“It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”
These words were written by the English jurist William Blackstone back in 1790. In the centuries since, his words have often been repeated, but their meaning seems to have been lost on those who uphold the criminal justice system. This is evidenced by the shocking number of false confessions used by the police and prosecutors to convict innocent people of crimes in America.
In 1992, a young man named Juan Rivera was interrogated for four straight days by detectives in Lake County, Illinois. After they were done with him, he had confessed twice to the brutal rape and murder of an eleven-year-old girl. The first time he confessed, the statement was so factually inconsistent that the police forced him to make a second to clear up the story (Gross & Possley, 2016). A year later, he was convicted of the crime. After spending thirteen years in prison, DNA evidence proved that it was someone else who raped and murdered the young girl.
Even with the exculpatory DNA evidence, prosecutors re-tried Rivera and secured another conviction for the same crime. This is due to his false confession. Thankfully, in 2011, his conviction was vacated and the charged were dropped after the Illinois Supreme Court found his conviction to be “unjustified and cannot stand” (Gross & Possley, 2016).
It;s difficult to understand why an innocent person would ever confess to a crime they didn’t commit, but that’s usually because they don’t understand how police interrogations are performed. According to research, most police jurisdictions use the Reid technique when conducting interviews (Day & Marion, 2017). This technique includes “repeated accusations and statements of the certainty of the suspect’s guilt; not letting the suspect speak and repeatedly shutting down his or her denials; telling the suspect that there is irrefutable evidence against him or her (even if that evidence does not exist); minimization and justifications for the commission of the crime; and providing the suspect with a theme describing why and how he committed the crime.” (Day & Marion, 2017).
Police departments who use the Reid technique believe that they can use non-verbal behavior to discern whether someone is telling the truth or being deceptive (Orlando, 2019). This belief, however, is not founded in social psychology. Studies have repeatedly shown that the behavioral cues police use to determine truth or deceit are not accurate indicators of truthfulness (Day & Marion, 2017). Often, the combative and aggressive nature of the Reid technique will elicit a false confession instead of the truth.
To help curb the prevalence of these false confessions, it’s time to retire the Reid technique and ban it from being used in police interviews. To replace it, police need to be trained in the PEACE method deployed by police in Britain. The PEACE method allows interviewees to tell their story without interruption and without deceit from the interviewer (Orlando, 2019). Instead, they follow the five steps of PEACE:
1) Preparation and planning. Interviewers are trained to complete a detailed interview plan. This plan should include the amount of time the interviewee has been in custody, the topics to be covered, and the points necessary to either prove the interviewee’s innocence or guilt (Orlando, 2019).
2). Engage and explain. The interviewer is trained to use active listening so that they may engage with the interviewee (Orlando, 2019). The interviewers should explain the reasons for the interview and its objectives (Gavin, 2017).
3) Account. The interviewer should use active listening to get the full story from the interviewee’s point of view (Gavin, 2017). Any questions that the interviewee asks should be direct and free from confusing cop jargon, and they should avoid any leading questions if they can.
4) Closure. The end of the interview should be planned to avoid any abrupt changes (Orlando, 2019). At the end of the interview, the detective or police officer should accurately summarize the interviewee’s version of the event, and they should allow the interviewee to make any corrections to the story (Gavin, 2017).
5) Evaulate. This final step is three-fold. The interviewer should conclude the interview and evaluate how the interviewer’s story fit with the facts, whether any further action is needed, and their own performance in the interview (Gavin, 2017).
By using the PEACE method instead of the Reid technique, our criminal justice system can once again reflect the motto that each person is innocent until proven guilty. The non-combative and non-deceptive PEACE method will also help to avoid the types of false confessions that landed Juan Rivera in prison. Until a shift from the Reid technique is done across the board, then the American justice system is declaring that it is, in fact, better that ten innocents suffer than one guilty person go free.
References:
Day, D. M., & Marion, S. B. (2017). Applying social psychology to the Criminal Justice System. Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems, 287–320. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781071800591.n11
Gavin, D. C. (2020). Coming to PEACE with Police Interrogations: Abandoning the Reid Technique and Adopting the PEACE Method. Loyola Journal of Public Interest Law, 22(1), https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A677091177/AONE?u=cens39029&sid=googleScholar&xid=259008fa
Gross, S., & Possley, M. (2016). For 50 years, you’ve had “The right to remain silent.” The National Registry of Exonerations. https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/False-Confessions-.aspx
Orlando, J. (2019). Interrogation techniques. https://www.cga.ct.gov/2014/rpt/2014-R-0071.htm
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