You Have the Right to Remain Silent

A critical discussion of the role that false confessions play in the creation of a bias in the United
States Criminal Justice System

Caitlin McIlwain
Professor William Talbott
Honors 230C
8 December 2017
 Introduction

In Spring of 1989, a 28 year old white woman jogger was horrifically raped and left to

die in Central Park, New York. Before the jogger had even emerged from her coma (72 hours

later), police had extracted confessions from five black and Hispanic teenage boys whose ages

ranged from 14 to 16. According to Ken Kratz, a Wisconsin prosecutor made famous by his role

in the Steven Avery trials, “innocent people don’t confess”1 (Making a Murderer), so by that

logic, the five boys, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana Jr.,

and Kharey Wise, who confessed to the sexual assault of Trisha Meili, were guilty. Case closed

(Burns 2012).

Not necessarily. 13 years later, in 2002, Mathias Reyes an inmate at the Auburn

Correctional Facility in Upstate New York, admitted to a fellow inmate, Kharey Wise, that he

had raped Meili. His detailed and corroborated account of the event coupled with DNA evidence

confirmed that he was the rapist, and the convictions of the Central Park Five were then vacated.

It is important to note that the evidence that most effectively connected the Central Park

Five to the case was their individual confessions. Without these, we can speculate that the case

would have taken a much different turn. So why did these boys confess if they truly did not

commit this highly publicized and horrific crime?

Multiple elements in the police interrogation of the boys proved to be coercive but

ultimately successful in extracting confessions. The first element of the interrogations related to

their length. The defendants, young teenage boys, had been in custody and interrogated on and

off for 14 to 30 hours and without the presence of an attorney or a guardian. After such a

significant amount of time alone, a person can lose perspective, and later hope, suggesting that

1
Ken Kratz was the primary prosecutor in the Teresa Halbach murder case, where defendant Brendan Dassey confessed to the
rape, murder, and mutilation of Teresa Halbach. (Episode 8 of Making a Murderer)
an interrogation of this length breaks down a suspect and forces them to confess as a way to stop

the offensive of questions.

But the length of the interrogation was only augmented by the second, and perhaps most

coercive factor of the interrogation: the police lied to the suspects to scare them into a

confession. The boys were told that there was evidence that linked them to the case; specifically,

the police reported that “hairs linked them to the victim’s body, which turned out to be false”

(Cassel 2002). According to Cassel, the suspect can, through repetition, time and isolation, be

induced by the investigator to believe the lies that they are told during an interrogation. Studies

show that some people who falsely confess do so because they internalize the repeated

suggestions and scenarios of questioners (Cassel 2002). Because a simple confession of “I did it”

is not enough for a conviction in the court of law, the police made suggestions to the boys that

they would later absorb into their stories2, creating a fictional narrative of the events of that

spring night in 1989.

The tipping point came when each boy was told that they were being implicated in the

crime by the others, which was initially false. Faced with a classic prisoner’s dilemma, each boy

supressed his claims of innocence and began to tell a non cohesive story about the night that he

was arrested, drawing from suggestions made by police over the course of the interrogation.

Each story was riddled with inconsistencies3, and none of the boys ever admitted to having

sexual intercourse with Meili –their confessions implicated them in mismatched roles around the

2
For example, Kharey Wise initially said the jogger's head injuries were the result of being punched; after prompting, he said the
injuries were caused by a rock; moments later, the rock turned to bricks. Mr. Wise said he was with a friend named Al; suddenly
Al vanished and was replaced by an Eddie. The investigators took Kharey Wise to the crime scene before his videotaped
statement, and the prosecutor showed him pictures of the victim. Those actions made it difficult to tell what he knew on his own,
further diminishing the probative value of his subsequent confession (Burns 2012).
3
Kharey Wise and Kevin Richardson were taken to the park and separately asked to point to the attack site, and they pointed in
different directions. Antron McCray said the jogger wore blue shorts and a T-shirt; she wore long black tights and a long-sleeve
jersey. Kharey Wise said the jogger and her clothes were cut with a knife but there were no knife cuts. Kevin Richardson did not
seem to know the victim bled, but she bled profusely (Burns 2012)
rape itself, that not only disagreed with the police’s knowledge of the crime but also conflicted

with witness reports (Burns 2012). But, in the USCJS, a confession can even override strong

physical evidence and inconsistencies like those presented in the Central Park Five’s narrative of

Meili’s assault (Cassel 2002). The jury is plagued by the institutionalized belief that a confession

is the same as guilt, and this leads to an exaggerated conviction rate, where innocent people are

convicted too frequently based on their (false) confession (Drizin and Leo 2005).

We can now conclusively state that innocent people do, in fact, confess, referring to the

case of the Central Park Jogger as a motivating example. But how often does this happen, and

what is the likelihood that a false confession will result in conviction? In this paper, I will first

discuss, in statistical and probabilistic terms, the relevance of this bias in the USCJS and the

likelihood of innocent people who give false confessions to receive a guilty verdict versus those

who did not confess. I will then critically evaluate why this is the case, analyzing how false

confessions are obtained through psychological coercion and deceit. This will lead to a

discussion on proposed solutions to the problem of innocent people falsely confessing, leading to

their subsequent conviction. It is the goal of this paper to thoroughly discuss how false

confessions bias the USCJS with the hope that this institutionalized bias will be ameliorated in

the near future through the policy amendments that I propose.

A Probabilistic Discussion of False Confessions and Conviction

I will first illustrate that false confessions are more common than once believed (certainly

more common than Ken Kratz would suggest), and that the Central Park Jogger case is not an

inconsistency in this field.

One of the most accurate ways to prove that a confession is false is to examine the

statistical evidence on exonerations. This is because an exoneration proves beyond a reasonable

doubt that a person is not guilty, and thus if the exoneree confessed as part of their initial

conviction, this confession is false (for greater proof that a confession is false, we turn to DNA

evidence and exonerations). According to the National Registry of Exonerations, there have been

2,127 exonerations as of November 26th, 2017. Within the total number of people exonerated, the

database calculated that about 12% of exonerees gave a false confession (255 people out of

2,127) (see Appendix 1) (“Percent Exonerations Contributing Factors By Crime”). These false

confessions were most likely to occur in cases of homicide, as 70% of exonerations with false

confessions are murder cases4 (“Percent Exonerations Contributing Factors By Crime”). The

percentage of exonerees who gave false confessions for homicide cases only increases when we

look at the statistics for just DNA exonerations: more than two-thirds of the DNA-cleared

homicide cases documented by the Innocence Project were caused by false confessions. In a

study conducted by the Innocence Project in 2016, there were 337 post-conviction DNA

exonerations in the US (meaning that 337 convictions were overturned by the emergence of

DNA evidence). Among these, 28% of innocent defendants made false confessions5. Ultimately

this statistical evidence suggests that exonerations of false confessors are more likely to occur in

the presence of DNA evidence (or unassailable evidence). This is because the jury and the

prosecution regards a confession as synonymous to guilt; physical evidence of innocence is the

best method of overcoming a false confession.

Based on these statistics, it is important for us to ask how relevant this problem of false

confessions really is. Given Dr. Michael Risinger’s6 conservative minimum factual innocence

4
This can be summarized by a simple probability: P(confession | innocent & crime is murder) > P(confession | innocent & crime
is not murder).
5
When the data set is narrowed to look specifically at minors, 65% of the defendants (who were minors at the time of conviction)
who were exonerated had made a false confession (“Brendan Dassey’s Confession Highlights Importance of Recording
Interrogations”). According to the Innocence Project, suggestibility, obedience to authority and immature decision-making
abilities make juveniles particularly susceptible to interrogations designed to elicit confessions from adults.
6
Risinger 2007
rate of 3.3%, and the US Justice Bureau of Statistics estimate of 2,220,300 people incarcerated,

we can conservatively estimate that about 73,270 people who are currently in jail are innocent.

Using the statistic that 12% of all exonerees falsely confessed, there are at least 8,792 people

who are currently in jail that gave a false confession to police (“Percent Exonerations

Contributing Factors by Crime”).7 Another database suggests that approximately 27% of the total

number of exoneration cases involved a false confession, which would mean that nearly 20,000

innocent people currently in jail gave a false confession (False Confessions Inc., 2014). While

the range of potential innocent people in jail who falsely confessed is wide, it still establishes,

beyond reasonable doubt, that many innocent people do confess.

But how likely is someone who confesses actually convicted? Answering this question

will show that a confession proves fatal in the USCJS. A study conducted by Professors Scott

Drizin and Richard Leo in 2005 establishes an estimate for a rate of conviction for people with

confessions versus those without. They found that more than four-fifths (81%) of the innocent

defendants who confessed and chose to take their case to trial were wrongfully convicted

“beyond a reasonable doubt” even though their confession was ultimately demonstrated to be

false (Drizin and Leo 2005)8. Thus, the factually innocent defendant who falsely confessed and

took his case to trial was approximately four times more likely to be convicted than acquitted,

proving that a confession is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that can be obtained. This

means that the probability of conviction given a confession, no matter if it is true or false is

significantly higher than the probability of conviction given no confession.

Factors that lead to False Confession and Conviction

7
This estimate is extremely conservative- I used the minimum rate of factual innocence established by Risinger, and also used
the false confession rate based only on those who have been exonerated. There are likely a larger number of people in jail who
falsely confessed whose cases have been undiscovered. It is extremely hard to prove a confession is false.
8
P(guilty verdict | confession & innocent) >> P(guilty verdict | no confession & innocent)
 In the USCJS the Reid Technique is considered, by prosecutors, as the gold standard for

interviews and interrogations based simply on its high rate of success in extracting confessions,

regardless of whether they are true or false. The court requires that a confession be voluntary,

trustworthy, and in compliance with the Miranda ruling (Nesterak 2014). This has subsequently

been adopted as the goal of the Reid Technique9.

The Reid Technique has three phases, the first is called Fact Analysis, this is followed by

a non-accusatory Behavior Analysis interview, and concluded with the Reid Nine Steps of

Interrogation (Jayne 1999). This interview and interrogation process is widely criticized by many

western countries as being a “guilt-presumptive, confrontational, psychologically manipulative

procedure whose purpose is to extract a confession”, according to the Alberta, Canada Provincial

Court Judge, Mike Dinkel (Quan 2012). In this section of the paper I will discuss the reasoning

for the controversy over the Reid Technique by focusing on how the Reid Nine Steps of

Interrogation are psychologically demanding to the point of coercion, similar to previous

techniques of violence that were outlawed.

According to the President of John E. Reid and Associates, Joseph Buckley, the

interrogation stage of the Reid Technique occurs only after the case facts have been developed,

analyzed, and investigated, and after all possible suspects have been interviewed (Jayne 1999). It

is important to make a distinction here between interviews and interrogations: interviews are

primarily information-gathering sessions with a victim or witness, and an interrogation is an

accusatory question and answer session held with the suspect, where the investigator tells the

suspect that there is no doubt that they are guilty (Jayne 1999).

In the Reid Interrogation technique, there are nine stages: the positive confrontation,

9
Note that the goal of the Reid Technique is to elicit a believable confession using the assumption that anyone who confesses is
guilty.
theme development, handling denials, overcoming objections, procurement and retention of

suspect’s attention, handling the suspect’s passive mood, presenting an alternative question,

having the suspect orally relate various details of the offense, and converting an oral confession

to a written confession (Jayne 1999)10. Dr. Richard Ofshe, a social psychologist at the University

of California, Berkley condensed this nine stage interrogation technique into two parts: eliciting

the first admission (steps one through seven), and obtaining the post confession narrative (steps

eight and nine) (John E. Reid & Associates, 2000). He believes that the Reid Interrogation

technique has evolved into a method that breaks a suspect down11 using psychological challenges

and lies that are aimed at accomplishing the following: to convince the suspect that there is no

doubt that they committed the crime, and to make the suspect feel trapped and helpless because

they are told they cannot leave until they confess. Often interrogators use a psychological tactic

when their suspects repeatedly resist confession by suggesting to the suspect that their memory is

suppressing bad thoughts (Shaw 2017). In the lengthy and controversial interrogation of Karen

Boes, a mother accused of killing her daughter in a house fire, Karen continues to deny

involvement in the crime, prompting the interrogator to respond by saying: “either that or you

don’t want to believe that right now... There are some things that we do that our bad mind causes

us to do that our good minds would never accept” (Shaw 2017).

Once a suspect becomes less adamant about their claims of innocence, they have entered

the stage of helplessness that allows the investigator to obtain the first admission of guilt. They

do this by further exposing to the suspect the unreliability of their memory, suggesting that there

is evidence connecting the suspect to the crime (even if this is untrue) and that a confession will

10
The last two stages are meant to allow the investigator to transform the admission into a legally acceptable confession
11
Professor of Law and Psychology at the University of San Francisco, Richard Leo, would agree, suggesting that the Reid
Technique has come to mean that “you isolate somebody and then you accuse them. Cut off their denials, confront them with real
or made-up evidence, then present minimizing scenarios—suggest that if you confess, it’s either not a crime, or it's not that
serious” (Kazdin 2016).
result in a reduced sentence. It is important to note that lying to a suspect does not make a

confession inadmissible in court –an investigator can tell the suspect that they have evidence that

proves their involvement in the crime (Frazier v. Cupp 394 US 731 (1969)) (John E. Reid &

Associates, 2000)12. They can also tell the suspect that they will receive a reduced sentence if

they confess, encouraging them to rationalize their outcome13 (State v. Nunn 212 Ore. 546, 321

P.2d 356 (1958) (John E. Reid & Associates, 2000). Lying to a suspect is meant to scare the

suspect into a confession; according to Meissner, a guilty (or innocent) suspect’s perception of

evidence against them is a strong reason why someone would confess14 (Meissner 2012, p.27). In

this case, p(confession | lied to) > p(confession | lied to). This probability holds regardless of

whether the suspect is innocent or guilty.

After the initial admission of guilt is received, then, in accordance with the latter half of

the Reid Technique and Ofshe’s condensed Reid interrogation method, the investigator will ask

probing questions that are littered with statements of reinforcement (as a method of establishing

a trusting relationship between the investigator and the suspect) to establish a believable

narrative of the events (John E. Reid & Associates). This post-confession narrative is crucial to

finding false confessions without DNA evidence15. According to several rulings by the US

Supreme Court, this technique produces confessions that are admissible. Only confessions that

are coerced or given without the requisite Miranda warnings (when relevant) are considered

12
“The fact that the police misrepresented the statements that [the suspected accomplice] had made is, while relevant,
insufficient in our view to make this otherwise voluntary confession inadmissible. These cases must be decided on the "totality of
circumstances.” Frazier v. Cupp 394 US 731 (1969)
13
“Even if a suspect. influenced perhaps by wishful thinking assumed that he would get more lenient treatment .[this] would not,
as a matter of law, make the confession inadmissible.” State v. Nunn 212 Ore. 546, 321 P.2d 356 (1958) (John E. Reid &
Associates, 2000)
14
As in the case of the Central Park Five, the suspects were told that there was evidence against them that they had committed
the crime, thus provoking a confession.
15
If a suspect’s statement conforms too closely to the police theory of how the crime was committed or if there are factual
inconsistencies between the suspect’s statements and the actual evidence, or if there are no details that can be used for the
independent corroboration of the confession then the confession is likely false.
inadmissible, but psychological coercion under the current rules does not automatically count as

coercion (Cassel 2002). In part, the Miranda ruling was a step in the Supreme Court’s campaign

to eliminate violence in interrogations16. But Miranda also ratified the “modern practice of in-

custody interrogation [which] is psychologically, rather than physically, oriented” (Possley and

Gross 2016). Thus, the Reid interrogation technique is extremely widespread throughout the

United States, and is often augmented by lengthy and psychologically demanding interrogations.

Now that I have detailed the most common interrogation strategy in the US, it is

important to establish why exactly innocent people confess under this technique.

Saul Kassin, Psychology Professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and

Williams College suggests, in an interview with journalist Evan Nesterak, that the Reid

interrogation technique, while eliciting voluntary confessions, creates coerced-compliant

confessions and coerced-internalized confessions (Nesterak 2014). The coerced compliant

confession can be represented by the Central Park Jogger case, where innocent people, who

know they are innocent become so stressed, so broken down, and so confused that they confess

fully knowing that they are innocent. In these cases, the suspects typically recant the confession

almost as soon as the pressure of the situation is lifted (Nesterak, 2014). A coerced internalized

confession occurs when an investigator successfully convinces an innocent suspect that they are

guilty of a crime that they do not remember committing. Both confessions are driven by the

psychologically coercive tactics consistent in the Reid technique.

The most notable factor in these innocent confessions is the confusion that innocent

suspects face before giving in to the investigator’s demand for a confession. According to the

16
This refers to the Supreme Court ruling over Brown vs. Mississippi in 1936 where three suspects had been tortured for days by
interrogators, resulting a confession. The Supreme Court excluded a confession from the prosecution based on the use of
violence. This paved the way for more modern interrogation techniques to be adopted- ones that focus on psychological
manipulation, not physical manipulation (Possley and Gross 2016).
Innocence Project, research shows that the confusion that factually innocent suspects face mostly

stems from the lies they are told by police (lies that there is physical evidence against the

suspect, lies that other suspects are implicating them in a crime, and lies that a confession will

reduce a sentence length). This confusion is intensified if the suspect has compromised reasoning

ability, which can be created if the interrogation is long and isolated, or can occur when the

suspect has mental limitations or limited education (Possley and Gross 2016). If investigators

repeat the statement that there is physical evidence linking the innocent suspect to the crime over

a long period of time, suspects begin to doubt their own memory. Lying to a suspect has proven

to be a sure way to convince the innocent suspect that they played a role in the crime (Meissner

2012, p. 27). As soon as this happens, an investigator can probe them with leading questions that

give an answer of “I don’t remember” instead of “no”. This opens the door for police to suggest

that the suspect committed the crime without remembering it (as in the case of Karen Boes17),

playing on the fallibility of human memory.

Interrogators further manipulate an innocent suspect by convincing them that they may

not remember details of the crime accurately, but assuring them that “we know you were there”,

so “just tell us”. Once a suspect begins to doubt their memory (usually through absorbing the

fallacies that investigators tell them about physical evidence), the interrogator moves on to the

aforementioned narrative about the unreliability of memory. As in the case of Karen Boes, the

interrogator convinced Boes that it is possible to completely forget an event, especially if it

carried negative connotations (Shaw 2017). This shows that the Reid Technique is

17
Karen Boes, mother to Robin Boes, falsely confessed to killing her daughter, Robin, in a house fire. In her interrogation, she
repeatedly denied involvement, saying that she “did not start that fire”. Boes agreed to take a polygraph test which came back as
“negative”. After a lengthy interrogation, Boes could not grapple with the results of the polygraph test (which is not considered
by scientists to be a fool proof way of determining fallacies). Boes began to doubt her own memories of the events, which at the
beginning of the interrogation were clear in her mind. She said things like “I don’t remember. I don’t know”, and later “I
apparently did it”. When the interviewer asked why she changed her mind, she said that the test told her that she did it (Shaw
2017).
psychologically manipulative, forcing innocent suspects to doubt the only evidence of innocence:

their memory.

According to Saul M. Kassin and his colleague at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal

Justice, lying has been scientifically proven to play a large role in eliciting a (false) confession.

In a series of laboratory experiments that were aimed at testing how lying (the bluff technique)

correlates with the confessions gained from innocent parties, subjects were instructed to

complete a task on a computer, then were falsely accused of a transgression such as crashing the

computer or collaborating with a colleague to improve their task performance. Notably, 43 of 71

subjects confessed that they had pressed a computer key they had been instructed to avoid when,

in fact, they had not. A second group that tested subject reactions to charges of cheating

produced nearly identical percentages of false confessions. In the second test group, “94% of

participants expressed some degree of certainty in their own innocence: 24 (73%) were

completely certain, 7 (21%) were somewhat to mostly certain; 2 (6%) said they were somewhat

certain of their guilt”. Most participants new they were innocent but most participants also

confessed. The most surprising finding is as follows: “75% of those who confessed in the bluff

condition explicitly cited the bluff as the reason for that decision” (Perillo and Kassin 2011).

Thus we can conclude that if an investigator lies to a suspect, there is a greater chance that they

will confess, even if they are innocent18.

Moreover, the Reid Technique tends to elicit false confessions (as well as true

confessions) because of its accusatory nature. It is not a fact-finding method of questioning, but

rather a method aimed at extracting a confession. Because the Reid Technique encourages

18
This experiment demonstrates the following probability: p(confession | innocent & lied to) >> p(confession | innocent & not
lied to).
investigators to assume the guilt of their suspect, the process of interrogation is often lengthy and

harsh, and incites the police officers to make accusatory statements in order to force the suspect

to confess. In fact, the Reid Technique suggests that police officers talk the majority of the

interrogation, and that the questions should be aimed at relating to the suspect, or garnering trust

from the suspect for the sole purpose of a confession (Jayne 1999). The questions are often

leading or forced-choice (not open ended), and prevent a suspect from telling their version of the

accused crime. It is in this way that the Reid Technique forces suspects down the train of thought

of the police officers, preventing them from straying too far from the investigator’s storyline.

The forced-choice and leading questions are meant to combat the recurring denials that police

officers hear, and after a lengthy interrogation of these type of questions questions, a suspect can

be broken down mentally, and coerced into a confession (Snook 2010, p. 217).

Thus we can conclude that p(confession | innocent & Reid Technique is used) >>

p(confession | innocent & cognitive interview technique19 is used). As was discussed, this

probability is significant because lying and psychological coercion, both tactics in the Reid

Technique, play a substantial role in eliciting a confession.

Proposals Aimed at Reducing the Number of False Confessions

In the current political climate, these aforementioned issues that produce false

confessions are under severe scrutiny. While many proposals could be derived to ameliorate the

issues presented in this paper, I will propose a reform that is aimed at decreasing the number of

false confessions through amending the interrogation technique used. I will then counter this by

suggesting that decreasing the number of false confessions could also decrease the number of

true confessions. I will conclude with the rebuttal that my proposal meets a certain standard of

19
This will be discussed in detail in the following section. In this paper, the cognitive interview technique that we will use is the
PEACE Method.
improvement, signifying that it is worthwhile.

My reform is twofold but is based on the idea that in order to decrease the number of

false confessions, the US should adopt elements of the current interrogation method used in the

UK: the PEACE Method (Preparation and Planning, Engage and Explain, Account, Closure and

Evaluate)20. The first element that the US should adopt relates to the interview-style of

interrogations. This has myriad benefits, as will be discussed, and should reduce the

psychological coercion that occurs in an interrogation. Moreover, the USCJS should not allow

investigators to falsely tell suspects that they have either physical evidence that connects the

suspect to the crime, or that the suspect has failed a polygraph test (if this is false). Both of these

reforms lead to a less psychologically coercive interrogation technique (based off of the PEACE

Method) that would likely reduce false positives21.

The first part of my reform is aimed at addressing some of the cognitive biases that

undermine an investigator’s interrogation. By reducing the likelihood that an investigator

prematurely determines the guilt of their suspect, the interrogation will have the opportunity to

become more of an extraction of facts than an accusation based on reasonable suspicion. This

approach is much less confrontational and psychologically manipulative than the Reid

Technique, and uses practices that resemble an interview rather than an interrogation. The

20
The stages of the PEACE method are described in detail as follows: 1. Preparation and Planning. Interviewers should create
a written interview plan, focusing on issues such as the objectives of the interview and the order of interviews. The plan should
include the time a suspect has been in custody, the topics to be covered, and points necessary to prove the offense or provide a
defense. 2. Engage and Explain. The interviewers should use active listening to engage the individual, and try to establish a
rapport with him or her. The interviewers should explain the reasons for the interview and its objectives. They should also
explain routines and expectations of the process and ultimately they should encourage the individual to state anything they
believe is relevant. 3. Account. The interviewers should use appropriate questions and active listening to obtain the interviewee’s
account of events. Questions should be short and aimed to help to clarify and expand the interviewee’s account. Multi-part
questions should generally be avoided due to possible confusion, and leading questions should be used only as a last resort.
4. Closure. This stage should be planned to avoid an abrupt end to the interview. Among other things, the interviewers should
summarize the person's account of events, allowing the person to make clarifications and ask questions.
5. Evaluate. The interviewers should evaluate the interview to (a) assess how the interviewee's account fits with the investigation
as a whole, (b) determine if further action is needed, and (c) reflect on their performance. (Orlando 2013)
21
p(confession | innocent & PEACE Method used) < p(confession |innocent & Reid Technique used)
PEACE method is based on the idea that until a trial determines guilt, a suspect is innocent until

proven guilty. Currently, the Reid Technique allows investigators to believe that a suspect is

guilty pre-trial, simply because the suspect is in their custody. This type of belief is augmented

by cognitive biases such as tunnel vision and confirmation bias which further encourage the

investigator, and later the prosecuting team, that the suspect held in custody for interrogation is

the factual offender, prompting them to ask relentless questions until they extract a confession

(Findley and Scott 2006). The PEACE method attempts to undermine this belief in guilt by

making the interrogation less of a psychologically draining and manipulative offensive, and more

like an interview that extracts facts. By taking this approach, the PEACE method discourages

police officials from asking multi-faceted or construed questions, and encourages the suspect to

recount his or her story of events without interruption, before being presented with

inconsistencies or contradictions between the story and the factual evidence obtained22. In fact,

the PEACE method does not even refer to the suspect as a suspect, it simply uses the term

“interviewee”. By changing the dynamic of the interrogation, and using transparency and

discussion as a way of building a rapport, police officials can obtain confessions without using

psychologically coercive and offensive techniques that leave suspects searching for a way out in

the form of a confession.

The second component of my proposal follows another key element that the PEACE

method upholds: investigators are prohibited from deceiving suspects during the interview

(Meissner 2012, p.11). I propose, based on this fact, that an investigator should not be allowed to

lie to suspects about two components: having physical proof of a suspect’s involvement in the

22
This is different from the Reid Technique, where suspects are subject to a monologue by the investigators before they are
allowed to speak. Notably, a suspect is not allowed to speak unless answering a question, which the investigator hopes is their
confession (Jayne 1999).
case, or about a failed polygraph test. As proven by Saul Kassin’s experiment, lying about the

knowledge of a suspect’s involvement plays a significant role in manipulation of a suspect

(Perillo and Kassin 2011). To counter the potential claim that prohibiting lying would drastically

decrease the number of people confessing, guilty and innocent, the investigators can still tell

suspects things like “let me help you so you can go home”, or “if you confess, you’ll likely

receive a reduced sentence”, even though these are still false statements. Kassin’s experiment

emphasizes that specifically lying about a suspect’s role in a crime23 does not just scare the

subject into confessing (which is the goal of interrogators who lie to their suspects), but tricks a

suspect into believing that their memory is not accurate. Over the course of a lengthy

interrogation, an isolated suspect exposed to the Reid Technique is more likely to absorb the

repeated fallacies they are told. However, if an innocent suspect is not told statements that cause

them to doubt the reliability of their own memory, they are more likely to believe in their own

innocence with certainty and they will not be as easily manipulated into confessing.

This element of my proposal draws from the cognitive interview process (akin to the

PEACE Method) which is focused on memory enhancement, and not deceit. “A meta-analytic

review of the research on the cognitive interview found a large effect size (d = 0.87) for the

cognitive interview compared to the standard interview24 in terms of correctly recalled details”

(Snook 2010, p.223). This statistic can be explained by the fact that when lied to in an

interrogation, innocent suspects absorb the lies as fact, and are then less likely to correctly

remember details from the time of the crime. Thus, a proposal that prohibits lying will likely

decrease the number of false confessions and increase the extraction of facts (Meissner 2012, p.

23
This includes lying about evidence that links the suspect to the crime scene, or lying about supposed accomplices implicating
the suspect in the crime.
24
This standard interview relates to the Reid Technique.
25).

This type of proposal completely unravels the current state of interrogation in the

criminal justice system. The Reid Technique has been routinely used and upheld as a successful

method and therefore cannot be so easily taken apart. The most significant reason for objection

stems from the belief that a softer interrogation would lead to less confessions25. We also know

for a fact that the Reid Technique works in extracting true confessions26 – why fix something

that seems to achieve its goal: extracting a confession? There are valid and persuasive reasons

why these proposals have not been implemented to date, with the most prominent objections

coming from law enforcement and prosecutors.

Law enforcement and detectives rely on the Reid Technique as a method for extracting a

confession. Without it, investigators argue, there would be valid reasons to believe that a

confession (true or false) would never be obtained in a given case, leaving more cases open, and

without resolution. For police officers, having open and unsolved cases means the true

perpetrator is still immersed in society, potentially inflicting more crime and making it appear

that the police department is ineffective in making the community a safer space. Police officers

who are promoted based on their ability to close cases would unreservedly oppose an

interrogation system that would result in less confessions, and therefore less convictions. John E.

Reid and Associates themselves counter the PEACE model by suggesting that it severely limits

the investigator’s ability to solve cases. They cite Detective Superintendent Sturgeon of the

Police Service of Northern Ireland, who has many experiences with interrogations both in typical

law enforcement and terrorism-related investigations as a result of the Troubles (these

25
This is true, in the sense that the goal of softening interrogation techniques is to reduce the amount of confessions from
factually innocent suspects.
26
Janye 1999
investigations do not warrant the PEACE method). In 2006, Sturgeon states that stated that

“these legal restrictions on interrogation have made it impossible to secure a confession or

incriminating admission from a suspect.” (John E. Reid and Associates, 2000)27.

Law enforcement opposition to deposing the Reid Technique is only one side of the coin.

Prosecutors may also suggest that softening the interrogation structure and preventing

interrogators from lying about evidence or polygraph tests would fail to inflict the right amount

of pressure on the suspect to confess. A suspect’s perception of evidence against them is a strong

reason why someone would confess (Meissner 2012, p.27). Thus, without the ability to lie, and

subsequently add pressure to a suspect, the number of true and false confessions would decrease.

Recall that a confession is nearly synonymous with conviction, ergo it is obvious why a

prosecutor, who is evaluated based on the number of convictions they have ascertained, would

vehemently oppose a suggestion that decreases the number of confessions.

Finally, we grapple with an objection by defense attorneys: if lying to innocent suspects

plays such a large role in their confessions, then why not eliminate lying all together? With the

proposal at hand, I suggested that we eliminate the ability to lie about evidence and ‘failed

polygraph tests’ (tests that came back as positive), but this leaves the possibility to lie to a

suspect about a reduced sentence, or “going home after a confession”. Defense attorneys would

suggest that we could eliminate more false confessions by disallowing this type of lying as well.

As I will argue in the following section, we must seek a balance between reducing false

confessions and reducing the potential for confessions from guilty suspects.

Objections from the prosecution and law enforcement are rooted in this idea that

softening interrogation strategies would decrease not only false confessions but also true

27
http://www.reid.com/pdfs/peacearticle.pdf
confessions. We cannot design a foolproof interrogation that only eliminates false confessions,

and does not affect the rate of true confessions. Thus, we contend with the effects that this might

have on society: guilty people, who were interrogated, may not confess, and may go free (based

on the idea that confessions are synonymous with convictions). So why unravel the current state

of interrogation in the criminal justice system?

While there is substance to this objection, the hope is that it the majority of this decrease

in confessions would come from a reduction in the number of false confessions. This proposal

favors innocent people more than guilty people, suggesting remedies that address the most

common factors that make innocent people confess. It should be noted that innocent people and

guilty people confess for different reasons: as discussed, the Reid Technique is psychologically

coercive and succeeds in manipulating an innocent suspect into believing that their memory of

events is not true. The psychological coercion makes innocent people confess because they are

confused, while guilty people confess because the interrogators elicit fear. The goal of the

proposal is to decrease the amount of psychological coercion that confuses innocent suspects.

In addition, to address the objection that without lying there would be no pressure on a

guilty suspect to confess, and that the overall idea of the PEACE Method is not harsh enough to

obtain true confessions, I will discuss evidence that suggests that the PEACE Method works. In

England and Wales, roughly 50% of suspects confessed to their crimes before the introduction of

the PEACE Method (the interrogation method used before the PEACE Method was similar to the

Reid Technique). However, with the introduction of the PEACE Method, roughly 50% of

suspects still confessed to their crimes, suggesting that the PEACE Method is still effective in

extracting a confession (the primary objection of the prosecution and law enforcement). It should

be noted that suspects confess when subject to the Reid Technique at a rate of 50% in countries
that continue to use Reid (Snook 2010, p. 222).

No proposal is truly infallible – any amendment to reduce false confessions will reduce

true confessions also. In what appears to be a classic Romilists versus Paleyites debate, we are

torn between implementing a proposal that may make the conviction of the truly guilty more

difficult28 and maintaining our current system that knowingly extracts confessions from innocent

suspects (Risinger 2007). Romilists, like the prosecutors and law enforcement officers described

above, claim that convictions of innocent people are inevitable and are the social price of

maintaining sufficient criminal law enforcement. I argue that we can take steps to reduce this

social price as suggested by my proposal, with the goal of having only 5% of the innocent people

in jail convicted on the basis of a false confession. A confession, while a significant piece of

evidence, is not the only component used to convict a person. It certainly makes a conviction

more likely to occur, but a crime without a confession does not necessarily go unsolved. Since

false confessions play a significant role in convicting innocent people, we can attempt to

decrease the number of falsely convicted individuals by amending the techniques surrounding

interrogation. We must realize that a balance exists between having a system that convicts

innocent and guilty people at a high rate and a system that convicts much fewer innocent people,

but also fewer guilty people. I believe that my proposal will advocate for the innocent people

who are at risk of falsely confessing, and will hopefully lead to only 5% of innocent people in

jail for falsely confessing.

Conclusion

Thus, I conclude by restating the bias at hand: confessions derived from the Reid

technique send innocent people to jail. Over the course of this paper, I have established that

28
Thus decreasing the number of innocent people convicted
specific factors of the Reid technique make it psychologically coercive, playing on the

unreliability of the human mind. Innocent people in particular are much more susceptible to

falsely confessing under the Reid technique than under any other cognitive interrogative

approach, which only furthers the idea that the Reid method is exceptionally deceitful and

coercive. In order to fix this issue, I propose a two step reform that first, changes the narrative of

an interrogation, thereby reducing the pressure that investigators place on their suspects, and

second, prevents an investigator from telling specific lies to the suspect. These reforms should

reduce the psychological coercion and manipulative nature that is present in the Reid Technique,

and thereby reduce the number of false confessions. While all proposals to soften the Reid

technique come with the objection that softening the interrogation technique to decrease the

number of false confessions will also decrease the number of true positives, it is important to

note that something has to be done in the defense of the innocent defendant. With potentially

10,000 to 20,000 innocent people in jail who have falsely confessed, the current system is far

from moral. The Reid technique is not searching for justice, but simply searching for

convictions.
 Appendix 1

(“Exonerations Contributing Factors By Crime”, The National Registry of Exonerations)

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