Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

232 A Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions
A neuropsychological assessment had been conducted three years previous
to my involvement in the case, and was repeated after my visit to the USA by
an American clinical psychologist. Mr R was overall of low average intelligence
with a significant Verbal–Performance discrepancy in favour of the former. His
history of extensive alcohol abuse prior to his arrest in 1985 and previous closed
head injury raised the possibility of organic problems, but a MRI brain scan in
1998 failed to find any significant cerebral damage.
Mr R told me that after his arrest he was extensively interrogated by the
police and accused of the murder. They claimed they had a witness and gave
Mr R detailed information of the crime scene and the victim. The police told
him that the victim had been a prostitute who ‘hanged out on the street a lot’.
After a while Mr R offered to take a polygraph test, because he thought this
would prove that he nothing to do with the murder. A polygraph test was then
arranged for him and he was told afterwards by one of he officers that he had
failed the test. He thought the officer was lying about the outcome of the test.
The interrogation then continued and Mr R kept denying the murder. An officer
then suggested that Mr R be taken to the murder scene and this was done. After
the visit the interrogation continued again; Mr R kept denying any involvement
in the murder. The police then allegedly suggested that the killing had been
unintentional and that if he admitted to it he would be out of the police station
in a couple of hours. With the continued denials, one of the officers became
frustrated and handcuffed him to a ring in the wall. He was then allegedly
physically beaten in the face and stomach and claimed that he felt frightened
for his life, because he did not know how far they would go to force a confession
out of him. Mr R now decided that he had to tell them something to stop the
beatings and the interrogation. He decided to make up a story based on what
he had been previously told about the victim by the police: namely that she was
prostitute (there was no evidence that the victim was a prostitute, in fact the
evidence points to the contrary) and that he had not meant to kill her.
The confession Mr R gave, which was signed by him and later reiterated
in front of a State Attorney, comprised an account where Mr R had murdered
the woman in self-defence. He had met the woman on the night of the murder,
she had offered him sex for $10, after which he refused to pay for her services.
She then pulled out a knife, they fought and she got stabbed. Mr R thought
this would satisfy the officer and that he would be released from police custody,
because the confession constituted self-defence and not murder. He only realized
the seriousness of his self-incriminating admissions when the police refused to
release him from custody, but he still did not think he would be convicted of
murder.
Although Mr R claimed that the beatings and the fear of physical danger
while in custody were the main reasons for his falsely confessing to the involvement
in the woman’s death, it is likely that he was at the time psychologically
vulnerable due to his history of alcoholism and likely susceptibility to suggestions.
Furthermore, Mr R completely failed to appreciate the seriousness of the
compromise he reached by admitting to causing the death of the victim in selfdefence
in his desperate attempt to find a way out of his predicament. The case
highlights the potential dangers of interrogators using theme development (see