Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

486 A Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions
Evans was charged with the murder at 1815 hours on 12 October 1972, and
replied:
Yes, I did it.
Evans was interviewed over a period of three days without the presence of a
solicitor.
According to a Psychiatric Report dated 4 April 1973, on 30 March and 2 April
1973, Evans was given drugs intravenously in order to enhance his memory for
events on 7 June 1972. During the first session Brietal was given and during
the second session Brietal was given together with Methedrine. There was a
third abreaction session on 7 April 1973. During the three abreaction sessions
Evans denied murdering the girl. He reported standing by a gate and there was
a hedge, he could hear a cry and a struggle going on. He then described a man
with a darkish face who was bending over the body of a girl.
Evans was convicted of the murder on 13 April 1973, and remained in prison
until 3 December 1997, when his conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal
in London.
Psychological Evaluation
According to the Medical Report dated 7 March 1973, Evans was assessed by
a prison psychologist whilst on remand and obtained an IQ score of 100. The
psychologist described Mr Evans as a person who has a ‘predisposition toward
neurotic–hysteric type reactions’. There were ‘strong impressions of hysterical
features’.
I became involved in the case in 1994 at the request of Justice. I interviewed
Evans on three occasions in prison. The second and third interviews were conducted
jointly with my psychiatrist colleague, Dr MacKeith, whom I had recommended
to Justice after my first interview with Evans. The main findings
from our evaluations were as follows.
Interviews
In interviews with me, Evans denied having had anything to do with the murder
and claims to have confessed falsely to the police for a number of reasons.
� When the police officers came to his grandmother’s house on 8 October 1972,
they challenged his previous alibi accounts, which confused Evans. The fact
that he had got his alibi wrong made him distrust his memory and he kept
asking himself ‘Why did I forget what I was doing on that day?’, ‘What else
have I forgotten?’. At about 2230 hours that same night he went to bed and
was still wondering why he had previously misled the police concerning his
alibi. At about 0300 hours he woke up and saw a young girl’s face staring
at him. It was a reddish face and Evans became petrified. This made him
think that it was the victim’s face and that perhaps he had had something