STORY: "Study shows ease of inducing false confessions: Researchers astonished as participants recalled crimes that never happened," by Yamri Taddese, published by Law Times on February 2, 2015.
GIST: "Researchers are questioning police interviewing techniques after a recent study showed how easy it can be to manipulate people into recalling vivid details of committing a crime they never took part in. “We were astonished at the rate of false memories of crime that developed. We weren’t anticipating anywhere near this kind of vulnerability in the average person,” says University of British Columbia Prof. Stephen Porter, who undertook a joint study published online recently in Psychological Science with British researcher Julia Shaw.........“It’s not too difficult, using manipulative tactics that we often see in police investigations, for people to be convinced and to come to recall that they committed a pretty major offence,” says Porter. “It’s pretty common for police in interviews with suspects to introduce evidence that implicates the guilt of the suspect and sometimes that evidence isn’t true. Sometimes it is true and sometimes it isn’t true. Police are permitted in Canada to use deception when interviewing criminal suspects to a certain extent, but it’s a very common tactic,” he adds. One of the interviewing methods used by police, known as the Reid technique, has been subject to criticism for its draining impact on suspects who sometimes tell the officers what they want to hear in order to get out of long and gruelling interviews. According to Porter, the research is another reason to doubt the reliability of the technique and the legitimacy of confessions. “It really suggests that we have to have strict guidelines on what happens in police interviews in terms of the kind of tactics that are being used and we sort of mimicked in our study,” he says."
The entire article can be found at:
http://www.lawtimesnews.com/201502024457/headline-news/study-shows-ease-of-inducing-false-confessions
See related Wrongful Convictions Blog post: "Our sincere thanks to the publisher of the study, SAGE Publications, for allowing us to post a link to the full text of the research article. The link will be active until March 5, 2015. See the full text here: Constructing Rich False Memories of Committing Crime. This excerpt from the abstract of the article: “It appears that in the context of a highly suggestive interview, people can quite readily generate rich false memories of committing crime.” And of course, for the term “highly suggestive interview” we can substitute “Reid Technique.”"
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2015/02/05/constructing-rich-false-memories-of-committing-crime/
See also: Joseph Buckley, President of Reid and Associates, defends "The Reid Technique" in a letter sent to The Charles Smith Blog in response to another post;
It
is often stated that the Reid Technique "shows no interest in learning
the truth, but the goal is to seek a confession." We clearly state the
exact opposite in our book Criminal Interrogation and Confessions (5th edition 2013) on page 5: "The
purpose of an interrogation is to learn the truth. A common
misperception exists in believing that the purpose of an interrogation
is to elicit a confession.... If the suspect can be eliminated [from
suspicion] based on his or her behavior or explanations offered during
the interrogation, the interrogation must be considered successful
because the truth was learned."
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-reid-technique-joseph-buckley.htmlPUBLISHER'S NOTE: Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html
I look forward to hearing from readers at:
hlevy15@gmail.com.
Harold Levy; Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;
