Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

616 A Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions
Evidence Act (PACE) 1984. Importantly, this involved the introduction of
mandatory tape recording of police interviews with suspects and offered special
safeguards for those who were deemed mentally disordered or ‘at risk’. In
October 1989 and March 1991, respectively, the convictions of the ‘Guildford
Four’ and ‘Birmingham Six’ were quashed. The freeing of the ‘Birmingham Six’
resulted in the setting up of the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice (1993),
with extensive research being commissioned into police interrogations, confessions,
psychological vulnerability and the legal process.
In addition to the research emerging from the two Royal Commissions, a
substantial amount of research had been carried out in Britain into false confessions
and psychological vulnerability during interrogation. In the late 1980s
and early 1990s this research was accompanied by increased recognition by
the judiciary that wrongful convictions can occur from false confessions and
psychological vulnerability. Not only did the Court of Appeal recognize the importance
of expert evidence in cases of learning disability and mental illness,
it came to recognize the concepts of ‘interrogative suggestibility’, ‘compliance’
and ‘personality disorder’ as factors that may render a confession unreliable.
The single most important and influential legal judgement for psychologists
was the case of Engin Raghip (one of the Tottenham Three), which was heard
in the Court of Appeal in December 1991. Here the criteria for the admissibility
of psychological evidence in cases of disputed confessions was substantially
broadened to include borderline intelligence and personality factors such as
suggestibility.
Since the landmark ruling in Raghip, there have been a number of other
leading judgments in high profile murder or terrorist cases where convictions
have been quashed on appeal. Out of the 22 appeal cases reviewed in detail
in Part III of this book it was in half of these (Raghip, Ward, Ali, Long, Kane,
Evans, Roberts, King, Hall, Gordon and Fell), that the psychological or psychiatric
evidence was the most important new evidence that resulted in the conviction
being overturned. In addition, Pendleton, whose appeal failed in June
2000, took his case to the House of Lords, where his conviction was quashed due
to ‘uncertainties and fresh psychological evidence’. The House of Lords ruled
that the Court of Appeal had exceeded its authority in the case by intruding
into the territory of the jury and upholding the conviction.
In relation to disputed confession cases, the attitude of High Court judges
to expert psychological evidence, and their level of sophistication in evaluating
it, have greatly improved since the late 1980s. The cases reviewed show that it
is wrong to assume that only persons with learning disability or those who are
mentally ill make unreliable or false confessions. The cases demonstrate the
importance of personality factors in potentially rendering a confession unreliable.
The focus of the English and Northern Ireland cases has largely been on
psychological vulnerability rather than on custodial factors (e.g. interrogation
techniques), although these two sets of factors are often reviewed jointly in the
psychological evaluation. It is essential that the vulnerabilities identified by the
psychologist or psychiatrist are relevant to the case, that they are measured reliably
and corroborated as far as possible, and placed appropriately in the context
of the totality of evidence in the case, including the nature of the interrogation.