Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

The Court of Appeal 443
experience considerable uncertainty, a situation that can cause them a great
deal of stress (Gudjonsson et al., 1993).
There is no doubt from the judgments I have read in these 22 cases that
post-admission details and apparent special knowledge often weigh very heavily
against the accused at trial. An apparent intimate knowledge of the offence
by suspects is very incriminating, and often rightly so. However, problems sometimes
arise when too much emphasis is placed on pieces of special knowledge
and it is assumed that only the real culprit could have possessed that knowledge,
when in fact there could be a number of explanations for it apart from
genuine guilt. The case of Mr Kiszko (Chapter 20) is a case in point. On the face
of it, his apparent special knowledge was extremely convincing and incriminating,
but we know now that it must have originated from the police. Even when
there is absence of any knowledge about the offences and the confession is unconvincing,
as it certainly was in the cases of MacKenzie and Fell, defendants
are still convicted on the basis of their confession.
In several of the cases (e.g. MacKenzie, Kiszko, Darvell, Fell), the judges seem
to have accepted the appellant’s actual innocence and in other cases they were
not satisfied of the appellant’s actual innocence and expressed their reservations
(Evans, King, Hall). Apparent special knowledge contained in the confession
may have played an important part in their scepticism over the appellant’s
innocence.
The cases presented in this chapter have largely involved understanding
the psychological vulnerabilities that cast doubts upon the reliability of the
confession and the safety of the conviction. This has involved a psychological
or psychiatric evaluation of the client, the findings of which have to be placed
within the circumstances surrounding the confession, including the nature of
the police interrogation, and the totality of the case. In the case of Miller, their
Lordships found there to have been oppressive questioning, whereas in the
remaining cases the legal issues centred on the reliability of the confession
and the fairness of the interrogation and custodial detention (e.g. refusal to
allow detainees to consult with a solicitor). In several of the cases there had
been police impropriety, including falsifying records of the interview, failure to
disclose crucial evidence favourable to the defence, failure to allow access to a
solicitor, and coercive police interrogation tactics. What does the psychological
assessment of appellants tell us about the characteristics of individuals whose
convictions were quashed? Why did they make a confession that was not reliable
and undoubtedly, in several of the cases, false?
In terms of psychological vulnerability, the cases presented in the following
four chapters are potentially biased in that most of the appeals were successful
because of the fact that the appellant had been found to be vulnerable to
giving unreliable confessions. However, it is interesting to note that not all the
appellants showed poor intellectual function. None of the appellants who had
been tested had IQ scores that clearly fell in the learning disability range (i.e.
an IQ score below 70). Therefore, their IQ scores alone do not seem to differentiate
them greatly from police detainees. Nevertheless, according to the
judgments, the borderline IQ score among several of the appellants was important
in overturning a conviction, particularly when combined with other