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1. BRIEFLY describe what happened in the Central Park Jogger case (2 points) In 1989, a female jogger was beaten, raped, and then left to die in Central Park (Kassin, 2005). The police arrested 5 boys from age 14-16 years old and of African American or Hispanic descent. The police induced confessions from these five boys and they were convicted for the crime. However, 13 years later, a man named Matias Reyes confessed voluntarily to committing the crime and DNA evidence proved his confession to be the truth. This case represents the problem of wrongful convictions that plague the justice system. 2. What verbal cues, nonverbal cues, and behavioral attitudes are investigators directed to attend to by Inbau, Reid, Buckley, and Jane? How accurate do they claim investigators can be if they attend to these cues? (3 points) According to Inbau, Reid, Buckley, and Jane the verbal cues that investigators are directed to attend to include qualified or rehearsed responses to questions (As cited by Kassin, 2005). The nonverbal cues can include slouching, frozen posture, and gaze aversion. The behavioral cues may include being guarded, unconcerned, or anxious. In attending to these cues, investigators can be trained to achieve an 85% accuracy level in judging truth and deception. 3. Summarize the laboratory research on people’s performance in detecting deception (3 points) Research has been unable to support claims that individuals are able to achieve higher than average levels of performance when judging or detecting truth and deception (Kassin, 2005). From the experiments conducted, most individuals were shown to perform not better than at a level of chance. The training programs used were only shown to produce small improvements which were... ... middle of paper ... ...ons can be useful in many areas. These areas can include questions that may be raised about whether a suspect was read their rights and the rights were waived (Kassin, 2005). Also the recorded account could show whether the interrogators used physical intimidation, if the suspect was cooperative or not, or if any threats or promises were implied. Also, the recording could provide whether the details of the confession were from the suspect or the police. All of these issues are resolvable with a videotaped account of interrogations, and they would also increase the fact-finding accuracy of the juries and judges in the trial. References Kassin, S. (2005). On the psychology of confessions: Does innocence put innocents at risk? American Psychologist, 60(3), 215-228. Retrieved from http://undergrad.floridatechonline.com/Courses/PSY3100/Critical_Reading_Kassin.pdf
After reviewing the article “Inside Interrogation: The Lie, The Bluff, and False Confessions”, it became very evident the huge problem with interrogations and false confessions in the criminal justice system is with false confession. Jennifer T. Perillo and Saul M. Kassin crafted three distinct experiments to try and better understand false confessions and how trues the actual numbers in real life are. What Perillo and Kassin were trying to prove is that “the bluff technique should elicit confessions from perpetrators but not from innocents” (Perillo, Kassin 2010). What is called the “Bluff Technique” is an interrogation technique that uses a sort of threat or hint that there is certain proof that a person will think is more of a promise for
In July of 2008, one of the biggest crime cases devastated the United States nation-wide. The death of Caylee Anthony, a two year old baby, became the most popular topic in a brief amount of time. Caylee’s mother, Casey Anthony, became the main suspect after the child supposedly was kidnapped and went missing. To this day, the Casey Anthony case shocks me because justice, in my opinion, wasn’t served. I feel as if the criminal conviction system became somewhat corrupted in this case. The entire nation, including the court system, knew that Casey Anthony was behind this criminal act, but yet she escaped all charges. I chose this case not only because it’s debatable, but also to help state the obvious, this case was handled the wrong way. Clearly the legal system was biased, which worked in Casey Anthony’s favor, freeing a murderer.
McCann, Joseph. “A Conceptual Framework for Identifying Various Types of Confessions.” Behavioral Sciences and the Law 16 (1998): 441-453. Web. 8 January 2014.
One of the last types of ways investigators are coached to detect deception is in the behavioral attitudes of a person being interviewed such as being unconcerned or over anxious (Kassin, 2005). The success rate of looking for these cues are very successful in telling if an individual is being deceitful and has surpassed any laboratory tests conducted on the subject. The laboratory test however did reveal some interesting facts. The research showed that people who had training and experience did not score better than the control group who received no training. In fact all individuals scored at the chance level with the people who had training scored just above chance or at the chance level. To check if special training in the detection of deception was more accurate a study ...
Even those who should have a clear sense of the an interrogation, fail to see the coercion brought upon the suspect that might lead to a false confession, and once a confession has been made, false or true, detectives or police terminates their investigation that could have found potential evidence to exonerate them. Once a confession is obtained, police tend to ‘‘close’’ cases as solved and refuse to investigate other sources of evidence (Leo and Liu) which is why such a high number of innocent people still remain behind bars. Across samples, police-induced false confessions were evident in between 15 and 25% in cases, making it one of the likely leading causes of wrongful conviction (Leo and Liu), but still juries disregard this evidence! Unfortunately, more cases like Rivers are out there. According to the Washington Post, the National Registry ha logged 1,733 exonerating cases of false confession. In one case, a man by the name of Ricky Jackson spent four decades for a crime he did not commit, only to be exonerated by DNA evidence after 40 years. To emphasize, few states, if any at all, courts provides information to the jury regarding how to assess voluntariness, nor do
Depending on what study is read, the incidence of false confession is less than 35 per year, up to 600 per year. That is a significant variance in range, but no matter how it is evaluated or what numbers are calculated, the fact remains that false confessions are a reality. Why would an innocent person confess to a crime that she did not commit? Are personal factors, such as age, education, and mental state, the primary reason for a suspect to confess? Are law enforcement officers and their interrogation techniques to blame for eliciting false confessions? Regardless of the stimuli that lead to false confessions, society and the justice system need to find a solution to prevent the subsequent aftermath.
Many of today’s interrogation models being utilized in police investigations have an impact on false confessions. The model that has been in the public eye recently is the social psychological process model of interrogation known as the “The Reid Technique.” There are two alternatives used by the police today to replace the Reid Technique, one is the PEACE Model and the other is Cognitive Interviewing. These methods are not interrogation techniques like Reid but interview processes.
Valentine, T., & Maras, K. (2011). The effect of cross-examination on the accuracy of adult eyewitness testimony. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25, 554-561. doi: 10.1002/acp.1768
To show an unbiased and educated examination of the five cases involving questionable interrogations, I will give information on the crime that occurred, the problems with the interrogations and other evidence, who is at fault for problems within the case, how the defendant was cleared (if he was), and the compensation and future changes that were a direct response to these cases provided that they occurred or are in the process of occurring. The five cases that I will examine involve the accused: George Allen, Hunter Johnson, Peter Reilly, Michael Crowe, and Reggie Clemons. Each case is significantly different yet showcases many acts of injustice within the justice system.
Psychological research shows, a witness's memory of details during the commission of a crime, has a high probability of containing significant errors. In response to these findings, the question is should witness testimony still be permissible in a court of law? Obviously, the answer to this question is an important one and is debatable. Consequently, what we know is many innocent people go to jail due to eyewitness misidentification. Therefore, it is imperative that all defense attorneys thoroughly evaluate the validity of eyewitness recollection events. Any defense attorney who does anything less is ignoring the findings of the psychological community and its’ study of how the brain functions. As a result, an intense analysis of an
Grubin, D., & Madsen, L. (2005). Lie detection and the polygraph: A historical review. Journal
Walsh, James, and Dan Browning. "Presumed Guilty Until Proved Innocent." Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN). 23 Jul 2000: A1+. SIRS Issues Researcher.
The reliability of eyewitness testimony has become a popular research topic in applied and social psychology since Loftus and Palmer’s study in 1974 (see Steblay, 1997; Wright & Loftus, 1998; Deffenbacher, Bornstein, Penrod, & McGorty, for reviews). Participants viewed videos or slides of traffic accidents (Loftus & Palmer, 1974) or a criminal act (Roediger, Jacoby, McDermott, 1996; Cutler, Penrod, & Martens, 1987) and afterwards were asked several questions about what they had just seen. The manipulation in studies was that the researchers did not ask the same question to all participant, but instead changed the wording of one critical detail in the question. In Loftus and Palmer’s study, some of the subjects were asked “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”, while other subjects were asked the same question with the verbs smashed, collided, bumped and contacted instead of the verb hit. Loftus and Palmer (1974) showed that changing a single verb induced the different participant groups to give different estimations of the car’s speed, and additionally to produce more false claims of having seen broken glass during later interrogation.
Valentine, T., Maras, K. (2011) “The effect of cross-examination on the accuracy of adult eyewitness testimony” Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25 (4), 554-661.
If we are to be truly innocent and humble beings, we must recognize our own innate guilt as human and accept it. If we do not, we will constantly be obsessed by our “state of apparent acquittals”. Kafka, Franz. A. The Trial. Trans.