Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

288 A Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions
Miranda nor the due process voluntariness test, as presently applied, provides
adequate protection to suspects against making coerced or unreliable confessions
(White, 1998, 2001). The traditional due process voluntariness test, which
finds coercion only under the most extreme circumstances, was formulated
without the benefit of contemporary research showing that some of the standard
techniques commonly used by interrogators are likely to produce an unreliable
confession (White, 2001). However, the Due Process Clause guarantees fair and
reliable procedures to criminal defendants at every stage. Thus, even if after
Connelly, ‘the due process voluntariness test is not concerned with reliability
of particular confessions, it may properly be concerned with regulating government
interrogation techniques likely to lead to untrustworthy confessions’
(White, 1997, p. 138). Accordingly, the Supreme Court should revisit the
traditional due process standard to take account of the empirical data about
the existence and causes of false or untrustworthy confessions (White, 2001).
VOLUNTARINESS AND MENTALLY VULNERABLE SUSPECTS
The Supreme Court’s decision in Colorado v. Connelly, finding a mentally ill
defendant’s statement ‘voluntary’, merely because no police impropriety was
involved, has serious implications for accused persons who are particularly at
risk of giving false confessions by reason of their youth, mental illness or mental
retardation (Frumkin, 2000; Hourihan, 1995).
Francis Connolly had approached a police officer on the street in Denver,
Colorado, saying that he wanted to confess to a murder. The police, unaware that
he was suffering from a mental illness, read him his Miranda rights and took his
statement. The following morning, Connolly became disoriented and confused,
saying that ‘voices’ had told him to go from Boston to Denver (a distance of
several thousand miles) and confess to a murder. At the suppression hearing
a psychiatrist testified that Connolly was suffering from chronic schizophrenia
and was in a psychotic state when he left Boston for Denver at the command
of the ‘voice of God’, which allegedly told him either to confess to the murder
or commit suicide. According to the psychiatrist, Connelly was at the time of
making the confessions experiencing ‘command hallucinations’. This psychotic
condition interfered with his ‘volitional abilities; that is, his ability to make
free and rational choices’. 22 The psychiatrist further testified that Connelly
had understood his legal rights and admitted that the ‘voices’ could in reality
be Connelly’s interpretation of his own guilt. However, in his opinion it was
Connelly’s psychosis that motivated him to make a confession.
On the basis of the psychiatric evidence, the trial court suppressed all of
Connelly’s statements, finding that both his initial statement to the police officer
and his subsequent waiver of his Miranda rights were ‘involuntary’ as not
being the product of a rational intellect and free will. The trial court reasoned
that although the police had acted properly and there was no coercion in securing
his confession, Connelly’s illness destroyed his volition and compelled
22 Colorado v. Connelly, 479 US at 161–162.