Abstract
Within the criminal justice system, confessions are an extremely powerful form of evidence. Unfortunately, innocent people sometimes falsely confess to crimes they did not actually commit. Such travesties of justice have sparked a significant degree of academic research into the false confession phenomenon. Within the existing literature, there exists a conceptual framework that the interrogative methods and actions of law enforcement officers are a key cause of false confessions with some researchers going so far as to suggest that law enforcement interrogators act as confidence men who trick criminal subjects into confessing. However, few researchers have actually questioned law enforcement officers about false confessions and even fewer have consulted with officers who specialize in interrogation. This study is a subset of a larger qualitative case study designed to explore the experiences of 13 federal law enforcement polygraph examiners who specialize in interrogation regarding their approach to criminal interrogation and their experiences with both true and false confessions. This study focused on the personal processes federal law enforcement polygraph examiners use in reviewing Miranda rights and documenting confessions. NVivo software was used to organize the data. Common themes in interview responses were then identified and revealed that participants employ an open, detailed, and straightforward approach in reviewing Miranda rights and documenting the confessions of criminal subjects. These findings contradict the premise that law enforcement interrogators inherently operate as confidence men by tricking and manipulating criminal subjects.
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Conflict of Interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Ethical Approval
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Qualitative Interview Questions
Qualitative Interview Questions
1. Background
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1.1
Participant information:
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Age
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Gender
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Total length of time in law enforcement
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Length of time as an agent
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Length of time as a polygraph examiner
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1.2
Extent of interview/interrogation training
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1.2
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2.
Approach to criminal interrogation
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2.1
What is your general approach to interrogating criminal subjects?
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2.2
Why do you think guilty people confess to you?
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2.3
What reasons have people given you for truthfully confessing?
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2.1
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3.
False confessions
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3.1
To what extent have you experienced false confessions?
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3.2
If you experienced a false confession, what were the circumstances?
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3.3
How can you tell if a confession is true or false?
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3.4
Why do you think a person would falsely confess to a crime they did not commit?
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3.1
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4.
Personal procedures
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4.1
How do you go about reviewing a subject’s Miranda rights?
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4.2
How do you go about documenting your confessions?
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4.3
When conducting a polygraph examination, what is your typical length of time between the introduction and the start of the post-test/interrogation?
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4.4
How long do your interrogations typically last?
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4.5
What do you think is an inappropriate or egregious length of time to interrogate someone?
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4.1
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5.
Interrogative Methods
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5.1
What interrogative techniques do you believe are effective in eliciting a true confession? Why?
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5.2
What interrogative techniques do you believe are ineffective in eliciting a true confession? Why?
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5.3
Which interrogative techniques do you believe are likely to cause a false confession? Why?
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5.4
What are your thoughts about the following interrogative techniques:
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5.1
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A.
Sleep deprivation?
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B.
Offering the subject a deal?
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C.
Presenting a subject with false evidence?
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D.
Using the bluff technique?
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E.
Preventing them from speaking to an attorney?
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5.5
Which interrogation techniques would you never use? Why?
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5.5
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6.
Experiences after the interrogation
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6.1
Within the federal system, do you believe that a confession ultimately benefits the subject or harms the subject? Why?
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6.2
In your experience, is there a difference in how criminal subjects are treated by the federal system when they confess as compared with when they continue their denials? If so, what is that difference?
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6.3
In your experience, are cases automatically closed once a confession is obtained? If not, what else takes place?
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6.4
In your experience, do federal prosecutors automatically convict a subject based on his/her confession? If not, what else takes place?
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6.1
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Beyer, B.J., Herndon, J. Interrogative Specialists and False Confessions: Debunking the Con Artist Myth. J Police Crim Psych 33, 233–243 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-018-9263-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-018-9263-3