Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

Interrogation in Britain 45
note taking resembles dictation whereas tape-recorded interviews resemble a
conversation.
Moston and Engelberg (1993) listened to over 400 taped police interviews
which had been conducted by detectives in the Metropolitan Police Force. Of
those taped interviews, 118 were analysed in detail in terms of interviewing
strategies. It was found that the interviews typically began in one of two ways,
which are referred to as ‘inquisitorial’ (76.3%) and ‘accusatorial’ (14.7%) strategies
respectively.
Inquisitorial strategies are aimed at general information gathering whereas
the accusatorial strategy focused on obtaining a confession. The choice of the
initial strategy used appeared to relate to the interrogator’s skills in interviewing
as well as the interrogator’s assumptions about the suspect’s guilt or
innocence.
The purpose of the inquisitorial style of questioning at the beginning of interviews
is to establish good rapport with the suspect and to find out more about
the suspect’s general demeanour and reactions. Asking background questions,
which are unrelated to the alleged offence, can be used to achieve these objectives.
However, Moston and Engelberg surprisingly found that in only 5%
of cases was there initial questioning to establish rapport. The most common
type of questioning in the inquisitorial group was ‘offence specific information
gathering’, and this was found in 43.2% of cases.
With confrontational (accusatorial) styles of questioning the emphasis is not
to establish what happened, but to obtain a confession. There are three main
ways in which the interrogator confronts a suspect. First, there is ‘direct accusation’,
where the interrogator straightforwardly asks the suspect about his
guilt or innocence (e.g. ‘Did you stab Joe Smith?’). This strategy was found in
13.5% of cases. Second, the evidence against the suspect is presented and an
explanation is required, which takes the form of either an admission or a denial
(5.1% of cases). Moston and Engelberg refer to this as the ‘evidence strategy’.
Third, the interrogator combines the evidence strategy with direct confrontation
(5.1% of cases). This is referred to as ‘supported direct accusation’, and is
the most persuasive way of obtaining a confession.
Moston and Engelberg suggest that the ‘supported direct accusation’ strategy
can lead to false confession among suggestible or compliant suspects. Furthermore,
if details of the crime have been communicated to the suspect at the
beginning of the interview, which Moston (1990a) argues is commonly the case,
then it becomes virtually impossible to establish whether or not the suspect
is simply echoing the information given earlier to him by the police. In other
words, it becomes much more difficult to validate the confession because the
suspect was not given the opportunity of spontaneously providing information
that could be used to corroborate his confession.
In other cases, according to Moston and Engelberg, some interrogators terminated
the interview immediately after the suspect had made a confession.
This prevented the opportunity of a good post-confession statement being taken
to corroborate the validity of the confession.
When suspects choose to exercise their right to silence the police are still
entitled to interview them. The most common response to questions of suspects
exercising their right of silence is by saying ‘No comment’ and in only 5%