Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

278 A Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions
the results of my assessment were mentioned on the radio. In the view of the
barrister involved in the case, ‘The judge gave your evidence for you’. There
have been other similar cases where judges have disallowed the psychological
evidence, but have themselves come to the same conclusion as expressed in the
expert’s report.
The landmark judgment in the case of Engin Raghip (R. v. Silcott,
Braithwaite, Raghip; The Times, 9 December 1991) broadened and clarified the
criteria for the admissibility of psychological evidence in cases of disputed confessions
(Gudjonsson, 1992c; see Chapter 18 in this book for a detailed discussion
of the case). It no longer became necessary to rely on an arbitrary IQ
score of 69 as the cut-off point for defining ‘mental handicap’ under Section 77 of
PACE; in addition, the concept of interrogative suggestibility, its measurement,
validity and relevance were approved by the Court of Appeal, and the Court
warned that high suggestibility and intellectual deficits could not satisfactorily
be detected by observations of the defendant’s performance in the witness
box. As far as disputed confessions are concerned, this was the first and most
groundbreaking judgment for the admissibility and role of expert psychological
evidence.
Expert psychological evidence of a significant impairment in intellectual
functioning is now routinely accepted, but until recently problems did sometimes
arise when dealing with abnormal personality traits, such as suggestibility
and compliance. Fortunately, as illustrated in Part III, clearer guidelines
are being provided in the recent Court of Appeal judgments.
The reverse proposition is never put forward by the prosecution, that is, the
argument that a person of superior intellect and abnormally low suggestibility
is less susceptible than the average person to pressure, manipulation or
coercion. Such evidence would not be admissible in English courts. Similarly,
even if it can be shown that the suspect fully understood his legal rights unaided,
a failure to read him his rights prior to custodial interrogation would
normally, but not inevitably, be considered a breach. For example, in Alladice
([1988], 87 Cr.App.R. 380) a suspect had been arrested so often that it was
assumed that he knew his rights already and he stated in evidence that this
was indeed the case; therefore the refusal to have access to a solicitor was
not a sufficiently serious breach to demand exclusion, as he did not need the
advice:
Had the solicitor been present, his advice would have added nothing to the knowledge
of his rights which the appellant already had. The police, as the judge found,
had acted with propriety at the interviews and therefore the solicitor’s presence
would not have improved the appellant’s case in that respect. This is therefore a
case where a clear breach of Section 58 nevertheless does not require the Court to
rule inadmissible subsequent statements made by the defendant (p. 387).
Of course, the prosecution can use certain positive characteristics to support
their case during rebuttal (i.e. when cross-examining the defence experts).
For example, there are cases where defendants have been shown to suffer
from learning disability, which makes the expert evidence admissible, but