PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: "Legal efforts to exonerate Tapp ramped up in 2014 when the wrongful conviction group
Judges
for Justice reviewed the interrogation. Though officers involved with
the case said Tapp was convicted based on details he knew about the
case, a report by Former FBI Agent Stephen Moore — who headed up
investigations into Al Qaeda in the Los Angeles office following the
September 11 attacks — detailed how officers fed information about the
murder to Tapp and coerced his confession. Over 68 pages Moore analyzed
the missteps made by detectives, calling out each error individually."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "The Reid Technique:
Moore
determined that several of the mistakes made by the officers
interrogating Tapp came from their misuse of the Reid Technique, an
interrogation process that is used by law enforcement officers
nationwide and focuses on confronting the defendant with the evidence of
their guilt. Two of the officers who interrogated Tapp, Brown and
Fuhriman, were using elements of the Reid Technique. The
Reid Technique has drawn criticism in recent years as lawyers and
investigators have alleged it can lead to false confessions. According
to Moore, however, the detectives compounded that risk by using
interview tactics that have been associated with the Reid Technique, but
have been disavowed as flawed, including by John E. Reid &
Associates, which developed the technique. In his report, Moore notes
that all of the techniques rejected by Reid are used by Fuhriman and/or
Brown, including threatening Tapp with the death penalty, implying he
would get a lighter sentence if he blamed Hobbs for the murder, and
conducting long and extensive interviews. "I think, unfortunately, too
many people are doing it the same way," Moore said in an interview with
the Post Register. Even in 1997, Moore said, officers would have
received training warning them of the pitfalls of such techniques. "The
drumbeat now is much louder," Moore said."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
STORY: by
Johnathan Hogan, published by The Post Register on August 17, 2019.
GIST: "In a green-tinted video dating to
January 11, 1997, then 20-year-old Christopher Tapp is seen being
interrogated by an Idaho Falls Police Department officer. Tapp had
not been arrested, but detectives suspected him of being involved with
the murder of Angie Dodge six months prior. No lawyer was visible as
Tapp was questioned by then Detective Jared Fuhriman. Fuhriman
presented himself as Tapp's friend, telling the suspect he would take
the fall and potentially face the death penalty unless he told officers
it was Benjamin Hobbs who raped and murdered Dodge. "That
little extra bit you got, we are gonna be able to take Ben and dropkick
him through the goalposts of life," Fuhriman told Tapp. "I'm serious as
a heart attack." Tapp would eventually tell detectives Hobbs had
killed Dodge and made Tapp participate. Hobbs would never be charged for
the murder, however, because his DNA did not match samples recovered
from the scene of the crime. Tapp would go on to be convicted for
the murder based on his false confession, despite the fact that his DNA
was also not a match. It would take two decades before he was eventually
exonerated, following a DNA match and confession by Brian Dripps, a man
who lived across the street from Dodge at the time of the murder. According
to law enforcement and legal investigators who have reviewed Tapp's
case over the years, his confession was the result of officers
improperly using interrogation techniques to coerce a confession,
costing Tapp 20 years of his life in prison while the man whose DNA did
match the samples walked free. In light of the fact that Tapp's
interrogation produced a false confession, the Post Register has sought
to understand how police interrogation tactics have changed since 1996.
While there are indications that some tactics have changed, there are
also indications that some of the tactics used on Tapp continue to be
used in interrogations today.
What went wrong?" Legal efforts to exonerate Tapp ramped up in 2014 when the wrongful conviction group
Judges
for Justice reviewed the interrogation. Though officers involved with
the case said Tapp was convicted based on details he knew about the
case, a report by Former FBI Agent Stephen Moore — who headed up
investigations into Al Qaeda in the Los Angeles office following the
September 11 attacks — detailed how officers fed information about the
murder to Tapp and coerced his confession. Over 68 pages Moore analyzed
the missteps made by detectives, calling out each error individually. A
few months after Angie Dodge's murder, Benjamin Hobbs was arrested for
raping a woman at knifepoint. The similarities led detectives to focus
on Hobbs, ignoring evidence that contradicted their theory that he was
the rapist, Moore argued. "The detectives’ mistaken conclusion
(taken in the absence of any supporting physical evidence of Hobbs’
guilt in the Dodge case) clouded their judgment and allowed a
predetermined conclusion to dictate the priorities and tactics of their
subsequent investigation, rather than evidence already (and
subsequently) obtained," Moore wrote.
Feeding sole-source information to Tapp: A key piece of evidence in convicting Tapp — what one court called the "crux" of the state's case — was Fuhriman's testimony
at
Tapp's trial that officers did not reveal any information to Tapp
during the interrogation, testimony that stands in stark contrast to
reviews of the interviews. Tapp was interviewed nine times over
three weeks in 1997, spending a total of 20 hours with officers. He
denied his guilt until police told him he could face the death penalty
or life in prison unless he said Hobbs had forced him to stab Dodge.
From there, Tapp gave multiple, inconsistent explanations for his role
in the murder — and many of those inconsistencies were
ignored
by the officers interrogating him. "In
essence, the detectives appeared to accept as true anything that they
agreed with their theories, and discarded anything which did not fit
their preconceived notion of the crime," Moore wrote. When
interrogating suspects, law enforcement officers rely on a factor known
as sole-source information, details about the case that would only be
known to the police or a witness. If the subject of an interrogation can
volunteer facts they couldn't know without having direct knowledge of
the crime, that can be used to demonstrate that a confession is true.
But in the Tapp interrogation, police fed such facts to Tapp,
contaminating the interrogation. In 2013 IFPD Detective Phil Grimes
testified on the importance of sole-source information in Tapp's
conviction. "He knew things that no one else should have known about
that murder scene," Grimes said. Moore
shows, however, that Tapp did not know those details until detectives
shared them with him. He did not know the layout of Dodge's house until
detectives gave him a floorplan. He gave multiple answers to what color
clothes Dodge was wearing and how many times she was stabbed. Moore
also described how officers "coached" Tapp by turning the interview
into a guessing game. In one occasion, he describes how officers asked
Tapp what furniture was in the room. Tapp gives several incorrect
answers that are met with silence from Detective Ken Brown.Brown
eventually moved on to a different line of questioning after Tapp failed
to describe the furniture. In other instances when Tapp did guess the
correct answer, detectives responded immediately with more questions.
The Reid Technique:
Moore
determined that several of the mistakes made by the officers
interrogating Tapp came from their misuse of the Reid Technique, an
interrogation process that is used by law enforcement officers
nationwide and focuses on confronting the defendant with the evidence of
their guilt. Two of the officers who interrogated Tapp, Brown and
Fuhriman, were using elements of the Reid Technique. The
Reid Technique has drawn criticism in recent years as lawyers and
investigators have alleged it can lead to false confessions. According
to Moore, however, the detectives compounded that risk by using
interview tactics that have been associated with the Reid Technique, but
have been disavowed as flawed, including by John E. Reid &
Associates, which developed the technique. In his report, Moore notes
that all of the techniques rejected by Reid are used by Fuhriman and/or
Brown, including threatening Tapp with the death penalty, implying he
would get a lighter sentence if he blamed Hobbs for the murder, and
conducting long and extensive interviews. "I think, unfortunately, too
many people are doing it the same way," Moore said in an interview with
the Post Register. Even in 1997, Moore said, officers would have
received training warning them of the pitfalls of such techniques. "The
drumbeat now is much louder," Moore said.
'Irresponsible and, frankly, illegal': Cases
like Tapp's have raised awareness among law enforcement, attorneys and
the general public about the potential of false confessions. Innocence
Project Co-Founder Peter Neufeld said a fourth of the defendants they
have exonerated since 1989 offered confessions. In an interview, he
cited many of the same criticisms Moore made during the investigation. "Law
enforcement is aware of it, and it was obviously completely
irresponsible and, frankly, illegal, for police to interrogate Chris
Tapp the way they did," Neufeld said. Like Moore, Neufeld noted
how officers fed Tapp information and interrogated him for hours until
he gave them the story they were seeking. "People knew in the
1990s, when this case went down, that you don't do that," Neufeld said.
"That's not something people just learned in 2019." Neufeld said
once a judge or jury hears the defendant confessed to a crime, the
defense is "screwed." He said the only chance for a defense attorney is
to call a psychologist to the stand who can explain why a person would
confess to a crime they did not commit. Idaho Falls Police
Department Spokeswoman Jessica Clements named two companies the
department uses to train and update officers on interrogation and
interview techniques: The Lie Guy and Wicklander - Zulawski &
Associates Inc. When reached by phone, both said they no longer
teach the Reid method of interrogation. David Thompson, vice president
of Wicklander - Zulawski & Associates Inc., said his company had
taught the method for 33 years but stopped teaching it in 2017. Thompson
cited the case of Brendan Dassey, who was convicted of murder in 2005.
His case was featured in the Netflix series "Making a Murder." Thompson
said the case was an example of how the Reid technique could be abused,
especially when interrogating minors or mentally disabled suspects. John E. Reid and Associates
responded to
Wiklander - Zulawski's decision in 2017, saying the company was
teaching a 33-year-old version of the Reid Technique and that false
confessions came from deviating from their technique rather than the
technique itself, which they called "The Gold Standard" of
interrogation.
Clements said the Reid Technique is still in use at
the Police Department, but that it is just one part of the interview
training officers receive. She said she was confident every officer had
attended new training in the last two years, but could not be sure
without reviewing the training schedule. The Post Register requested interviews with Idaho Falls Police Chief Bryce Johnson and
Captain
Bill Squires, but was told both were unavailable. Moore contrasted the
Idaho Falls Police Department's recent efforts on the case with the 1997
investigation. "(Police
Chief Bryce Johnson) was obviously more concerned with doing the right
thing than circling the wagons and keeping their skirts clean," Moore
said. In an email to the Post Register, Idaho State Police Public
Information Officer Tim Marsano said the Peace Officer Standards &
Training provides four hours of instruction on interview techniques to
future officers but does not teach the Reid Technique. Bonneville
County Public Defender John Thomas, who has long represented Tapp during
his appeals, said he still sees aspects of the Reid Technique used by
the Idaho Falls Police Department. He noted, however, that officers and
detectives use less deception and lies than they once did, and that the
Reid Technique appears to be in decline. "Some of the guys who have been
on the force a bit longer, they still use it," Thomas said. Moore said
the Reid Technique can still be useful to interrogators if they are
aware of its potential pitfalls. "The Reid Technique, used wrongly, is
ultimately browbeating," Moore said. What is the Reid Technique? The Reid Technique
gained popularity in 1955 after John Reid, then a Chicago Police
Department officer and polygrapher, extracted a confession from Darrel
Parker, who was accused of murdering his wife.
Parker was later exonerated after another man confessed to the murder.The method consists of three phases.
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.postregister.com/news/crime_courts/what-went-wrong-with-the-interrogation-of-christopher-tapp/article_1250ed14-70bc-5a3a-8521-00aeb3187dc5.html
