Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

Psychological Vulnerability 493
providing a measure of the suggestibility and/or compliance of the accused such
as might lead him to make a false and unreliable confession (p. 3).
In 1982 the distinction between suggestibility (involving the (usually temporary)
acceptance of guilt by the suspect, who during interrogation becomes persuaded
that he did commit the crime) tended not to be clinically distinguished from compliance
(where the subject at all times believed himself to be not guilty of the
offence but went along with the suggestion to relieve short-term pressure). This
may have been because there existed no recognized method of measuring either.
Dr Gudjonsson by his work then provided the tests now recognized as measuring
each. In applying them retrospectively, in 1994, the tests did not show the appellant
to be suggestible, but did show him to be considerably more compliant than
either the figure that was average for prisoners, or the overall average for the
population (p. 23).
The expert evidence is agreed as to the excessively compliant personality of this appellant,
and his consequent vulnerability. He pre-eminently needed the attendance
and support of a solicitor. There were no grounds for holding him ‘incommunicado’
(p. 30).
Had the new psychiatric and psychological evidence been before the court, the
trial judge would have been bound to exclude the evidence of the confessions, and
without that evidence there was no case to go before the jury (p. 31).
The court accordingly quashed Robert’s conviction from 15 years previously. In
their final paragraph the judges concluded:
Medical science and the law have moved a long way since 1982. We hope that the
safeguards now in place will prevent others becoming victims of similar miscarriages
of justice. The courts must ensure that lessons learnt are translated into
more effective protections. Vigilance must be the watchword of the criminal justice
system if public confidence is to be maintained.
Comments
The importance of the judgment is that the court recognized the pioneering
scientific developments since 1982 that had taken place in relation to the assessment
of psychological vulnerability and identifying false confessions. In
particular, the court accepted the importance of experts being able to provide
measurements of such psychological concepts such as suggestibility and compliance.
It extended the ruling in R. v. Raghip in that high compliance on testing,
supported by relevant background information, was a sufficient psychological
vulnerability on its own, in the circumstances of this case, to overturn a conviction.
There had been no formal psychiatric diagnosis of mental illness, personality
disorder or learning disability. The Court also recognized the important
distinction between the concepts of suggestibility and compliance.
ASHLEY KING—ABNORMAL SUGGESTIBILITY
AND COMPLIANCE
Over a two-day period in November 1985, Ashley King was interviewed on 10
occasions by the police in connection with a woman, Mrs Greenwood, found