Investigative interviewing: the literature - New Zealand Police

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Investigative Interviewing: viewing: THE LITERATURE The George Heron case (1993) Some of the tightening up of interviewing procedures since PACE resulted from specific cases. The most famous of these is R v Heron (1993). George Heron was arrested and charged with the murder of a 7 year old girl, Nicki Allen, in 1992. The victim had been seen in the company of a man fitting Heron’s description. Even though Heron was known by others to be acquainted with the victim, he initially denied this. After arrest, Heron was interviewed on five separate occasions, a task that used 12 audiotapes. On the later tapes he gave a full confession in which he provided details known only at that time to police and forensic investigators. At Heron’s 1993 trial, however, the judge (Mr Justice Mitchell) ruled that only the first four tapes (containing consistent denials) were admissible. He rejected the remaining tapes on the basis that the questioning was oppressive. It included questions on Heron’s sex life and religious beliefs, suggestions that it was in Heron’s best interests to confess, and a tendency by officers to pass comment rather than to question. Heron was subsequently acquitted, although in a later civil case taken by the victim’s parents he was found liable and ordered to pay damages. This case had major implications for the police force involved (Northumbria) and all others in relation to interviewing practice. It was used to inform thinking around the national implementation of the PEACE model (described elsewhere in this review) and was incorporated into police training material (Milne & Bull, 1999). FALSE CONFESSIONS Another reason why ethical interviewing must be pursued by Police is to avoid false confessions. As stated by Elizabeth Loftus: “One goal of our legal system must be to secure convictions of the guilty, but another must be to minimise wrongful convictions, including those involving false confessions” (2004, pi) Kassin and Gudjonsson (2004) describe the criteria used to determine that a confession previously given was false: “Confessions may be deemed false when it is later discovered that no crime was committed (e.g., the presumed murder victim is found alive); when additional evidence shows that it was physically impossible for the confessor to have committed the crime …; when the real perpetrator, having no connection to the defendant, is apprehended and linked to the crime (e.g., by intimate knowledge of the crime details, ballistics, or physical evidence); and when scientific evidence affirmatively establishes the confessor’s innocence” (2004, p48). The phenomenon of false confessions occurs in different ways and for different reasons, including dispositional and situational factors (Kassin & Gudjonsson, 2004): Dispositional (i.e. personal risk factors) • personality characteristics - people who make false confessions tend to be suggestible, compliant, anxious, lack assertiveness and have poor memories and low self-esteem • youth - extremely vulnerable when faced with leading questions, repetition, disbelief and other tactics from figures of authority • intellectual impairment - disproportionately represented in data on false confessions - mainly due to suggestibility and desire for approval, and an inability to understand the consequences of their actions • psychopathology - the tendency towards false confession may be found in people with distorted perceptions and memories, a breakdown in reality monitoring, impaired judgement, anxiety, mood disturbance, and possibly a lack of self-control (Kassin & Gudjonsson, 2004, p53). Situational • physical custody - the extreme anxiety created in some suspects by being in unfamiliar surroundings and unable to escape can make a person willing to do or say anything • isolation - many ‘interrogations’ go on for long periods, causing tiredness, fear and uncertainty e.g a study of documented false confession cases in America (Leo, 1996) found that 34% lasted 6 to 12 hours and 39% lasted 12 to 24 hours 24
REVIEW OF INVESTIGATIVE INTERVIEWING • confrontation - the research is clear that a person can be induced to confess and to accept responsibility for something they didn’t do by tactics such as strongly asserting they are guilty, interrupting denials, presenting false incriminating evidence, and saying they failed a lie-detector test • minimisation - a process of providing or allowing the suspect to make face-saving excuses for the event - implies leniency will follow (e.g., being allowed to go home or get a lighter sentence). A large body of research exists on this subject (see, for example, Gisli Gudjonsson, 1992) and false confessions have led to the conviction of many innocent people. The “Innocence Project” (a non-profit legal clinic at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, USA that handles cases where post-conviction DNA testing of evidence can yield conclusive proof of innocence) describes a case in point: “The problem of false confessions has been further illuminated by the exoneration of five men - Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Kharey Wise - who were wrongfully convicted of a brutal attack in New York’s Central Park. DNA testing corroborated the confession of Matias Reyes. Reyes stated that he acted alone and that he did not know the five men that were convicted in what is now known as the Central Park Jogger Case. The five men, teenagers at the time, were picked up by police following a chaotic night in Central Park, marked by violence and what was termed “wilding”. Their statements to authorities were quite damning. Each gave a detailed videotaped statement minimizing his own involvement in the crime but implicating the rest. What the jury did not see were the tactics used to elicit these statements, one of which came after over twenty four hours of interrogation. Despite the fact that their accounts varied greatly, these confessions were used to convict all five men, all of whom served out their sentences” (Innocence Project, 2001). Researchers Saul Kassin and Gisli Gudjonsson (2004) provide many more examples of false confessions in their recent comprehensive literature review on the psychology of confessions. Their material makes it clear that police cannot ignore the results of research on why people confess to something they did not do. PRINCIPLES OF INVESTIGATIVE INTERVIEWING Yeschke (2003, p12) states that: “It is time that those involved in investigative interviewing be specifically taught what is ethical and what is unethical, beyond what is legal and what is illegal”. It is clear that England and Wales had recognised and adopted the notion of ethical interviewing over a decade earlier than Yeschke’s writing. Home Office Circular 22/ 1992 provides the following seven principles of investigative interviewing: Table 2: The principles of investigative interviewing (HO Circular 22/1992) 1. The role of investigative interviewing is to obtain accurate and reliable information from suspects, witnesses or victims in order to discover the truth about matters under police investigation. 2. Investigative interviewing should be approached with an open mind. Information obtained from the person who is being interviewed should always be tested against what the interviewing officer already knows or what can reasonably be established. 3. When questioning anyone a police officer must act fairly in the circumstances of each individual case. 4. The police interviewer is not bound to accept the first answer given. Questioning is not unfair merely because it is persistent. 5. Even when the right to silence is exercised by a suspect the police still have a right to put questions. 6. When conducting an interview, police officers are free to ask questions in order to establish the truth; except for interviews with child victims of sexual or violent abuse which are to be used in criminal proceedings, they are not constrained by the rules applied to lawyers in court. 7. Vulnerable people, whether victims, witnesses or suspects, must be treated with particular consideration at all times. 25
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Investigative interviewing: the literature - New Zealand Police

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