Interrogation Room

Research Paper: Why do innocent people confess in the interrogation room?

An accused is found guilty because of his/her own confession that he/she made in the interrogation room. He/She spends many years in jail without saying anything. However, another person comes forward and accepts responsibility for that same crime a few years later. As it turns out, the person who initially confessed to the crime was innocent. So, why did he/she confess to a crime he/she did not commit? To answer this question, one has to go inside the interrogation rooms of Canada. First of all, the interrogators tell the suspects that the police have evidence against them. Second, the interrogators ask

suggestive and leading questions that influence the suspects to believe that they are guilty. Finally, the confessions of the accused are obtained through coercion. Thus, there are three main reasons why innocent people confess to a crime: proof, suggestive questioning, and coercion.

The first technique that interrogators use to obtain a confession is that they go into an interrogation room already assuming that the suspect is guilty. He/She fabricates fake evidence against the accused in order to get a conviction. This procedure is best described in the words of Witt:

In the face of increasingly relentless interpersonal pressure, the suspect is pushed to

account for the purported evidence. By training, the interrogator interrupts any

denial or introduction of exculpatory evidence offered by the suspect (e.g., I wasn't

there, I was at my brother's house), and insists that the suspect explain the facts

(e.g., your fingerprints were on the gun). As the list of purported evidence grows,

wrongly accused suspects develop some theory of what is going on. Some guess

that someone has set them up by planting evidence. Others opine that they are

being railroaded by the policeÐ'--that the police have deliberately decided to

show false evidence to produce a false conviction. Both types of theory are based

on the suspect's partial acceptance of the interrogator's version of the facts: that the

evidence, though false, does exist. ("Review")

During this stage, the suspect might try to reject any evidence against him/her and

deny all charges. Hartwig, Granhag, and Vrij explain the disadvantage of the suspect's

denials for the interrogator: "Denials are unwanted as they put the interrogator in a

disadvantaged situation. The idea is that the more a denial is repeated, the more difficult

it will be for the interrogator to persuade the suspect to confess. The optimum way of

handling denials, therefore, is to negate them before they are voiced" ("Police"). The

interrogators try their best to turn down denials even before they are expressed because if

the suspect succeeds in denying, it will be impossible for the interrogator to get a

confession. As a result, the interrogator's job is to get a confession out of the suspect and

he/she could care less if it is obtained through false evidence.

The second technique interrogators use to obtain a confession is suggestive

questioning. During this stage, the interrogator asks leading questions that influence the

responses of the suspect. With this technique, they try to get the suspect to say what they

want them to say. This questioning technique is explained by Naish in a review of

Gudjonsson's book called The Psychology of Interrogations, Confessions, and

Testimony:

A sizeable portion of the book deals with the issue of suggestion and suggestibility,

both in the context of influencing witnesses and leading questions, and also

addressing the possibility that suggestible innocent people may be lead to believe

that they are in fact guilty. Within these topics Gudjonsson describes the

suggestibility scale that he has produced, for assessing what he terms "Interrogative

Suggestibility". Subjects scoring high on this measure are presumed to be those

likely to change their stories if an interrogation is mishandled. The author cites

research showing that "false confessors" tend to score high on this scale. These are

the people who make a conviction, but subsequently withdraw, claiming police

pressure for example, as a reason for their earlier admission. (127)

The author mentions in the review of Gudjonsson's work that some people are

pressured by the police during an interrogation. This type of technique is called coerced

internalized. The interviewer asks these types of questions to make the suspect

believe that he/she committed the crime: "So, where did you hide the knife after

killing him?" "Did anybody else help you bury the body in the backyard?" As more

leading questions are asked, suspects feel more pressured from the police to give an

answer and it is more likely that suspects will start to believe that they committed the

crime; henceforth, they will confess to a crime they did not commit.