Police Deception during Interrogation and Its Surprising Influence on Jurors'

[Joanne98]

by Krista D. Forrest & William Douglas Woody



Police deception raises important ethical and legal questions across a variety of constituents, particularly given several recent and highly publicized miscarriages of justice that resulted from false confessions, such as those involving Marty Tankleff, John Kogut, and the suspects in the Central Park Jogger cases (see Friedman, 2010; Innocence Project, 2010a; Hirschkorn, 2002, 2003, respectively). Inbau and colleagues (2001), authors of the Criminal Interrogations and Confessions manual, train police officers in the careful use of trickery and deception. In an additional volume, Jayne and Buckley (1999) go on to say "the use of trickery and deception is of paramount importance to the success of an interrogation" (p. 443).


The materials that follow review our recent study of jurors' perceptions and decisions in cases involving confessions and police deception during interrogation (Woody & Forrest, 2009) and provide additional updates from our ongoing research program. We briefly review the psychological and legal literature related to police deception in the form of false-evidence ploys, and then discuss our methodology and findings. We conclude with a series of concrete recommendations for litigators.

False-Evidence Ploys


One form of deception is the false-evidence ploy, a claim by police to have non-existent evidence that implicates the suspect (see Leo, 2008). A false-evidence ploy is a common police strategy, with 92% of over 630 police detectives from the United States and Canada reporting that they use false-evidence ploys during interrogation (Kassin, et al., 2007). Many forms of false-evidence ploys exist. Leo (2008) identified testimonial ploys (i.e., a claim to have eyewitness or video evidence), scientific ploys (i.e., a false claim to have DNA, footprint, or other scientific evidence), and demeanor ploys (i.e., a false claim that the suspect's behavior indicates guilt). False-evidence ploys raise particular concerns in the social science community because false-evidence ploys increase the likelihood of false confession in laboratory studies (see Kassin & Kiechel, 1996; Nash & Wade, 2009; Perillo & Kassin, 2010; Redlich & Goodman, 2003; Stewart, Woody, & Pulos, 2010) as well as within interrogations described in archival data (Gudjonsson, 2003; Leo & Ofshe, 1998). A recent review of the false confession literature concluded that false-evidence ploys "have been implicated in the vast majority of documented false confession cases" (Kassin et al., 2010, p. 12).


The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed confessions to be admitted to court after police use false-evidence ploys to induce suspects to confess (e.g., Frazier v. Cupp, 1969). Additionally, other courts have evaluated false-evidence ploys in several cases, and with some exceptions (discussed subsequently) courts ruled that the voluntariness of a confession was not compromised by the use of false-evidence ploys (see e.g., State v. Cobb, 1977 and State v. Jackson, 1983 for discussions of false-evidence ploys including fabricated fingerprints and fabricated bloodstains and eyewitnesses, respectively). Courts have recognized limits, however, due to excessive coercion or due to the form of fabricated evidence. For example, in Lynum v. Illinois (1963) police deceived the suspect by telling her that if she did not confess she would lose government benefits as well as custody of her children; the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the suspect's confession. Additionally, if the fabricated evidence could be mistaken for real evidence by the media, appellate courts, or the trial court (e.g., by being printed on official letterhead), courts have ruled that the confession was inadmissible (see e.g., Florida v. Cayward, 1989). These rulings have led legal scholars to argue for a variety of positions related to police deception ranging from eliminating police deception outside of severe circumstances (e.g., Paris, 1997) to avoiding deception prior to Miranda (Mosteller, 2007), to leaving current limits unchanged (e.g., Magid, 2001), to increasing the rigor of the limits on police deception (e.g., Slobogin, 1997, 2007; Thomas, 2007).


Despite the legal questions related to police deception, false-evidence ploys during interrogation are generally legal, and these ploys increase the likelihood of false confession. For any confession, if the suspect recants the confession and then goes to trial, the judge may hold a pre-trial hearing to determine whether the confession can be admitted into the courtroom (Kassin & Gudjonsson. 2004). If the judge admits the confession to trial, the next line of protection for the defendant is the jury.

Jurors, Confessions, and False-Evidence Ploys

http://www.astcweb.org/public/publication/article.cfm/1/22/6/Police-Deception-During-Interrogation-and-Influence-on-Jurors

[Old Codger]

1. IF

You lie to a police officer you are breaking the law, if they lie to you they are enforcing the law..... sounds like republican logic to me...