Massachusetts, and so far, psych is
Speaker 1: your favorite class. You walk into your classroom and start
Speaker 1: taking off your jacket while your teacher makes some announcements.
Speaker 1: He says, the psychology department is conducting an experiment. Participation
Speaker 1: is completely optional, but anyone who decides to participate will
Speaker 1: receive extra credit. You're already doing really well in this class,
Speaker 1: so the extra credit doesn't matter to you that much.
Speaker 1: But you're curious to see what a psychological experiment will
Speaker 1: be like, so you sign up. The next week, you
Speaker 1: show up to the room where the experiment will be conducted.
Speaker 1: When you get there, there's already another student waiting outside
Speaker 1: who says she's also here for the experiment. It's not
Speaker 1: long before a professor comes out into the hall to
Speaker 1: greet you, and he's well, very professor looking. He wears
Speaker 1: a tweed jacket and his hair slightly gray. The professor
Speaker 1: tells you in a very authoritative tone, to sit in
Speaker 1: front of the computer. He then motions for the other
Speaker 1: student to sit in the chair next to you. On
Speaker 1: the table in front of her, there's a piece of
Speaker 1: paper with letters printed on it. Then the professor takes
Speaker 1: his seat across from you. Both. He says welcome, Thanks,
Speaker 1: for joining us today. This experiment will test reaction times.
Speaker 1: One student will read from a list of letters well
Speaker 1: the 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: computer to crash. And if that happens, we'll lose all
Speaker 1: of our data, and we wouldn't want that to happen.
Speaker 1: It's not quite the experiment you were expecting, but it
Speaker 1: sounds like it'll 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: You're 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?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: I didn't. I don't know why this happened. I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask you one more time. The professor says, did
Speaker 1: you hit the alt key? I said no, I really
Speaker 1: don't think I did. You're getting flustered, and the professor
Speaker 1: is clearly angry. What a strange reaction. He stands over
Speaker 1: you and picks up the keyboard and clicks some keys
Speaker 1: and nothing happens. You did hit the alt key. I
Speaker 1: know you did. He turns to the student who is
Speaker 1: reading the letters and asked her if she saw what happened.
Speaker 1: She says, hate to say it, but I did see
Speaker 1: you hit the alt key. The professor storms over to
Speaker 1: his seat and starts writing furiously on his pad of paper.
Speaker 1: You're confused, and you feel really bad like you've messed
Speaker 1: up the whole experiment. You didn't mean to. You thought
Speaker 1: it was going well. But if the other student said
Speaker 1: you did it, I mean the computer did crash. You
Speaker 1: must have hit it by accident. The professor rips off
Speaker 1: the top page of his writing pad and pushes it
Speaker 1: toward you. Sign this, he says. You read what the
Speaker 1: professor has scribbled down. It says, I hit the alt
Speaker 1: key and cause the computer program to crash. Data was lost.
Speaker 1: I really don't think I hit it, professor, you say.
Speaker 1: The professor is now fuming. He practically slams the pen
Speaker 1: down on the table in front of you. Sign it.
Speaker 1: The leader of this experiment will call you later today.
Speaker 1: You think this guy's pretty pissed. I'll just talk it
Speaker 1: through the organizer of the experiment. When he calls, you,
Speaker 1: pick up the pen and sign the paper. Just then,
Speaker 1: another student walks into the room. The professor says to her,
Speaker 1: we'll have to reschedule our appointment. As he leaves the
Speaker 1: room to get his appointment book, mumbling something angry to himself,
Speaker 1: the new student in the room raises her eyebrows at you.
Speaker 1: She whispers, Hey, what happened? She must have heard all
Speaker 1: of the yelling. I hit a key on the computer
Speaker 1: that I wasn't supposed to, and I guess I crashed
Speaker 1: the computer, you say. The professor comes back, he books
Speaker 1: a new appointment with the girl who walks in. When
Speaker 1: she leaves, he sits down and takes a deep breath
Speaker 1: and says, it's okay, I didn't mean to get so upset.
Speaker 1: Show me exactly what happened when you hit the alt key.
Speaker 1: You put your hands on the keyboard, and you say, well,
Speaker 1: when I was going to hit the A button, I
Speaker 1: hit the alt key with the side of my hand
Speaker 1: by accident. The professor writes down a note on a
Speaker 1: pad of paper, then looks up. Okay, great, His demeanor
Speaker 1: totally changed. He suddenly calm and seems to be even cheery.
Speaker 1: That's the end of the experiment. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for participating, and let me explain everything. He tells you
Speaker 1: that the experiment was really not for testing reaction times,
Speaker 1: but to study whether presenting someone with phony evidence and
Speaker 1: then accusing them can lead that person to admit to
Speaker 1: doing something that they did not do. Turns out, everyone
Speaker 1: else that was in that room with you, the student
Speaker 1: reading out the letters, the one that later asked you
Speaker 1: what happened, they were all in on the experiment. The
Speaker 1: professor tells you that you did not, in fact hit
Speaker 1: the ald key, but you certainly aren't the only person
Speaker 1: to falsely admit that you did. The story you just
Speaker 1: heard is based on an experiment that was conducted by
Speaker 1: psychology professor Saulcasten at Williams College in nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 1: Now he did the experiment to better understand why people
Speaker 1: confess to crimes they did not commit. You might be thinking, well,
Speaker 1: admitting to hitting an ald key sounds like a sort
Speaker 1: of low stake scenario. It's nothing like admitting to a
Speaker 1: rape or a murder, and that's precisely the point. In
Speaker 1: the state scenario of Casson's experiment. It seems like there
Speaker 1: would be less of a reason to lie. So the
Speaker 1: experiment actually underscores how a combination of applying pressure and
Speaker 1: false inculpatory evidence can cause someone to doubt themselves to
Speaker 1: the point of admitting to something they did not do,
Speaker 1: even in a low stress situation. So it logically follows
Speaker 1: that when the stakes are as high as being accused
Speaker 1: of something like rape or murder, the stress and vulnerability increases,
Speaker 1: as does the likelihood that someone will falsely confess. Often
Speaker 1: when I tell people about Chorus confessions, they say I
Speaker 1: would never confess to something I didn't do. But if
Speaker 1: you were able to relate to the student in this experiment,
Speaker 1: if you could just imagine yourself second guessing your own
Speaker 1: actions in that scenario, then it's likely that you too
Speaker 1: are susceptible to the tactics that are often employed by
Speaker 1: law enforcement to obtain a confession, regardless of whether you
Speaker 1: are innocent or guilty. I'm Josh Dubens, civil rights and
Speaker 1: criminal defense attorney, an innocent ambassador to the Innocence Project
Speaker 1: in New York. Today, on Wrongful Conviction Junk Science, we
Speaker 1: examine the psychology behind coerce confessions. Interrogation techniques that detectives
Speaker 1: use when questioning a suspect are in fact, very efficient
Speaker 1: and extremely effective. They routinely result in getting people to
Speaker 1: confess to committing crimes, and that presents a really unique
Speaker 1: dilemma for detectives investigating those crimes. They know that once
Speaker 1: they get someone in that windowless room of a police precinct,
Speaker 1: they will oftentimes be able to get them to confess,
Speaker 1: which means those detectives better have real evidence, not merely
Speaker 1: a gut feeling or a hunch, real proof tying a
Speaker 1: suspect to a crime before subjecting them to the crucible
Speaker 1: of an interrogation, because while this process is great at
Speaker 1: getting guilty people to confess the crimes they committed, it
Speaker 1: is also great for getting innocent people to confess the
Speaker 1: crimes they did not commit.
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Speaker 1: Course, confessions have been a part of our criminal justice
Speaker 1: system for a long time. Take, for example, the case
Speaker 1: of Stephen Born in eighteen nineteen, detectives found three big
Speaker 1: bones in Stephen's backyard in Vermont. The police alleged that
Speaker 1: the bones belonged to his brother in law, who had
Speaker 1: gone missing and was presumed to have been murdered. The
Speaker 1: police told Stephen, the only way you're going to avoid
Speaker 1: the death penalty is to confess and stand trial, and
Speaker 1: so Stephen confessed. He put his fate in the hands
Speaker 1: of a jury who declared him guilty of murdering his
Speaker 1: 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: they 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 Bourne's, 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 nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 1: a detective named John Reid began to 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 Reed technique spread throughout the country and is still
Speaker 1: popular today. According to the Red and Associate's website, over
Speaker 1: half a million law enforcement and security officers have attended
Speaker 1: their training programs. And while John Reid's technique indeed increased
Speaker 1: the likelihood of securing a confession from crime suspects, not
Speaker 1: much had been done to understand whether these tactics produced
Speaker 1: confessions that were actually accurate and truthful. That is until
Speaker 1: Saul Cassen began conducting his computer crash experiments at Williams College.
Speaker 1: Doctor 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. Cassen 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 were told that someone saw them hit the
Speaker 1: alt key, one hundred percent of them confessed. 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, sixty five percent of student udens who
Speaker 1: were presented with false incriminating evidence actually believed in their
Speaker 1: own guilt. This was measured by how many of the
Speaker 1: students said, I hit the key When that third student,
Speaker 1: remember the one that enters the room for their quote
Speaker 1: unquote appointment, A seemingly more neutral party comes into the
Speaker 1: room and says, hey, what happened. Finally, thirty five percent
Speaker 1: of the students actually internalize their guilt to such a
Speaker 1: degree that they made up details about it by saying,
Speaker 1: for example, oh, I hit the alt key with the
Speaker 1: side of my hand. The fact is that none of
Speaker 1: these students had hit the alt key, yet under these
Speaker 1: controlled conditions, they confessed to something they didn't do. Inducing
Speaker 1: vulnerability and presenting false, incriminating evidence are the cornerstones of
Speaker 1: the red technique. What doctor Casson's experiment shows is that
Speaker 1: interrogation techniques like John Reid's are a recipe for causing
Speaker 1: innocent people to admit to things that they did not do.
Speaker 3: You can flip a coin and be as accurate in
Speaker 3: determining whether somebody is telling the truth or not as
Speaker 3: a trained police officer, and trained police officers are no
Speaker 3: more effective at that than your average person. And in fact,
Speaker 3: there have been numerous psychological studies and nothing correlates to
Speaker 3: being able to do that to any degree of scientific validity.
Speaker 3: And that's really where the junk science of this technique
Speaker 3: comes in, because the reality is you can't tell whether
Speaker 3: or not somebody is lying by verbal and nonverbal behavior.
Speaker 1: So with us today we have the amazing David Rudolph.
Speaker 1: David is a phenomenal, phenomenal criminal defense attorney, civil rights attorney,
Speaker 1: criminal justice reform, AVAC. 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 standard police interview.
Speaker 3: When you're trying to elicit information, What you're really doing
Speaker 3: is interviewing, not interrogating. You're asking open ended questions, You're
Speaker 3: following up on things, not for the purpose of confronting
Speaker 3: the person, but rather for the purpose of finding out
Speaker 3: what actually happened, And that's not designed to get a confession.
Speaker 3: The retechnique is simply a protocol for how to interrogate someone.
Speaker 3: And this is important. Who you already believe is guilty.
Speaker 3: You don't use the retechnique in order to elicit information.
Speaker 3: You only use the retechnique in order to secure admissions
Speaker 3: and then ultimately a confession.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's talk about that for a second, because
Speaker 1: you said something interesting, and that is that the interrogator
Speaker 1: will actually use this technique on the person they believe
Speaker 1: to be the guilty suspect. They might not have any
Speaker 1: physical evidence to prove that, but they have a hunch,
Speaker 1: or they're zeroing in on someone because of tunnel vision,
Speaker 1: whatever the case, maybe they think this is their guy,
Speaker 1: and they bring that person in for questioning. And they're
Speaker 1: not simply trying to find out the truth, right, They're
Speaker 1: sole objective when they employ this technique is to get
Speaker 1: a confession.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. It's intuition plus arrogance. You know, that's my recipe
Speaker 3: for how this all starts. You have a police officer
Speaker 3: who's done one hundred five hundred, one thousand investigations and
Speaker 3: they know who they like for the crime. You know,
Speaker 3: if it's a wife who's dead, they like the husband immediately.
Speaker 3: If the husband has a mistress, well that's the clincher.
Speaker 3: So there's all these sort of preconceptions, and then the
Speaker 3: arrogance is that they know because they've done it so
Speaker 3: many times. And you know, part of what we ought
Speaker 3: to recognize here is that when you're doing that, you're
Speaker 3: obviously already thinking the person's guilty, and so confirmation bias
Speaker 3: is going to start leaking in. And this is especially
Speaker 3: true and it's ironic where there's not much other evidence.
Speaker 3: Picture this situation. So there's a vicious crime, just an
Speaker 3: awful uproar in the community, and this police officer believes,
Speaker 3: legitimately believes that this other person is the purp, but
Speaker 3: there's no evidence. The pressure to get that person to
Speaker 3: confess becomes enormous because if you don't, then there's no case.
Speaker 3: And so ironically enough, there's much more pressure to get
Speaker 3: a false confession when there's no evidence. So that means
Speaker 3: there's much more pressure to get a false confession when
Speaker 3: the person is innocent.
Speaker 1: So David walk us through this technique. Let's say you
Speaker 1: have a husband suspected of killing his wife. Police ask
Speaker 1: him to come down to the station. What's the first
Speaker 1: thing that happens.
Speaker 3: What you do in the retechnique is first you isolate
Speaker 3: the person. You put the person in an uncomfortable position,
Speaker 3: you shut them off from any support system, and you
Speaker 3: make them anxious so that they're more susceptible to the
Speaker 3: other techniques that are going to follow. And so the
Speaker 3: person is feeling vulnerable. And when you feel vulnerable, you're
Speaker 3: much more likely to give in to pressure, particularly if
Speaker 3: you're all alone in a strange place, surrounded by imposing
Speaker 3: authority figures who have guns. I don't think there's very
Speaker 3: many people who wouldn't feel a bit of panic at
Speaker 3: that situation, just psychological panic. So it's a whole notion
Speaker 3: of creating a situation where you are uncomfortable that you
Speaker 3: want to get out of, and then creating a situation
Speaker 3: where the only way out is to say what those
Speaker 3: bullies want you to say.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm imagining the guy in our hypothetical who
Speaker 1: is probably just overcome with grief from having just lost
Speaker 1: his wife, and then the last place he wants to
Speaker 1: be is where he ends up, you know, in some
Speaker 1: dank room at a police station, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: got no windows, it's always got those uncomfortable chairs and
Speaker 1: they leave them to cool as heels, right, and he
Speaker 1: sits there by himself for a while, and then the
Speaker 1: detectives come in and the questions start and tell our
Speaker 1: listeners what techniques the interrogators use to sort of capitalize
Speaker 1: on his vulnerability.
Speaker 3: What you do during the interview phase is you ask
Speaker 3: a series of questions, some of which are called behavior
Speaker 3: provoking questions, and there are questions that are designed, at
Speaker 3: least in the officer's mind, to provoke responses that they
Speaker 3: can then use to determine whether the person is telling
Speaker 3: the truth or not. So, you know, it might be
Speaker 3: questions like why would somebody be saying that you were
Speaker 3: at the crime scene if you really weren't, Or what
Speaker 3: do you think should happen to the person who did this?
Speaker 3: You know, when you ask a husband, why would your
Speaker 3: own friends be saying that they think that you might
Speaker 3: have done this? And you're thinking to yourself, well, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe some of my friends saw that time when you know,
Speaker 3: my wife and I got into an argument over the
Speaker 3: car or whatever it is. And so you're just trying
Speaker 3: to come up with some explanation because the officer is
Speaker 3: asking you for one, and you minimize it because it
Speaker 3: wasn't a big deal, and so you talk about it
Speaker 3: and then all of a sudden that then becomes the
Speaker 3: takeoff point. Well, that wasn't the only time that you
Speaker 3: had an argument, wasn't. No, it wasn't the only time
Speaker 3: we had an argument. Well, let's talk about some of
Speaker 3: the other times you had arguments. And the idea is
Speaker 3: that if you ask enough of these behavior inducing questions,
Speaker 3: you as a trained police officer looking at verbal and
Speaker 3: nonverbal cues, you know, hesitation, how their eyes are looking,
Speaker 3: that you can tell if they're lying or not.
Speaker 1: A lot of us have this notion that investigators have
Speaker 1: this heightened ability to tell if someone is lying or not,
Speaker 1: and that's just not the case. We know that there's
Speaker 1: no science to back up that an officer can tell
Speaker 1: if you are or are not telling the truth. But
Speaker 1: that doesn't help the person sitting in that interrogation chair.
Speaker 3: Any answer you give is subject to confirmation, bias, and interpretation.
Speaker 3: And that's why this whole thing is junk science. There's
Speaker 3: no logic to it. No, there's no basis for it.
Speaker 3: It's simply, let me ask a couple of hard questions
Speaker 3: and see if the person is getting nervous or more nervous.
Speaker 1: Okay, so now the cop is certain at least in
Speaker 1: his or her mind that the person in front of
Speaker 1: them committed the crime, even though there's no proof to
Speaker 1: back that hunch up. So what's the next step.
Speaker 3: Now? The goal is to get the confession, especially, as
Speaker 3: I said earlier, when there's no other evidence. So the
Speaker 3: tone of the whole conversation changes. It now turns sharp,
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, the officer says, listen, you know,
Speaker 3: we've been talking for a while and I just have
Speaker 3: to tell you. We know you're guilty. The person says, well, no,
Speaker 3: I'm not, and the officer says, well, don't bother lying
Speaker 3: to me about it. So the person says, no, I
Speaker 3: didn't do it. Well, then can you explain why your
Speaker 3: DNA is on the knife? The officer says, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe it was so horrible that you've blotted it out
Speaker 3: of your memory. You know, maybe that's why you don't
Speaker 3: remember it. But how do you explain that that DNA
Speaker 3: is on that knife? And there is no DNA on
Speaker 3: the knife. But the officer is now aligning to the
Speaker 3: person in order to induce the person to be sort
Speaker 3: of incredulous about his own guilt or innocence. And so
Speaker 3: there are cases where people actually become convinced people are innocent,
Speaker 3: become convinced that, yeah, maybe I actually did this, or
Speaker 3: yeah I did this, and the person knows they didn't,
Speaker 3: but yet if they're told that they did, at some
Speaker 3: point they become convinced that they must have done it.
Speaker 3: Why else would this person be saying that.
Speaker 1: And I think the most important point here is that
Speaker 1: a lot of people think that the police can't lie.
Speaker 3: To them, and in fact, in most countries they can't.
Speaker 3: In the Great Britain, the cops cannot lie to you
Speaker 3: about the evidence. But our Supreme Court has said, oh no,
Speaker 3: it's fine for you to lie to a suspect about
Speaker 3: the evidence, because after all, he or she knows if
Speaker 3: he's innocent that it can't be true. Well, that ignores
Speaker 3: the psychology of it. The truth of the matter is
Speaker 3: that cops are allowed to lie during interrogations everywhere in
Speaker 3: the United States, because the United States Supreme Court has
Speaker 3: said that's not a violation of due process and it's outrageous.
Speaker 3: Why should they be able to lie to you about
Speaker 3: something as serious as a crime and the evidence of
Speaker 3: a crime. I'm not aware of any other English speaking
Speaker 3: country where that's okay. It's not okay in Canada, it's
Speaker 3: not okay in Great Britain, it's not okay in Australia
Speaker 3: or New Zealand. We are the only country I'm aware
Speaker 3: of where that's permissible. And that's there's a big, big
Speaker 3: problem that needs to be corrected.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I try to put myself in these
Speaker 1: people's shoes all the time, and I think about what
Speaker 1: it would be like if an officer said to me
Speaker 1: that my friend claimed that I murdered someone when I didn't,
Speaker 1: and that there's DNA evidence against me. I mean, I
Speaker 1: would feel just totally screwed, you know, scared alone. And
Speaker 1: you know, after these interrogators confront the suspect, they say
Speaker 1: we have this evidence. They might even tell them that
Speaker 1: they have witnesses that have identified them at the scene.
Speaker 1: They give all of this false, incriminating evidence. This is
Speaker 1: constant psychological pressure being applied to a suspect and it
Speaker 1: is increasing their vulnerability. Okay, The suspect gets more and
Speaker 1: more scared, more upset, and the detective starts talking about
Speaker 1: the serious consequences, and the suspect is starting to get
Speaker 1: convinced that you know, they're going to go to prison
Speaker 1: for something they didn't do, so tell us what typically
Speaker 1: happens next.
Speaker 3: What happens is the police go into minimization, moral justifications
Speaker 3: excuses for the potential behavior. So they say things like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, we can understand how this might have happened.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, you may have been provoked, maybe
Speaker 3: this was in self defense. From the minimization, they go
Speaker 3: to two other techniques, and I'll call them active encouragement
Speaker 3: and alternative theories. So active encouragement is they're trying to
Speaker 3: sort of say, you know, we're just trying to help
Speaker 3: you here. It's going to look a lot better for
Speaker 3: you if you explain that this was just because your
Speaker 3: uncle made you do it than if the DA and
Speaker 3: the jury thinks you did this because you're a monster.
Speaker 3: You're telling them that he's going to do You're going
Speaker 3: to be charged based on this evidence, and now you're
Speaker 3: providing this lifeline if you will. I've had situations where
Speaker 3: people have been told if you don't confess, you're going
Speaker 3: to get life. If you do confess, we'll treat you
Speaker 3: as a juvenile offender.
Speaker 1: So what's happening here is that the person is told
Speaker 1: you don't really have any good or attractive options. Right,
Speaker 1: they're often told, as you said, you're going to get
Speaker 1: life in prison or even the death sentence if you
Speaker 1: don't confess, And the interrogators tell them that confessing will
Speaker 1: at least get them the better of two horrible options. Right,
Speaker 1: You'll get life instead of the death penalty. It doesn't
Speaker 1: really leave the innocent person with much of a choice,
Speaker 1: does it.
Speaker 3: To top it all off, Josh, if you're innocent and
Speaker 3: all you want to do is get out of that room,
Speaker 3: you know you've now been in there for two hours,
Speaker 3: three hours, four hours, they haven't accepted any of your denials,
Speaker 3: and now you just wanted to stop. And what you
Speaker 3: think to yourself if you're innocent, is if I just
Speaker 3: agree with what they're saying, If I just agree with
Speaker 3: what they're saying, this is going to stop. And when
Speaker 3: I get out of here, you know, I can explain
Speaker 3: why this happened, and everyone's going to understand that I'm innocent,
Speaker 3: because that's what the evidence is going to show, and
Speaker 3: you know, it just becomes the path of least resistance.
Speaker 3: The other piece you need to understand is it's not
Speaker 3: just a person saying I'm guilty, because that's just the
Speaker 3: first step.
Speaker 1: Right, because a jury's got to be able to believe it.
Speaker 1: The confession has to sound convincing.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: If all it was was the person said, yeah, I
Speaker 3: did it, I don't think a jury is going to
Speaker 3: give that a whole lot of weight. But when the
Speaker 3: person's confession includes details that own only the perpetrator could know, well,
Speaker 3: the perpetrator and the police. Once it has those details,
Speaker 3: it becomes persuasive evidence. It's not just why would an
Speaker 3: innocent person confess? It's how would an innocent person know
Speaker 3: these things? And that's where the power comes in, you know.
Speaker 3: It's the details about where the attack occurred, how it occurred,
Speaker 3: what weapon was used, how long it took, what time
Speaker 3: it occurred. All of these are fed into the person,
Speaker 3: you know, with leading questions. So do you remember it
Speaker 3: was about nine pm when you finally entered the house,
Speaker 3: you know? And when you went into the house, do
Speaker 3: you remember that the first place you went was into
Speaker 3: the kitchen and that's where you found the knife? Right,
Speaker 3: So there's all these leading questions that if you're innocent
Speaker 3: and you're trying to get out of there, you're accepting
Speaker 3: you don't even have to say it. You just say
Speaker 3: yeah or mm hm, and those then get incorporated into
Speaker 3: a written statement. And you've already gone so far as
Speaker 3: to say all this, so you figure, what the hell,
Speaker 3: I'll sign it, and then your life is over.
Speaker 1: So, David, what can we do here? The system keeps
Speaker 1: on churning out false confessions? How do we get this
Speaker 1: to stop?
Speaker 3: Stop using this particular technique. It's an enormously effective technique
Speaker 3: to get guilty people to confess. We can all agree
Speaker 3: on that. The problem is it's also an enormously effective
Speaker 3: 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 who
Speaker 1: committed a crime. But that's not really the case, right
Speaker 1: because there are other more reliable techniques out there. So
Speaker 1: tell us about some other ways that detectives can obtain
Speaker 1: a confession that doesn't employ or doesn't include employing the
Speaker 1: read technique.
Speaker 3: In Great Britain, they use a completely different method, and
Speaker 3: it's called the piece method peacee And you don't try
Speaker 3: to force the conversation in any particular way. You're simply
Speaker 3: conducting a really thorough interrogation or interview that has been
Speaker 3: planned out in advance. You know exactly what you're going
Speaker 3: to ask, you know what you want to talk about,
Speaker 3: you know what you want to ask questions about, you
Speaker 3: know what evidence there is, and so you can judge
Speaker 3: the validity of what the person's saying by the actual evidence,
Speaker 3: not by false evidence. And it's a completely different technique,
Speaker 3: and it is not something that results in the kinds
Speaker 3: of false confessions that you see in the United States.
Speaker 3: If there's other evidence, then you don't necessarily need the confession.
Speaker 3: All you may need are some inconsistencies in the person's
Speaker 3: statement to sort of nail the case down. And if
Speaker 3: there is no other evidence, why would you try to
Speaker 3: get a confession where the confession may very well not
Speaker 3: be accurate.
Speaker 1: Now, another part of the problem here that we touched
Speaker 1: on a bit is not just the false confession, but
Speaker 1: also how convincing it ends up being when it is
Speaker 1: presented to a jury. Is there any insight into what
Speaker 1: other countries do in that regard.
Speaker 3: You know, in the United States, a jury has to
Speaker 3: come back with either guilty or not guilty, and not
Speaker 3: guilty sort of implies innocence. In Scotland there's a vertict
Speaker 3: called not proven, and I think the verdicts in every
Speaker 3: country should be either proven or not proven, because if
Speaker 3: that was the verdict, the presumption of innocence becomes less
Speaker 3: important in a sense, because the focuses on did the
Speaker 3: state prove its case right?
Speaker 1: Because a journam might be thinking shit, if I say
Speaker 1: not guilty, what I'm really saying is that the person
Speaker 1: absolutely didn't do it. And what I really want to
Speaker 1: say is that who knows. The person may have done it,
Speaker 1: but the prosecution just did improve their case. So if
Speaker 1: you include this other sort of line item or this
Speaker 1: notion that they have in Scotland not proven on the
Speaker 1: verdict form, it would actually be a way to protect
Speaker 1: the presumption of innocence exactly.
Speaker 3: I think that that would go a long way towards
Speaker 3: focusing jurors attention on the actual question.
Speaker 1: These seem to be really big changes that are going
Speaker 1: to take a lot of time and effort to accomplish.
Speaker 1: We like to be able to provide our listeners with
Speaker 1: some insight into what they can be doing to help
Speaker 1: change the system. So what would you tell our listeners
Speaker 1: they can be doing to help effectuate change, especially when
Speaker 1: it comes to wrongful confessions or coerce confessions.
Speaker 3: Please go sit on juris to talk to your fellow
Speaker 3: jurors and talk to your friends and neighbors and co
Speaker 3: workers about these issues. When you hear somebody's confess to
Speaker 3: a crime, go and talk with other people and explain
Speaker 3: that it may not be what it seems, because that's
Speaker 3: how this changes. It changes from the bottom up, not
Speaker 3: 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. Now 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 going to happen to me
Speaker 1: until it does. Unfortunately, your innocence is not a safeguard
Speaker 1: against being incarcerated. As we discussed in this episode, innocent
Speaker 1: people are often more likely to falsely confess than the
Speaker 1: actual perpetrator of a crime. For a few reasons. First,
Speaker 1: they 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'll be that. The problem is
Speaker 1: that interrogators who are following the read technique don't take
Speaker 1: the words you say at face value. Instead, they look
Speaker 1: behind the words and look for reasons why those words
Speaker 1: port your guilt. Remember, most of the time, they have
Speaker 1: decided that you were probably involved before you even get
Speaker 1: in that room. That is why you were being interrogated
Speaker 1: in the first place. Another reason why many innocent people
Speaker 1: confess is because none of us are immune from the
Speaker 1: effects of the psychological warfare administered under conditions that are
Speaker 1: simply the perfect storm for vulnerability. And believe me, it
Speaker 1: 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 Tribble, 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 Flam and the team
Speaker 1: at Signal Company Number One executive producer Kevin Wardis and
Speaker 1: senior producers Karen Kornhaber and Britz Spangler. Our music was
Speaker 1: composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram
Speaker 1: at dubin Josh. Follow the Wrongful Conviction podcast on Facebook
Speaker 1: and on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Twitter at
Speaker 1: wrong Conviction