Richard A. Leo

Police-Induced Confessions: Risk Factors and Recommendations

Recent DNA exonerations have shed light on the problem that people sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit. Drawing on police practices, laws concerning the admissibility of confession evidence, core principles of psychology, and forensic studies involving multiple methodologies, this White Paper summarizes what is known about police-induced confessions. In this review, we identify suspect characteristics (e.g., adolescence; intellectual disability; mental illness; and certain personality traits), interrogation tactics (e.g., excessive interrogation time; presentations of false evidence; and minimization), and the phenomenology of innocence (e.g., the tendency to waive Miranda rights) that influence confessions as well as their effects on judges and juries. This article concludes with a strong recommendation for the mandatory electronic recording of interrogations and considers other possibilities for the reform of interrogation practices and the protection of vulnerable suspect populations.

Police Interviewing and Interrogation: A Self-Report Survey of Police Practices and Beliefs

By questionnaire, 631 police investigators reported on their interrogation beliefs and practices—the first such survey ever conducted. Overall, participants estimated that they were 77% accurate at truth and lie detection, that 81% of suspects waive Miranda rights, that the mean length of interrogation is 1.6 hours, and that they elicit self-incriminating statements from 68% of suspects, 4.78% from innocents. Overall, 81% felt that interrogations should be recorded. As for self-reported usage of various interrogation tactics, the most common were to physically isolate suspects, identify contradictions in suspects’ accounts, establish rapport, confront suspects with evidence of their guilt, and appeal to self-interests. Results were discussed for their consistency with prior research, policy implications, and methodological shortcomings.

The Consequences of False Confessions: Deprivations of Liberty and Miscarriages of Justice in the Age of Psychological Interrogation

This article studies the precise impact that false confessions have on criminal defendants. Using evidence from sixty cases of police-induced false confessions in which the defendants confession is not supported by any physical or reliable inculpatory evidence, the authors explore the impact of unreliable confession evidence on criminal justice officials, the jurors and the criminal justice system. The article demonstrates that a trier of fact may be so biased by a false confession that it will likely favor prosecution and conviction despite strong evidence of innocence, often leading to a defendants incarceration and even death. Additionally, the article finds that, despite Miranda, contemporary law enforcement personnel continue to employ coercive and manipulative methods.To prevent miscarriages of justice caused by false confessions, prosecutors, judges, and juries should carefully scrutinize and evaluate a suspects post-admission narrative against the known facts of the crime. The article also asserts that mandatory video- or audio-recording of police interrogations would greatly decrease the risk of harm caused by false confessions by reducing the use of psychologically coercive interrogation methods.

Miranda's Revenge: Police Interrogation as a Confidence Game

This article explores the intricacies and mechanics of police interrogations in light of the Miranda decision. Legal scholars have yet to resolve the question of why suspects usually waive their rights and provide incriminating admissions and confessions. This article argues that the answer to this question lies in the nature of contemporary interrogation strategies. By developing sophisticated interrogation strategies based on manipulation, deception, and persuasion, the American police have replaced coercive pre-Miranda interrogation practices with manipulative and deceptive tactics that resemble the structure and sequence of a classic confidence game. The article concludes that Mirandas enduring legacy has been to transform police power inside the interrogation room without undermining its effectiveness.

The Impact of Miranda Revisited

The second of a two-part series, this article analyzes the long-term impact of the Courts ruling in Miranda v. Arizona on the behavior, attitudes, and culture of American police interrogators. The study is based on nine months of observation in an urban police department involving 122 interrogations and 45 detectives. It also relies on 60 videotaped custodial interrogations from two additional police departments. The article reviews the history and evolution of judicial attempts to regulate police interrogation methods through the constitutional law of criminal procedure. The author evaluates the desirability of Miranda as public policy and argues for the adoption of a constitutional rule that requires videotaping of custodial interrogations in all felony cases. Recording interrogations will provide greater credibility and legitimacy to police work, improve the quality of interrogation practices, and preserve the details of the interrogation for future review.

Rethinking the Study of Miscarriages of Justice: Developing a Criminology of Wrongful Conviction

This article provides a brief history of the study of miscarriages of justice in America. It analyzes the field of wrongful conviction scholarship as three distinct genres: the big-picture studies, the specialized-causes literature, and the true-crime genre. It also analyzes what these literatures have contributed to knowledge about miscarriages as well as their limitations. This article attempts to rethink the study of miscarriages of justice to systematically develop a more sophisticated, insightful, and generalizable criminology of wrongful conviction.

Police-Induced Confessions, Risk Factors and Recommendations: Looking Ahead

Reviewing the literature on police-induced confessions, we identified suspect characteristics and interrogation tactics that influence confessions and their effects on juries. We concluded with a call for the mandatory electronic recording of interrogations and a consideration of other possible reforms. The preceding commentaries make important substantive points that can lead us forward—on the effects of videotaping of interrogations on case dispositions; on the study of non-custodial methods, such as the controversial Mr. Big technique; and on an analysis of why confessions, once withdrawn, elicit such intractable responses compared to statements given by child and adult victims. Toward these ends, we hope that this issue provides a platform for future research aimed at improving the diagnostic value of confession evidence.

From False Confession to Wrongful Conviction: Seven Psychological Processes

A steadily increasing tide of literature has documented the existence and causes of false confession as well as the link between false confession and wrongful conviction of the innocent. This literature has primarily addressed three issues: the manner in which false confessions are generated by police interrogation, individual differences in susceptibility to interrogative influence, and the role false confessions have played in documented wrongful convictions of the innocent. Although the specific mechanisms through which interrogation tactics can induce false confessions, and through which they can exert enhanced influence on vulnerable individuals have been widely addressed in this literature, the processes through which false confessions, once obtained by police, may lead to wrongful conviction have remained largely unaddressed. This article addresses this gap in the literature, examining seven psychological processes linking false confession to wrongful conviction and failures of post-conviction relief: (1) powerful biasing effects of the confession itself, including incorporated “misleading specialized knowledge” (inside crime-relevant knowledge displayed by the suspect in the false confession, but acquired through outside sources (such as the interrogator) rather than in the course of the commission of the crime); (2) tunnel vision and confirmation biases, (3) motivational biases, (4) emotional influences on thinking and behavior; (5) institutional influences on evidence production and decision making; and inadequate context for evaluation of claims of innocence, including (6) inadequate or incorrect relevant knowledge, and (7) progressively constricting relevant evidence. We discuss reciprocal influences of these mechanisms and their biasing impact on the perceptions and behaviors of suspects, investigators, prosecution and defense attorneys, juries, and trial and appellate judges.

The Third Degree and the Origins of Psychological Interrogation in the United States

On August 1, 1930, Christine Colletti was murdered and left lying on the side of an abandoned road with five bullet wounds (e.g., Leo, 1994). Shortly after learning of his wife’s death the next day, Tony Colletti, an 18-year-old Cleveland resident, accompanied plainclothes detectives to police headquarters for what he was told would be routine questioning. During the car ride to the station, Detectives Corso and Welch told Colletti that they knew “what really happened,” instructing Colletti to “come clean” and tell them about the murder. Colletti responded, as he would continue to do many times over the next two days, that he did not know what the detectives were talking about, explaining that he had last seen his wife the night before and was as surprised as everyone else to learn of her murder.

Questioning the Relevance of Miranda in the Twenty-First Century

Is the Miranda v. Arizona decision a significant influence on the American criminal justice system in the twenty-first century? This article assesses two generations of legal research on Miranda in order to evaluate Mirandas effect on police interrogations, confessions and convictions, and the American public at large. The conclusion is that Miranda marginally limits interrogators from eliciting confessions, its influence on the criminal institution is overstated, and the decision provides few benefits to criminal suspects. The article also suggests that legal scholars devote more energy to the empirical study of police interrogations and confessions. Finally, this article argues for mandating video or audio recording of police interrogations in order to promote interrogation reform. Such electronic recordings would create an objective, comprehensive, and reviewable record of the interrogation for all parties. Additionally, recording interrogations would furnish scholars with valuable empirical data.