Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

Psychological Vulnerability 499
Comments
This is an unusual case and in some respects resembles the case of Judith Ward.
In both cases the confessions were not retracted for many years. Why should
people who are wrongfully convicted for murder maintain their confession for
several years if it is not true? A number of reasons can be put forward.
� They believe they were involved in the crime even if they are truly innocent
(this is only likely to apply to internalized false confessions, or where the
person is unable to distinguish fact from fantasy, as in the case of David
MacKenzie).
� They think there is no chance of a successful appeal and the quickest way
of being granted parole is to pretend that the confession is true. This is
sometimes claimed by appellants with some justification, because without
the confession the person is unable to comply with offence related work
in prison which facilitates their release into the community (e.g. gaining
insight into their offending, displaying feelings of remorse).
� They are frightened of repercussions if they retract the confession (e.g. that
their families will be in danger, or that they will be re-interrogated by the
police or in some way harassed).
� They want to keep up a notoriety status, for example by the need to appear
hard and tough in the eyes of other prisoners.
The judgment builds upon the ruling in Roberts, but defines limits as to the
admissibility of expert testimony. What is important is the type of vulnerability.
The implication is that some vulnerabilities, even if they do not amount to a
psychiatric disorder, are particularly relevant and important in rendering a
confession unreliable. In the case of Roberts it was abnormally high compliance.
In the case of Hall it was his abnormal personality (e.g. high compliance, low
self-esteem, impulsivity) that rendered the confession unreliable. Second, these
personality problems have to fall outside normal limits in terms of their severity
(i.e. the degree to which they are present has to be very infrequent in the
population). Third, it has to be established that these abnormal characteristics
or traits were evident prior to the police interviews when the confession was
made.
IAIN HAY GORDON—EXPLOITATION OF SEXUALITY
On 12 November 1952, Miss Patricia Curran, the 19-year-old daughter of a
High Court Judge in Belfast, was murdered. She was last seen by witnesses at
about 1720 when disembarking a bus near her home at Whiteabbey. Her body
was found in the early hours (at about 2 a.m.) the following day by Mr Desmond
Curran (her older brother and a member of a search party), in shrubbery off
the private drive leading to her home at Glen House in Whiteabbey, a middleclass
suburb of Belfast. It later emerged that she had been stabbed 37 times. A
major murder inquiry was launched by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC)
and about 40 000 witness statements were taken. After the first weekend two
detectives from Scotland Yard were called in to assist with the murder inquiry.