Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

The Effects of Drugs and Alcohol upon the Reliability of Testimony 431
that these were false confessions, there is no doubt that, under certain circumstances,
withdrawing from drugs or alcohol can result in suspects making a
false confession to a serious crime, such as murder. The following case shows
how this can happen. The case involved the murder of two elderly women who
were living together at the time of their death, a false confession to the murders
by a heroin addict, referred to as Mr D in this chapter, the apprehension
of the real culprit after he murdered again and the subsequent withdrawal of
the charges against Mr D.
At the time of his arrest, Mr D was in his early 20s and was living in a
hostel. He had a history of learning disability and after leaving school he began
to take illicit drugs. At first he only smoked cannabis, but later went on to
consume heroin, which he had taken intravenously two or three times a day
for about one year prior to his arrest. His normal routine was to obtain drugs
after he got up every morning, which he financed by thieving. On the day of
his arrest, which was several months after the murders of the two women, he
had just got up and was getting ready to go out to obtain more heroin when
the police arrived. He had last taken heroin early the previous evening (i.e.
about 12 hours previously). Later that morning he was interviewed informally
at a police station for over two hours. Mr D initially claimed that he could
not remember his whereabouts on the day of the murder and blamed his poor
memory on his drug taking at the time. At the end of the morning interview he
was reported as becoming anxious and shaky, at which point he broke down,
cried and confessed to the murders of the two women. After making a confession
he was arrested and formally interviewed for over one hour during the early
afternoon, an interview that was video-recorded. By this time Mr D had been
without heroin for about 20 hours. Two hours after this interview terminated,
Mr D was visited by a doctor at his own request, who prescribed him medication
(methadone) for his withdrawal symptoms. According to the custody record, this
medication was not given to Mr D until three hours later, during which time he
was interviewed again, but this was not audio or video-recorded, and he gave
a much more detailed confession than he had done during the video-recorded
interview. Why should Mr D give a more detailed confession during the second
formal interview? There are two alternative explanations for this. First, his
memory of the murders had began to come back to him as he thought and
talked about the offences. Second, Mr D had nothing to do with the murders
and was able to use information communicated to him by the police to make the
confession more detailed and apparently also more convincing. We now know
that the second explanation is likely to be the correct one.
During the video-recorded interview he came across as being passive, acquiescent
and compliant. The interview was quite leading and numerous suggestions
and prompts were put to Mr D. He readily agreed with suggestions
put to him and seemed vague and hesitant when asked open-ended questions.
The impression he gave was that he did not have detailed knowledge about the
murders and was just agreeing with what the police were suggesting to him.
A few weeks after Mr D’s arrest another man was arrested in connection
with other murders. He volunteered detailed admissions of the murders of the
two elderly women in the presence of his solicitor. This included a great deal
of special knowledge about the murders, which was more convincing than that