GIST: "In 1998, a 25-year-old unsophisticated
man in Alberta was arrested for aggravated assault on his infant son.
After several hours of interrogation, during which time he repeatedly
denied having hurt his son, he was left in the interview room. Sobbing,
he wrote out an apology and made comments like, “How could I have done
this?” The investigating officers in M.J.S. [2000] A.J. No. 391
managed to overcome the suspect’s refusal to accept responsibility for
the offence by the use of what is known as the Reid technique, an
interrogation approach developed in the United States by John E. Reid
& Associates. The Reid technique instructs investigators to
engage in “behaviour symptom analysis,” relying on patterns of conduct
that supposedly indicate whether or not the suspect is telling the
truth. The interrogation begins with the investigator asserting his
absolute certainty of the suspect’s guilt. The suspect is relentlessly
pushed to accept culpability. Moral justifications may be proffered (for example,
that the suspect experienced abuse as a child, or that they inflicted
the injuries unintentionally). The suspect may be confronted with exaggerated or fabricated evidence.
They may be told that the proof of their guilt is incontrovertible, given that all other suspects had been cleared. The
investigator may present two alternative versions of the suspect’s
conduct, one of which is significantly worse than the other, and
encourage the suspect to adopt the less serious model.
A suspect
who remains silent or continues to deny involvement may be faced with an
investigator unwilling to accept that position, confronting him with
the investigator’s theory of what “really” happened and endeavouring to
overcome any reluctance to confess. The trial judge was very
critical of the methods used by the police on the suspect in the Alberta
Provincial Court Criminal Division case, characterizing it as a
“classic illustration of how slavish adherence to a technique can
produce a coerced-compliant confession.” He ruled the evidence
inadmissible. He also wasn’t the first to reach such conclusions
in assessing the impact of the Reid technique on the admissibility of
evidence and was, by no means, the last. In
R. v. Thaher, 2016 ONCJ 113,
Justice Peter Andras Schreck refused to admit a Reid-based confession
by a mentally ill, fatigued man accused of attempted murder and
questioned for more than seven hours. Referring to the Supreme Court of
Canada decision in
R. v. Oickle, 2000 SCC 38, [2000] 2 S.C.R. 3, Schreck characterized the method as a “shoddy police practice … shown to be coercive and to produce false confessions.” In
R. v. Goro 2017 ONSC 1236,
Halton and RCMP police officers executed a warrant for footprint
impressions on a man under investigation for a cold-case murder. He
was never told of his right to counsel, cautioned or told he was free
to leave at any time. Rather, he was interrogated for almost six hours. In
the face of lengthy police monologues insisting on his guilt, he denied
culpability but some of his statements could have been contradicted by
forensic evidence. In the ruling, Justice Dale Fitzpatrick found
it unnecessary to decide the Reid issue due to overriding Charter issues
on detention. However, he stated, “[U]se of the Reid technique
or something akin to it does not automatically render a statement
inadmissible. . . However, the technique is inherently coercive and for
that reason has been the subject of considerable judicial and academic
criticism.” One may wonder why some police services continue to
use such questionable methods, given the risk of wrongful convictions,
unsuccessful prosecutions and the attendant failure to investigate and
apprehend the real perpetrators. It can’t be for a lack of
alternatives. The investigative interviewing approach involves a
thorough and objective investigation of both the offence and the
suspect. It is followed by an open-ended interview where the
suspect is allowed to talk freely in response to open-ended,
non-confrontational questions, which has proven to be very effective in
gaining admissions that don’t involve the risk of false confessions. One
such technique, known as PEACE (preparation, engagement, accounting,
closure and evaluation), involves officers asking follow-up questions
based on the answers given as well as other information compiled by the
investigators. One need only watch the very skillful interview of
Col. Russell Williams by Ontario Provincial Police detective Jim Smyth
to see how a suspect may be engaged in non-confrontational dialogue,
ultimately leading to false statements and a full confession to acts of
murder. Several countries in Europe and elsewhere have
successfully implemented the investigative interviewing method. In the
United States, Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates, a private agency
involved in training police officers for many years, has discontinued
teaching the Reid technique as a result of concerns over false
confessions. While several police services in Canada have
incorporated the use of investigative interviewing methods such as PEACE
into their training, many have not yet chosen to discourage or
discontinue the use of the Reid technique. Judicial commentary on the problematic aspects of this method of interrogation is going into its second decade. I
encourage members of the legal profession to add their voices to those
who have urged our police services to cease utilizing the Reid technique
once and for all. Let’s hope they’ll listen. Our justice system would
certainly be better if they do.""
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