Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

224 A Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions
enjoying himself at a party when two police officers arrived late one evening,
arrested him and placed him in a cell at the local police station. At the time of
his arrest the police noted that the man was moderately intoxicated. Within
one hour of being brought to the police station Mr E requested to speak to
one of the officers who had arrested him. Mr E told the officer that he knew
about the location of the bodies of two missing persons and said he would tell
him ‘in exchange for the present case’. There was no further discussion about
this and the officer left the cell. About half an hour later Mr E requested to
speak to the other officer who had arrested him. He told the officer in some
detail how one year previously he had murdered a man and robbed him. While
giving this confession Mr E was in a very emotional state; and according to
the officer he cried profusely and said that the murder had caused him great
anguish and he needed to get if off his chest. The officer told Mr E that he would
discuss the case with him further in the morning. The following day Mr E was
interviewed but retracted the confession he had made the previous evening. He
requested a consultation with a solicitor and subsequently gave a statement.
He explained that the motive for giving a false confession to the murder was
that he was intoxicated, was angry towards the police for having arrested him,
and wanted to take his revenge. After the interview Mr E was remanded in
custody by the court while the veracity of his confession was investigated. Of
concern to the court was the fact that Mr E appeared to have a reasonably
detailed knowledge of an unresolved murder, which indeed had taken place.
The police investigated the confession and found it was untrue. Mr E was
released from custody, but was subsequently convicted of wasting police time
and received a prison sentence.
When interviewed by a psychologist several years later (Sigurdsson, 1998),
Mr E claimed to have made the false confession in order to take revenge on the
police, because he had been arrested when he was having a good time at the
party. Psychological testing revealed a man of good average intelligence, who
had a history of alcohol abuse and personality disorder.
PRESSURED–COMPLIANT FALSE CONFESSIONS
Four cases of the pressured–compliant type of false confession are discussed;
all involve custodial interrogation. A case of pressured–compliant confession
involving a non-custodial interrogation is discussed in Chapter 22.
Mr F—Absence of Mental Disorder
In 1987 two frail and elderly women were found battered to death in their
home. The police thought that the murderer had entered the house through
an unlocked rear door in the early hours of the morning. The women had been
sexually assaulted either before or after their death. A few days after the murder
a 17-year-old neighbour (Mr F) was arrested and interrogated about the
murders. Apparently a statement he had previously given to the police during
a routine door-to-door enquiry about his movements on the night of the murder
was inconsistent with statements given by two of his neighbours.