Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

516 A Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions
testimony in chief involved outlining the psychometric findings, particularly
Miller’s borderline intelligence and high suggestibility. The cross-examination
focused predominantly on the police interviews and how Mr Miller had been
able to resist suggestions and pressure. The judge ruled the interviews admissible.
It is evident from the judge’s ruling that he was impressed by Miller’s
apparent ability to resist suggestions during the police interviews and considered
this far more important than the psychological test findings. The judge
firmly rejected the idea that there was any evidence of oppression or that anything
was said or done by the police to render the confession unreliable.
I gave evidence before the jury on 10 September 1990. Again, I was only
required by the defence to state the psychological findings. Defence counsel
did not ask me any questions about the police interviews or their unreliability.
This appeared to have been a deliberate decision, which was very unwise. As it
happened, the prosecutor did not ask me questions about the test findings, but
focused again in great detail on the police interviews, trying to demonstrate
how Miller was not suggestible, and asking a large number of questions, many
of which were hypothetical, arising from the police interviews (e.g. why had
I not asked Miller about this and that in my interview with him). The crossexamination
also involved the prosecutor placing in front of me in the witness
box photographs of White’s mutilated body, the purpose allegedly being to see
how Miller’s description of the crime scene matched that given in his interviews.
In re-examination by the defence, I was not asked how my overall assessment
of the case cast doubts on Miller’s confession.
In his summing up before the jury, the judge appears to have marginalized
my testimony by pointing out how well Miller coped with the police interviews
and in the witness box during the trial. The prosecutor clearly implied before the
jury that Miller was functioning much better than the test findings indicated,
a view which appears to have been shared by the trial judge and presented
to the jury. However, there were many instances during the police interviews
when Miller clearly did not cope well and exhibited signs of very high suggestibility.
These do not appear to have been sufficiently communicated to the
jury.
After their conviction in 1989, the ‘Cardiff Three’—Stephen Miller, Tony
Parris and Yusef Abdullahi—fought hard to get their convictions overturned.
Miller was fortunate to find himself two outstanding lawyers to fight his
case, solicitor Gareth Peirce and Michael Mansfield QC, a formidable team
indeed.
The appeal was heard before Lord Chief Justice Taylor and Justices
Popplewell and Laws in December 1992 ([1993], 97 Cr.App.R.). Lord Taylor
in his judgment concluded:
Having considered the tenor and length of these interviews as a whole we
are of the opinion that they would have been oppressive and confessions obtained
in consequence of them would have been unreliable, even with a suspect
of normal mental capacity. In fact, there was evidence on the voire dire from
Dr Gudjonsson, called on behalf of Miller, that he was on the borderline of mental
handicap with an IQ of 75, a mental age of 11 and a reading age of eight
(p. 105).