False confessions are, understandably, of great concern to the American legal system. A false confession can lead to the wrongful imprisonment of an innocent individual, ensure the freedom of the true criminal, and prevent the victims from receiving the justice they deserve. While reading the text’s section on the subject, I was reminded of the case of Peter Reilly, an 18 year old living in a small Connecticut town who, after returning home from the local youth center, found his mother dead on the floor, her throat cut and her legs broken (Barthel, 1976). Reilly, despite initially claiming that he was innocent and that he had no memory of committing the crime, eventually came to believe that he did, in fact, kill his own mother, giving a full confession and even going as far to explicitly detail how he committed the murder (Toglia, Read, Ross, & Lindsay, 2010). Consequently, he was convicted of first-degree manslaughter and sentenced to six to sixteen years in prison (Spelhaug, n.d.).
From the outside, it seemed like an open and shut case. Just another psycho who snapped and killed someone. However, Reilly later recanted his confession, claiming that it was coerced, and two years later, independent evidence supported his claims, proving that he could not have committed the murder (Toglia et al., 2010). Reilly was eventually exonerated, but there was no way to undo what had already been done to him. This revelation is particularly concerning because not only did Reilly give a false confession which resulted in his conviction, but he also, at the time, truly believed that he had done it.
How does something like that even happen?
Well, a number of factors went into the making of this particular false confession. First of all, Reilly lived in a small town. He already knew and liked a number of the officers involved in the investigation and had even previously considered a career in law enforcement (O’Donohue & Levensky, 2004). He trusted them to look after his best interests, and the interrogator regularly exploited this trust, claiming that he was trying to help him, even as he railroaded him into a false confession (Berthal, 1976). Reilly was also young. Youth, in particular, are at risk of giving false confessions because they tend to be “immature, naively trusting of authority, acquiescent, and eager to please” (Leo, 2009).
After being taken into custody, Reilly, “was held at the police station overnight, subjected to an interrogation, and took a voluntary polygraph test, all without the presence of an attorney” (Spelhaug, n.d., para. 3) in the hopes that his actions would help demonstrate his innocence. (They did not.) Mirroring Bradley Page’s case, the officer conducting the interrogation used minimization and false incriminating evidence to elicit a confession from Reilly (Berthal, 1976; Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). Reilly was told that he had failed the lie detector test — untrue — and was, over the course of six hours, slowly convinced that he had committed the crime (Berthal, 1976). It would take quite a while to detail all of the manipulation and leading statements that went into making Reilly’s eventual confession, so I will let this excerpt from the interrogation (taken from Roesch, Zapf, and Hart’s (2009) discussion of the case) speak for itself:
Peter: The polygraph test is giving me some doubts right now. Disregarding the test, I don’t think I hurt my mother.
Det.: You’re so damned ashamed of last night that you’re trying to just block it out of your mind. […]
Peter: Would it definitely be me? Could it be someone else?
Det.: No way, not from these reactions [to the polygraph test].
The officers involved in the case were convinced that Reilly was guilty, and this presumption of guilt lead them to interrogate him in ways that confirmed their suspicions. As Hill, Memon, and McGeorge (2008) showed in their study, the confirmation bias can affect the questioning style of the interviewer, which can then lead to the suspect behaving and responding in ways that confirm their initial beliefs — a self-fulfilling prophecy. Lastly, Reilly was held at the station overnight, and prior to taking the polygraph test, he stated that he “hadn’t been to bed in almost thirty hours” (Barthel, 1976, p. 48). He amended this slightly, stating that he got an hour or two of sleep in the morning, but his later complaints of complete exhaustion emphasize the fact that he was suffering from sleep deprivation (Barthel, 1976; O’Donohue & Levensky, 2004). Physical exhaustion has been found to be a significant risk factor for police-induced false confessions, and sleep deprivation has been found to impair inhibitory control, reduce the individual’s ability to understand the consequence of their actions, and result in an increased susceptibility to coercion and the creation of false memories (Frenda, Berkowitz, Loftus, & Fenn, 2016; O’Donohue & Levensky, 2004).
It was a nightmare situation. The transcript of Peter Reilly’s interrogation reads like a Kafka novel. A teenager, whose mother has just been brutally murdered, is manipulated into believing that he was one who killed her. We, of course, are able to read about the case with the benefit of hindsight and the knowledge that he is innocent, but the officers involved in this tragedy had no such advantage. They were small town cops conducting a murder investigation — a challenge that they were not quite prepared to face. However, by understanding the circumstances that contributed to Peter Reilly’s false confession, we can improve police procedures in the future.
The best advice I can give to you personally, however, is to always, always get an attorney.
References
Barthel, J. (1976). A Death in Canaan. New York, NY: E.P. Dutton.
Frenda, S. J., Berkowitz, S. R., Loftus, E. F., & Fenn, K. M. (2016). Sleep deprivation and false confessions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,113(8), 2047-2050. doi:10.1073/pnas.1521518113
Hill, C., Memon, A., & McGeorge, P. (2008). The role of confirmation bias in suspect interviews: A systematic evaluation. Legal and Criminological Psychology,13(2), 357-371. doi:https://doi.org/10.1348/135532507X238682
Leo, R. A. (2009). False confessions: Causes, consequences, and implications. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law,37(3), 332-343.
O’Donohue, W., & Levensky, E. R. (2004). Handbook of forensic psychology: Resource for mental health and legal professionals. San Diego, CA: Elsevier.
Roesch, R., Zapf, P. A., & Hart, S. D. (2009). Forensic Psychology and Law. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Spelhaug, C. (n.d.). Peter Reilly. Retrieved from https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetailpre1989.aspx?caseid=268
Toglia, M. P., Read, J. D., Ross, D. F., & Lindsay, R. (2010). The Handbook of Eyewitness Psychology(Vol. 1). New York, NY: Routledge.
Tags: coercion, confirmation bias, false confessions, false incriminating evidence, internalized false confessions, investigative interview, minimization, Peter Reilly, sleep deprivation
Wow, what a sad story. I think we are just beginning to understand how much of an impact interrogation tactics can have on the validity of a witness’s story. The contributing factors of sleep deprivation, susceptibility to coercion from authority due to youth, exhaustion, etc. all play a role in how well a person is able to accurately recall a situation. It is so alarming that an innocent individual can be completely convinced that they actually committed a terrible crime. There is so much to be learned about how the human mind process events and information.
I find it surprising that we do not have more stringent standards when it comes to interviewing a witness. Many studies (https://search-proquest-com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/docview/763254233/fulltextPDF/C54C25CC50DD4400PQ/1?accountid=13158) have been conducted on the efficacy of different interview methods and the cognitive interview (CI) has been identified as a reliable method to achieving more accurate results than the method that is currently utilized by most law enforcement organizations (Memon, Meissner & Fraser, 2010). The protocol of the CI allows the interviewer to build rapport with the witness and walk through the events in a way that increases the amount of accurate information that is recalled by the witness.
I believe that if we are able to establish strict guidelines of how all interviews and interrogations are to be conducted (for suspects as well as witnesses) such as the CI, we will be able to attain more consistently reliable results. Peter Reilly’s story is a good reminder of how important it is to utilize scientifically proven, ethical interview techniques in order to attain a reliable account of what the witness experienced. Thank you for sharing this sobering reminder.
References:
Memon, A., Meissner, C. A., & Fraser, J. (2010). The cognitive interview: A meta-analytic review and study space analysis of the past 25 years. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 16(4), 340-372. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1037/a0020518