After reviewing the article “Inside Interrogation: The Lie, The Bluff, and False Confessions”, it became very evident the huge problem with interrogations and false confessions in the criminal justice system is with false confession. Jennifer T. Perillo and Saul M. Kassin crafted three distinct experiments to try and better understand false confessions and how trues the actual numbers in real life are. What Perillo and Kassin were trying to prove is that “the bluff technique should elicit confessions from perpetrators but not from innocents” (Perillo, Kassin 2010). What is called the “Bluff Technique” is an interrogation technique that uses a sort of threat or hint that there is certain proof that a person will think is more of a promise for …show more content…
future exoneration that would make a person think easier on them to confess. Perillo and Kassin wanted to use the bluff technique in all three of their experiments to see how it would relate to actual percentages. The problem with the bluff technique however is that “innocent people may “voluntarily” decide to confess out of a misplaced confidence that their admission will later be disproved” (Perillo, Kassin). They were also using false incriminating evidence to try to see how participants would react to being told that the evidence points them to the crime. In Perillo and Kassin’s first experiment, they used 71 students at a university and had them write letters that another person was reading and see how fast they could do it. At the beginning, the participants were told to not hi the Alt. key or the computer would crash. However, in the course of doing this, the person pretending to run the experiment or what they called a “confederate” was to randomly crash the computer and immediately pretended to be mad saying the participant hit the key “many of which denied at first” (Perillo, Kassin). Then the confederate would throw in false incriminating evidence saying she “saw the participant hit the ALT key with the side of his or her finger” (Perillo, Kassin). After all of this the confederate would then “ripped a sheet of paper from a notepad and handwrote the following statement: “I hit the ALT key I wasn’t supposed to press and caused the program to crash. Data was lost. Session was terminated without credit” (Perillo, Kassin). Now whether the participants signed the paper or not is what they were looking for. The results of the first experiment showed that “43 of 71 (60.6%) participants confessed to pressing the forbidden ALT key, and 7 of 71 (9.9%) internalized a belief in their culpability” (Perillo, Kassin).
In the second experiment, Perillo did the same format at the experiment above however, instead of false incriminating evidence they used a bluff. The bluff was added after the computer crashed by saying they have “recorded all of their key strokes” and have a camera in the back recording” (Perillo, Kassin). The thought that the key stroke calculator and the camera would help prove them innocent, the majority of the participants confessed “22 of 38 (57.9%)” (Perillo, Kassin). The third experiment involved a sort of game show where a group of the participants were put in a room and had to answer questions. They were told if they cheated that it would be very bad for their scholar record. One group was put in a room and had no one attempt have them cheat. The other room used a confederate to act like they don’t know the answers and ask for help, whether the person answered or not was what was recorded. At the end the ones who didn’t respond were let go and the once who even responded with no were confronted and accused of cheating. They said they had a camera in the back and room recording the session and knew
everything. In one half of the people they used no bluff proof and the other half used the camera. “34 of 59 (57.6%) of participants confessed to collaborating with the confederate on an individual task” (Perillo, Kassin). In the three experiments Perillo and Kassin found them to almost replicate and prove that when entering false evidence or bluffs, an innocent person has a high chance of confessing.
As a result of Ford’s threatening interrogatories, the four suspects made a false confession, in which they stated that they committed the murder. The tight, dark room and the long time the interrogatories took made the four men subject to Ford’s psychological abuse and falsely confessed. Most of them said that they told him what he wanted to hear. The author Chapman (2013) argued that, “psychological research is applied to interrogation, the result can be that the officer already believes that the suspect committed the crime and is not likely to take no as an answer,” (p.162).
The Asch and Milgram’s experiment were not unethical in their methods of not informing the participant of the details surrounding the experiment and the unwarranted stress; their experiment portrayed the circumstances of real life situation surrounding the issues of obedience to authority and social influence. In life, we are not given the courtesy of knowledge when we are being manipulated or influenced to act or think a certain way, let us be honest here because if we did know people were watching and judging us most of us would do exactly as society sees moral, while that may sound good in ensuring that we always do the right thing that would not be true to the ways of our reality. Therefore, by not telling the participants the detail of the experiment and inflicting unwarranted stress Asch and Milgram’s were
In order to incriminate Danial Williams, Joseph Dick, Eric Wilson, and Derek Tice with the rape and murder of Michelle Moore-Bosko, Detectives Maureen Evans and Robert Ford conducted long, grueling interrogation sessions using many provocative and manipulative tactics. Throughout this process, Ford and Evans coerced the suspects into renegotiating their perception of the crime until an entirely new reality was created. This new reality evolved as the police elicited additional confessionary evidence to account for each new piece of physical evidence from the crime scene. Eventually, in an iterative process that had police editing their theories of the crime and then forcing the suspects to claim this new reality as their own, the reconciled reality of the crime became one that was consistent with both the criminal evidence and the suspects’ new perception. An analysis of empirical m...
Due to rising levels of danger along with the creation and utilization of new technology, the government of the twenty first century, are becoming more involved and protective similar to the government of Oceania in the book Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell. In the book Nineteen Eighty Four, the main character Winston Smith, commits acts that are not legal according to the government of Oceania. Winston commits crimes which include thinking bad things about the government of Oceania, or thought crime, plotting against the government of Oceania, and having sexual relations with a young woman named Julia. Eventually, Winston ends up getting caught by a hidden telescreen and two thought police informants. When Winston is caught, he is transported to a prison without being read rights, much less having any actual rights. While in prison Winston is deprived of food and sleep, received regular beatings, is brainwashed, and is tortured physically, mentally, and emotionally. This essay will show the reader what the modern day government of the United States of America does to its political prisoners and how this compares to the treatment of political prisoners in George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty Four.
The Central Park Jogger case is one of false confessions to a crime, with a little help from police, which the defendants did not commit. Evidence taken at the crime scene did exclude the defendants, however, because of videotaped confessions they were sentenced to prison for a crime they admitted to committing even though they did not. It was not until many years later did the original perpetrator step forward from prison to admit he was the one who committed the crime with evidence (DNA) and firsthand knowledge of the scene. The five original defendants were released from prison but until serving a lengthy term. There are cues that can be noticed when investigators are conducting preliminary interviews that have a very high rate of success in determining the guilt or innocence of an individual. Some of these cues may be verbal such as a rehearsed response (Kassin, 2005). Other types of cues may be nonverbal body language such as a slouching (Kassin, 2005).
Even those who should have a clear sense of the an interrogation, fail to see the coercion brought upon the suspect that might lead to a false confession, and once a confession has been made, false or true, detectives or police terminates their investigation that could have found potential evidence to exonerate them. Once a confession is obtained, police tend to ‘‘close’’ cases as solved and refuse to investigate other sources of evidence (Leo and Liu) which is why such a high number of innocent people still remain behind bars. Across samples, police-induced false confessions were evident in between 15 and 25% in cases, making it one of the likely leading causes of wrongful conviction (Leo and Liu), but still juries disregard this evidence! Unfortunately, more cases like Rivers are out there. According to the Washington Post, the National Registry ha logged 1,733 exonerating cases of false confession. In one case, a man by the name of Ricky Jackson spent four decades for a crime he did not commit, only to be exonerated by DNA evidence after 40 years. To emphasize, few states, if any at all, courts provides information to the jury regarding how to assess voluntariness, nor do
The act of interrogation has been around for thousands of years. From the Punic Wars to the war in Iraq, interrogating criminals, prisoners or military officers in order to receive advantageous information has been regularly used. These interrogation techniques can range from physical pain to emotional distress. Hitting an individual with a whip while they hang from a ceiling or excessively questioning them may seem like an ideal way to get them to reveal something, but in reality it is ineffective and . This is because even the most enduring individual can be made to admit anything under excruciating circumstances. In the Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights there is a provision (“no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself” ) which reflects a time-honored common principle that no person is bound to betray him or herself or can be forced to give incriminating evidence. This ideology of self-incrimination has been challenged heavily over the past s...
Many of today’s interrogation models being utilized in police investigations have an impact on false confessions. The model that has been in the public eye recently is the social psychological process model of interrogation known as the “The Reid Technique.” There are two alternatives used by the police today to replace the Reid Technique, one is the PEACE Model and the other is Cognitive Interviewing. These methods are not interrogation techniques like Reid but interview processes.
7% of group A said “yes” and 15% of group B said “Yes” to an item
Depending on what study is read, the incidence of false confession is less than 35 per year, up to 600 per year. That is a significant variance in range, but no matter how it is evaluated or what numbers are calculated, the fact remains that false confessions are a reality. Why would an innocent person confess to a crime that she did not commit? Are personal factors, such as age, education, and mental state, the primary reason for a suspect to confess? Are law enforcement officers and their interrogation techniques to blame for eliciting false confessions? Regardless of the stimuli that lead to false confessions, society and the justice system need to find a solution to prevent the subsequent aftermath.
According to “Sleep Deprivation and False Confessions” and “False Confessions to Police and their Relationship with Conduct Disorder, ADHD, and life adversity,” it tackles on the causes of false confessions and who is more prone to such factors. Based on “The Role of Deception” and “How the Police Generate False Confessions: An Inside Look at the Interrogation Room” by Trainum, James L, it focuses on the methods police interrogators use to coerce a false confession. Lastly, ways to prevent false confessions from recurring will be recommended through “Miranda Rights Comprehension in Young Adults with Specific Language Impairment,” “Miranda Rights and Wrongs: Matter of Justice,” and “Police-Induced Confessions: Risk Factors and Recommendations.” Due to these reasons, the modern justice system needs to be updated and enforced to avoid similar cases of coerced false
To prove the two hypothesis the researchers present the participants with a series of opportunities to cheat, but then surprise them with an additional series of cheating opportunities. To increase their interest in participating the contributors obtain $.10 for each flip of a coin, but only if the side up of the coin is “heads”. The participants have the opportunity of flip the coin 7, 10 or 13 times, the flipping of the coin happens privately, and they are told not to cheat. The researches then tried to prove the hypothesis in 4
Leo, R and Ofshe R. The Social Psychology of Police Interrogation: The Theory and Classification of True and False Confessions. 16 Studies in Law, Politics and Society 189,
Some people say that this is not a moral thing to do, and the evidence the police obtain from acts of deception should not be allowed to be used in court. But this should not be the case. If a person is not guilty then they would not have anything to confess to in the first place, regardless of what the police do during the interrogation. For example, in the case article, a woman was asked to write down something that she had previously said in the interrogation. After she does this the officer tells her that there is powder on the pen that detects gunpowder from a person’s hand. The officer then asks the women if she was okay with the technician looking at the pen. She said yes and once the technician looked at the pen he lied and told the women that the powder had detected gun residue, even though there was nothing on the pen in the first place. This was done to make it seem like the police had evidence on the women for the crime, even though they did not. She ended up confessing to the crime once she believed that the police could use this “evidence” to incriminate her for the crime. If the police could not have done this deception, they may never have found evidence for the crime. The girl could have just pleaded the fifth and if the police had nothing on her, they would have had to let her go. This is just one example of how police deception is a really effective way of getting evidence on a crime. Even though the officers are lying about having evidence, it is for a greater cause. If the girl had really not done anything wrong, she should not have been afraid when the technician said that the pen tested positive for the residue. She would have just told them that that was impossible because she was not guilty and not involved in the crime what so ever. But some people may say that deception should not be used because it messes with people’s heads. A person may plead guilty
The experiment was designed to see if people would commit morally questionable acts just because someone with authority asked them to. The first deceptive part of the experiment was the experiment description itself. The volunteers were told that they would be experimenting how punishment affects memory, not about their willingness to commit acts that are morally questionable. The experiment involved three people. “the experimenter”, a volunteer, and an actor pretending to be another volunteer. Both “volunteers” were given a slip of paper which both read