Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

546 A Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions
and trickery by the police. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that the
confession was false. True as well as false confessions can result from police
pressure. Had Hoyt made a false confession to the murder of her children?
Before addressing this question, it is important to recognize the importance of
the confession in convicting her and how it came about in psychological terms.
What was the process that made Hoyt confess to the murders of her children,
after she had initially denied the offences?
The police must have known that they would not get a conviction without a
confession. The fact that five children in one family had died was not sufficient
by itself to obtain a conviction. In addition, there was no salient physical or
medical evidence that Hoyt’s five children had been murdered. All the police
had was that Hoyt had the opportunity of murdering her children and she
would have had the means to do it. The police carefully planned the best way of
extracting a confession from Hoyt (Firstman & Talan, 1997; Hickey, Lighty &
O’Brien, 1996). Having studied the case in detail, it seems the police employed
the following tactics to break down Hoyt’s resistance.
� They used a local police officer whom Hoyt liked and trusted to get her to
cooperate with the police without her being aware of the dangers that lay
ahead. Hoyt was tricked into a false sense of security and once her defences
were down the police moved in to persuade and pressure her to confess to
the murder of her five children.
� Hoyt was isolated from her husband as a way of making it easier to extract a
confession from her. She was undoubtedly highly dependent on her husband
for emotional support. His presence was undoubtedly seen by the police as
a likely hindrance to the psychological manipulation and trickery that had
already been planned in great detail.
� Hoyt consistently claimed that the police tricked her into believing that
they were interested in talking to her about the death of her children and
SIDS in connection with research. If this is true it was very misleading, dishonest
and unethical. Although the police denied in their testimony that
this account was true, I think it is quite possible that they employed such
a strategy. Considering the importance of the ‘sting’ operation and the detailed
planning involved, the police would not have risked being open and
honest with Hoyt that she was suspected of murdering her children and
that they were planning to interrogate her at the police barracks. The fact
that Hoyt took her family photograph album with her to the police barracks
(she told me this was at the suggestion of the police) supports the
view that she thought she was assisting with research. I am satisfied, as
undoubtedly the police were, that Hoyt would not have gone voluntarily to
the police barracks if she had had any suspicion that they had wanted to
interrogate her.
� Hoyt consistently claimed that the police underplayed the reading of the
Miranda warning and made her believe that it was just a trivial routine
that they had to follow. I found Hoyt’s description of this to me credible and
this is the kind of strategy the American police would probably employ in
a situation like this (Macdonald & Michaud, 1992).