Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

210 A Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions
suspect’s likely motivation. Is it a reflection of lack of genuine knowledge
about the offence or a lack of motivation or ability to reveal information?
� Denial of certain parts of the offence is common and should not be regarded
as evidence that the confession is false. It could be due to genuine
memory problems or reluctance of the suspect to reveal the full details of the
offence.
� The timing of the retraction is important; late retractions are viewed
with suspicion (this is a complex issue, which is addressed in detail in
Chapter 12).
� The defendant’s explanation for having allegedly made a false confession
is an important factor in determining the confession’s validity. The reasons
given need to be carefully evaluated, although Inbau et al. do not provide
an objective basis for doing this.
Ofshe and Leo (1997a, 1997b) rightly place a great deal of importance on the
content of the post-admission statement as a way of discriminating between
true and false confessions. Unfortunately, as discussed earlier in this chapter,
there are various sources of potential contamination that may not be identified
unless all the police interviews were properly recorded. In many cases involving
false confession, the record of interviews is too incomplete to properly analyse
the significance of the post-admission statement. A proper record is essential
for this to be a valuable method of analysis.
Only one study has investigated empirically the differences between true
and false confessions using a within-subject design. Using the revised Gudjonsson
Confession Questionnaire (GCQ-R), Sigurdsson and Gudjonsson (1996)
compared among 51 prison inmates the factor scores relating to a false confession
and a true confession that they had made to the police. The findings
indicated that when making the false confession suspects had experienced far
more police pressure and less internal pressure to confess than when making
a confession to a crime they had committed. The implication is that making a
false confession is largely associated with police pressure and the greater the
pressure the more likely suspects are to make a false confession, but this does
also depend on the nature of the false confession.
The reporting of police pressure was lowest where suspects were falsely confessing
in order to protect somebody else. They also reported less regret about
having made the false confession and offered less resistance during the interrogation
than with other types of false confession. The argument put forward by
Ofshe and Leo that the quality of the post-admission statement is the best discriminator
between true and false confessions is problematic with these kinds
of false confession, because the confessor often had good knowledge about the
crime from their peer or friend.
Two significant differences on the GCQ-R emerged between compliant and
internalized false confessors. First, internalized false confessors reported experiencing
greater internal pressure to confess during the interrogation than compliant
false confessors, including experiencing a greater feeling of guilt about
the offence. This appears to relate to their coming to believe during the interrogation
that they had committed the offence of which they were accused.