Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Kiota.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Police interviewing
techniques have been a controversial topic here and around the globe.
There have been countless high profile cases where someone has
been convicted but later exonerated and their interrogations questioned. In
(00:32):
New Zealand, Tana Pora was wrongfully convicted of murder and
rape largely based on a confession given during a lengthy
police interview, and more recently, Harry Matchett had his manslaughter
conviction quashed after a so called false confession. He spent
three years behind bars and is now seeking six hundred
(00:53):
thousand dollars in compensation. So why do people confess to
things they didn't do? Today on the Front Page, forensic
psychologist Rosie Mittweet joins us to discuss the psychology behind
police interviews. So tell me why might someone confess to
(01:16):
a crime that they actually didn't commit.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Well, first of all, let's think about what a confession is.
A confession in a police context and the criminal context
is when somebody basically admits to the crime. But you
can get different types of confessions. You can get a
full confession. You've accused me of X, and I've admitted it,
and I've got and tell you why and all the
(01:41):
details that you want. But then you can also get
tentative confessions. So I'm not telling you that I did it.
I'm not necessarily saying I didn't do it, but I
give some information that supports that I did it. So
I might say something like, well, if you say so,
(02:03):
then I did or I probably did it. So we've
got to be careful of that. A full confession or
a full admission versus a tentative one.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
And in both of those cases, I mean, we have
seen instances where people have you know, done a full
confession or a partial confession, or have said probably, you know,
I may have been there, I probably did that, but
in fact, years later, things like DNA has you know,
found out that that is completely not the case. Why
(02:36):
would someone say, yes, I did it.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
I think that probably in most cases in life, if
you think outside of the coult room context, I think
most of us have probably confessed to something that we
didn't do right. And a good example of that is
maybe back in the school days, when one of your
mates is getting into trouble for something and you just
(03:02):
take the fall for them, or you might protect a
sibling against your angry parents. Question then becomes like if
if you think, well, at one time, I did take
the blame for something where I knew I didn't do it,
or I apologized for something and I knew I wasn't
(03:23):
responsible for what I did, but I apologize. So if
you like that might be an attentative admission of sorts.
You can just sit back now and downplay that and think, oh, yeah,
it's something that I did, it was a long time ago,
and you just cast over it. But if you actually
stop in pouts and reflect on why did you do that?
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Right?
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Why did you take the blame for something that you
didn't do. Most typically, if you were to stop and think, well, yeah,
back at school, I took the fall for my maid,
Well you might say, well, I did it out of
loyalty to them than my friend, and I didn't want
them to get into trouble, whereas the consequences for me
were less were far less severe. Things like that can
(04:08):
be quite powerful drivers for why somebody might make an
admission to something that they didn't do. So there's basically
mechanisms that we think are why people make false confessions.
That's one of them that I've already spoken about, a
voluntary confession, voluntary admission, so you literally volunteer the admission.
(04:34):
But the other one is confessions can be or retracted.
Confessions can come about when people say that they were
placed under pressure and they received inducements.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
So that's the coercive confession or something.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Exactly exactly coercive. And now we used to think that
false or false admissions or unreliable admissions would only come
about by harsh interventions, harsh interviewing styles, so literally beating somebody,
(05:16):
assaulting them, depriving the depriving them of food, you know,
for days, electric shock treatment, all sorts of deprivation, and.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
That level of coercion.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Has high incidents of people agreeing to whatever's put to
them because they just can't take it anymore.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
And the belief is so they go.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Into it, denying the offending that as the pressure builds
and is sustained, they give up and they admit to
whatever's been put in front of them under the belief
that that pressure or that coercion will stop having done that.
And we used to think that it would be brutality
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that would essentially make people confess in that context. What
we now know, and we've known for a while now
through research and experience, is that it could be far
more subtle than that inducement being offered, a bribe being offered.
If you confess, this interview can stop and or you
(06:25):
can get to go home and be with your family.
Inducements like that can make people admit to all sorts
of things that later they retract.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
When it comes to I suppose police interviews, where does
the blind blur I guess when it comes to being
approachable and cordial versus being a bit too matey, when
does it blur into coerciveness?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
So to speak, Well, you use the word mate It
should never be matey police interviews.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Never matey.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
If the police have reason to believe that somebody is
a suspect for a crime, and that's the reason that
they're questioning you, it ought to never be matey. That
the police have their own processes and so they ought
to be in uniform. Your bill of rights need to
be read to you. You need to be very clear
(07:19):
on that, and part of that is you don't need
to make a statement, and that's important that you can
speak to your lawyer without delay, that you understand these
conditions that the police approach should never be matey. It
needs to be the lines need to be well to
find that you are there because you are a suspect
(07:41):
for X offense, So my view being mate being chummy
that can create problems of reliability.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Further down the track, how long.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Do you think is too long when it comes to
a police interrogation or propose we're calling them police interviews now.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
I mean, look, I read police interviews most weeks of
my career, not for this purpose, not necessarily because there's
questions about the reliability of confessions, but just to read
the evidential interviews that an offender or complainant has made.
And I have to say that overwhelmingly I see excellent
(08:26):
police processes in their questioning, and they take great care
around instructing the suspect around their rights. So what we
call the Bora rights there the museum full of rights,
and they have regular breaks. And I don't think an
(08:48):
interview should go on for hours. It shouldn't go one
if it's obvious that the suspect is fatigued. But often
there's obviously an asymmetry of power. If you're in a
police interview and you could ask somebody, you know, how
are you Are you going okay?
Speaker 1 (09:05):
You're happy to continue?
Speaker 3 (09:06):
And the person might say yes, yes, I'm happy to continue,
but that they are doing that, they're saying that to
try and please the interviewer. I think it's a good
process for the police to insist on breaks and say, look,
we'll stop now and offer the person you know, a
drink or coffee or smoke if they do and just
(09:27):
have a break. And in my experience, the police are
quite good at doing that and institutes reasonable breaks. But
I don't think an interview should go one for hours.
I don't think it should go on late into the night.
Definitely shouldn't have gone overnight. Fatigue and the like can
be an impediment to a good interview.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Go ahead.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
It's four declamatory sentences followed by a question for a
total of fifty seven words. Okay, it's look. It obviously
starts with you the right to remain silent. I know
you've heard them beforn, and then I think it sounds
something like, yeah, well the thing, yeah, oh right, do
you have the right to remain an attorney?
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Did you say that you have the right to be
an attorney. You do have the right to be an
attorney if you want to do so.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
You mentioned something. What rights do you have when you
are being interviewed or interrogated by police? So you have
the right to remain silent? Is that just not in
the movies?
Speaker 3 (10:38):
It's definitely not in the movies. So you don't need
to make a statement. And you can start to make
a statement and then decide that you want to stop
making that statement, and that is okay. You can ask
to speak to a lawyer at any time and without delay,
and in private. If you're a child, if you are
(11:02):
sixteen or under, you can have a support person in
there with you of your choosing. Doesn't need to be
your parents to be somebody of your choosing.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
When it comes to false confessions, what do you think
are some really good examples It could be from overseas
or even here in New Zealand, about how things have
gone wrong and how they've been fixed.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
Before I even talk about toilples, I'll tell you how
how I got into the area. But you have to
remember a couple of things I prefer to call in
my working practice, I refer to them as retracted confessions,
not false confessions, because just because a confession is retracted,
(11:47):
it doesn't mean it's false. And ultimately, you know that
the court is the decision maker, and it's for the
courts to decide whether somebody's statement is unreliable not and
ultimately whether it is false or not if it goes
that far. That's not the role of an expert in
somebody such as myself. What I do is I give
(12:08):
an opinion on it. Then I give an opinion on
a balance of probabilities. The other thing is that when
I give an opinion one way another and whether I'm
saying it is in my opinion reliable or unreliable, the
opposite side, so whether I'm instructed by the crime or
the defense, the other side will have the opportunity to
(12:30):
get their own expert to review my work and give
their own opinion. And that can even happen as many
as two, three, four or five experts, you know, in
a case. So that's I think really important for people
to understand. It's not that you get one expert and
they decide. We give an opinion and that's open to
(12:51):
scrutiny and cross examination. Like it's always the court that
will make the decisions on that. But look that there's
been a lot of high profile cases nationally and internationally.
Probably the highest profile one here in New Zealand is
the Taina Poorer case where he made various statements that.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Were found unreliable.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
In the UK, I was always interested in cases from
the seventies. You've got the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six,
and these were very high profile cases at the time
where these individuals were accused of IRA bombings and they
had very dubious police interviewing, the elicited admissions that were
(13:35):
then retracted that these people were found guilties and years
in jail. I think the Birmingham six sixteen years in
prison always maintained the innocence and then eventually those convictions
were overturned. But the way I got into this in
New Zealand was very early on in my career. I
(13:58):
had a routine assessment looking at the issue of fitness
to stand trial and this person had been accused of
child sexual offending. But what was really interesting was he
turned up to the police station on his own accord
and he made these disclosures and the police of course
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did what they had to do. And part of their
investigation is they went to speak to the complainant and
the complainant said that not only had this never happened,
she didn't even know who the accused was, had never
come across him, and of course they checked all of
that out, that they felt that because he'd made this admission,
(14:44):
that they had to charge him. And it was early
in my career, you know, and the circumstances of this
whole thing concerned me, and I remember speaking to the
law and said, look, in terms of his fitness to
stand trial, there are no issues there. He's a bit
(15:05):
to stand trial, but I'm concerned about the reliability of
this admission. And that lawyer, who's very good, got his
own independent expert to look into this issue. And what
it was found was, you know, this person had boadline
intellectual functioning, so from memory, I don't think he had
intellectual disability, that he wasn't far from it. So he
(15:25):
had cognitive limitations. And basically he was living with some
friends and they I think there'd been some issues on
their side in terms of their own offending histories, and
they had said to him he'd mentioned a girl or
somebody that he'd seen, and they basically said to him
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that they put the accusations to him and said that
the right thing for him to do would be for
him to go and make this admission, and he did
that to please them, to be part of the friendship circle.
And it was that case, as I say, very early
on in my career that got me interested in this
and that was why I started reading, you know, quite
(16:08):
extensively about it, and it sort of became an interest
theory of mine and have been unvoult in furious cases.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Over the years. Than that. Thanks for joining us, most welcome.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzdherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
produced by Jane Ye and Richard Martin, who is also
our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page
on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune
(16:46):
in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.