INTERVIEW: "Controversial police tactic under the spotlight"; A Radio New Zealand (RNZ) interview with Mike White - the accomplished journalist who exposed the mysterious interviewing technique known as 'Complex Investigation Phased Engagement Model', or CIPEM.
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BACKGROUND: "In 2022, the case against three men accused of murdering Upper Hutt woman Lois Tolley fell over after a judge ruled evidence - including a confession - had been improperly obtained, and was inadmissible in court. Part of the reason was the use of a mysterious interviewing technique called the Complex Investigation Phased Engagement Model, or CIPEM. Now an international expert who validated the interviewing technique says her conclusions were wrong and it doesn't meet international standards for evidence-gathering. Journalist Mike White has been investigating the issue for Stuff and speaks to Nights about the latest developments.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/nights/audio/2018940194/the-controversial-police-tactic-under-the-spotlight
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This Blog is interested in false confessions because of the disturbing number of exonerations in the USA, Canada and multiple other jurisdictions throughout the world, where, in the absence of incriminating forensic evidence the conviction is based on self-incrimination – and because of the growing body of scientific research showing how vulnerable suspects are to widely used interrogation methods such as the notorious ‘Reid Technique.’ As all too many of this Blog's post have shown, I also recognize that pressure for false confessions can take many forms, up to and including physical violence, even physical and mental torture.
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog:
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Police, who strongly suspect Manning was murdered at the Mongrel Mob’s then headquarters in Galbraith Ave, Christchurch, previously said a male’s DNA profile was extracted from a semen sample found during a post-mortem examination of her body, but they had been unable to match it to anyone. Last year they revealed they were trialling a controversial DNA tool, forensic investigative genetic genealogy (FIGG), in an effort to solve Manning’s murder, and the 1980 killing of schoolgirl Alicia O’Reilly. FIGG allows detectives to compare DNA of unidentified suspects with genetic profiles uploaded to genealogy websites. However, Privacy Commissioner Michael Webster believes use of the tool raises a number of ethical and privacy issues, and should not be used beyond the trial until “appropriate legislative safeguards are in place”. The FIGG trial is ongoing, and could run into 2025, a police spokesperson said this week. “Police won’t be making any decisions on the future of this technology until the trial is completed and the results evaluated.”
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PHOTO CAPTION: "Former detective superintendent Tom Fitzgerald invented CIPEM. He retired from the police in October 2022.."
GIST: "Six years after Mauha Fawcett was convicted in 2014 of murdering Christchurch sex worker Mellory Manning, police were planning to interview a group of other people they thought were connected to the killing.
Fawcett, a Mongrel Mob prospect, was found guilty of Manning’s 2008 murder, but his conviction was quashed in 2017 after it was revealed he suffered from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, and that a confession police extracted from him was unreliable.
But as police were preparing to retry him, they were simultaneously planning to confront six other people, with the prospect of charging some of them in relation to Manning’s death.
The information has been revealed in emails obtained by The Post as part of an ongoing investigation into the police’s use of the Complex Investigation Phased Engagement Model (CIPEM).
The controversial interviewing and suspect targeting technique was used in five homicides after it was introduced in 2018, police said.
It extracted a false confession from a suspect in the unsolved 2016 murder of Upper Hutt woman Lois Tolley, and has been the subject of widespread criticism and now abandoned.
In 2020, Detective Senior Sergeant Brian Archer, the head of Operation Dallington, the inquiry into Manning’s murder, wrote to Detective Sergeant Dylan Ross about getting help from a specialised interviewing team Ross was part of.
The team, under Detective Superintendent Tom Fitzgerald, was primarily used to crack cold cases by employing CIPEM, which Fitzgerald invented.
It was Fitzgerald, referred to by police officers in early interviews with Fawcett as “Big Boss Tom”, who coaxed a confession from Fawcett during a 2009 interview.
Fawcett later repeatedly denied involvement, gave numerous contradictory statements about what happened to Manning, and made many patently wrong claims about events that night.
Despite this, Fawcett was convicted of Manning’s murder in 2014, and sentenced to life in prison.
When the Court of Appeal overturned his conviction in 2017, police moved to put him on trial again, and began preparing their case against him.
At the same time, however, they were looking closely at a group of other people they thought might have been involved in the murder.
In late 2019, according to emails obtained using the Official Information Act, Archer sounded out Fitzgerald about using members of the CIPEM team to interview up to six people in connection with the crime, and got tentative agreement from Fitzgerald.
In October 2020, Dylan Ross emailed Archer to say he’d discussed the issue with Fitzgerald, who’d proposed the team would interview only one of the six, who lived in Dunedin.
Archer asked for the rationale behind the decision, but did not receive a written response.
Ten days later, Archer again wrote to Ross, stressing that interviews with all six people needed to be completed.
“The challenge that I am facing is that the trial for Fawcett is set down for 3 May 2021. I do need to finalise this interview phase well before then, because if we were going to charge another person, is it likely to affect whether Fawcett’s trial goes ahead.”
Archer noted Fitzgerald had offered the CIPEM team’s help with only one person, and questioned who would interview the other five.
“I just need some clarity about your plans and your timings, as time is ticking away.”
Ross passed Archer’s message up the line to Fitzgerald, saying it was Fitzgerald’s decision whether they were involved.
No further emails have been released detailing Fitzgerald’s response, if any.
However, police have told The Post four of the six people were interviewed - but none by anyone trained in CIPEM.
They declined to answer a series of questions about the case, including the age or gender of the individuals, and whether they obtained DNA samples from them.
The charges against Fawcett were eventually dismissed in 2022 - meaning a retrial never occurred - after a High Court judge excluded evidence from interviews police conducted with him.
The judge considered his “confession” to be unreliable, given he suffered from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
It is unclear if anything happened after the four people were interviewed, or to the two other people of interest.
Police have refused to answer questions about them.
Police, who strongly suspect Manning was murdered at the Mongrel Mob’s then headquarters in Galbraith Ave, Christchurch, previously said a male’s DNA profile was extracted from a semen sample found during a post-mortem examination of her body, but they had been unable to match it to anyone.
Last year they revealed they were trialling a controversial DNA tool, forensic investigative genetic genealogy (FIGG), in an effort to solve Manning’s murder, and the 1980 killing of schoolgirl Alicia O’Reilly.
FIGG allows detectives to compare DNA of unidentified suspects with genetic profiles uploaded to genealogy websites.
However, Privacy Commissioner Michael Webster believes use of the tool raises a number of ethical and privacy issues, and should not be used beyond the trial until “appropriate legislative safeguards are in place”.
The FIGG trial is ongoing, and could run into 2025, a police spokesperson said this week.
“Police won’t be making any decisions on the future of this technology until the trial is completed and the results evaluated.”
Mellory Manning’s brother, Rob Manning, said police told him in 2020 about their efforts to interview others connected to the case.
However, since then, he has only had occasional updates from Archer, though he said he knew police were working on the FIGG investigation.
“I think that’s probably the key, moving forward. Because the person might live in Australia, and you wouldn’t know.”
Manning said he hadn’t given up on his sister’s murder being solved.
“No, of course not. You’ve got to hope for the best, one day. And it’s about everyone’s safety.
“If a person’s capable of that, and they’re still out in the community, it’s probably not good for anybody.
“It can’t bring Mellory back, but you can try and keep everyone else safer.”
The CIPEM technique, which aimed to crack cases by putting a suspect at ease in a relaxed environment, was the subject of damning criticism by the judge in the Lois Tolley case, the late Justice Simon France, who said it had “the effect of downplaying, or arguably obscuring, the true nature of what is occurring”.
After being kept secret for several years, The Post was finally able to reveal CIPEM’s existence in 2022.
Since then, our ongoing investigation has highlighted various concerns about use of the technique, and helped spark a national review of all police interviewing in late 2022.
The Law Commission has also considered the legality of techniques such as CIPEM and there is an ongoing inquiry by the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) into its use.
While the police review of their interviewing programme is yet to be concluded, earlier this year they admitted CIPEM would play no part in updated training.
Fitzgerald retired from the police in October 2022, in a move that surprised many colleagues.
He insisted he had planned his retirement for some time and it had nothing to do with scrutiny of CIPEM.
The entire story ca be read at:
https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/350285887/spotlight-fell-six-people-after-overturning-mellory-manning-murder-conviction
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. 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/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater's attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it's the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-12348801
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SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
---------------------------------------------------------------
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater's attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it's the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-12348801
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