208. True vs. False Confessions

going to be available pretty soon. As always, Patreon members will get first DIBs. We keep these at small groups on purpose, maybe a dozen maybe to fifteen people per tour. So if you're local or if you're going to be coming in from out of town, your best bet is even if you just join Patreon for a month to be able to snag some spots. That's a tactic when we're not against it, those will be coming up. It's going to be true Crime Walking tours through Los Angeles.

We're probably going to do two different locations, one more in the Hollywood area and maybe we'll go back downtown for the others. We'll just have to see what our tour guide Chris can come up with for us. Very exciting as we move into summertime. So what's been going on? What are we doing lately?

So my days off on Mondays, I've been trying to pop on for like an hour or so and watch along and then you know, we do a little bit of chatting. If there's something that comes up that is relevant to you know, any of our experience in the room. So right, that's been fun on it.

kind of invited in a camera crew. She has said like this has been her way to sort of testify without testifying, which I mean just kind of speaks to like the day and age of how trials are tried, you know, sort of in the courtroom and sort of by public opinion, and the content that is created around all that. I mean, we've talked about that before. Sometimes things are way too soon, and I don't know if that's a good choice or a bad choice on their part,

but it was obviously strategic. So yeah, yeah, anyway, that's anything else, like anything good that you've been watching lately.

a call. Really well written because he's coming at it from a private detective standpoint, which is really great. So that's what I've been doing.

he brings both of those worlds together. He uses his storytelling skills and legal insight to not only explore the haunting disappearance of Heather Elvis, but to also shed light on the powerful influence of social media in shaping public opinion as well as impacting real life investigations. It's a gripping series that also raises important questions about online behavior, misinformation, and the long road to justice.

So we are going to stick to what we know and more importantly, what we don't know about this topic.

this easy, especially when there's a recorded confession. From the West Memphis three to the Central Park five to endless cases around the world, false confessions have played a disturbing role in some of the most infamous and unjust wrongful convictions. We have Jesse miss Kelly, a teenager with a low IQ who was pressured into confessing to a triple homicide in West Memphis, Arkansas. His story was riddled with inconsistencies

and was unsupported by any physical evidence. His statement then implicated, of course, Jason Baldwin and Damian eccles, all all of whom spent eighteen years in prison before DNA evidence and public pressure led to their release.

years in prison before the real killers were discovered. Also, Juan rivera under house arrest at the time of the crime he was accused of, was manipulated into giving a false confection to the murder of an eleven year old victim, leading to three wrongful convictions despite exonerating DNA evidence.

they were ultimately acquitted after decades of injustice. These cases reveal how easily the criminal justice system can be led astray when confessions true or not, become the foundation of prosecution, and that memory distrust syndrome I just mentioned, we will definitely come back to that.

have incredible databases and really really solid statistical research. Nearly one in three DNA based exonerations involved a false confession. That's over twenty eight percent of cases where somebody admitted to a crime they never committed.

the truth? You know, we tell the truth for a variety of reasons, primarily to build trust, to foster strong relationships, and to maintain societal order. And that's not necessarily a conscious thing. It's built into us if we're raised pretty normally and we've got great people to look up to as we are going through our de middle stages as children. Because when people trust us, they're more likely to believe

what we say and rely on us. Honesty nourishes all types of relationships, whether they are with family, friends, or romantic partners.

dignity and shows that you value their perspective. Many believe that honesty is a moral principle that should be followed, as it reflects a commitment to integrity. Truth telling is essential for maintaining a functioning society as it allows people to navigate interaction and build trust in a system.

He points out that lying isn't just human. He notes that animals like gorillas, dolphins, and even birds can show deceptive behaviors, suggesting that lying may have evolutionary roots and how social creatures are able to navigate their environments. The point being is that to some extent, deception itself is

a survival tool, not just a moral failing. Children begin experimenting with deception as early as six months old, with skills becoming more complex by age four, So this developmental process suggests that lying is not learned from culture alone. It's something that we refine with practice, like any form of communication, again, likely an adaptive survival value that works

for us. In communication with readers about his previous article online, Slayer notes that people share they are grappling with the emotional and ethical tension between being truthful and lying for convenience, for self protection, or even for kindness.

another one. It's fascinating because it's just again another example of how little we actually know about brain functioning animals, and it sort of it really is the final frontier for human consciousness as well as far as us studying ourselves. So, going back to Slater's article, while the saying that we all use honesty is the best policy holds a lot of cultural weight, honesty is definitely not always the best choice in every situation, and I think all of us can.

and even white lies can have significant unintended consequences. So, big picture, why take the risk of lying? Because people lie for two main reason. There's the thrill of seeing that they can get away with it, which feels very childlike. It also feels a little antisocial, right, But it also depends on the age and the overall functioning of an individual, and that could mean a lot of things, because a child's willful lie can be very different from the motivation

of an adult's willful lie. Most likely, though, are what we call perceived benefits that can come as a result of the line, like protecting themselves, looking good, avoiding conflict, or even sometimes helping someone else, And sometimes the potential payoff like saving face or maintaining privacy for that individual, it outweighs the potential damage that could be coming as

a consequence. Additionally, if a lie, if it's believable and it goes undetective, that lie may actually elevate someone in the eyes of others, and in some cultures or contexts that perceive effectiveness or confidence may actually matter more than truthfulness. I'll never forget in talking with my nephew who is former Secret Service and much like you and me, like a research or like just loves you know, going to trainings and getting on this information, and we were talking about.

cultural view is very, very different. It's not my fault that you were falling for this, it's your fault for being stupid, which is very different from our Western mindset right or the what we say, which is why if you do have that mindset of like, well, people should be good, then that can even set you up for being more of a victim.

confessions and the research behind it. Really, I mean, with conversations with some other creators, we have been pretty inspired while guesting on those shows and kind of listening to other podcasts that we're covering some really intense cases about false confessions being at the heart of that case. We've all listened to like amazing shows that have really really

dove deep into those. But for Scott and I, the way we work, we just simply wanted to see with the literature about the hallmarks of and the factors in true confessions and false confessions has to say, like what is out there In reviewing the available research, we decided to break this up into a differences. Just looking at it, it made sense to look at circumstantial differences, linguistic differences,

and behavioral differences. So this really is kind of the meat and potatoes of the episode that we're getting into already. So we're going to do that, and then we're going to move into false confession specific research and then look at evidence based interrogations. To kick us off here, we were able to find a paper from March of twenty nineteen in the Frontiers of Psychiatry journal titled Confessions and Denials when Guilty and Innocent forensic patients self reported behavior

during police interviews. Yes, titles are always very worthy, but we got to get it across an title so someone can search it. Was your dissertation a mile long title like mine was no, no good, I love it nice and concise.

crime occurred, that sort of thing. Actually, of the entire population of the people that they interviewed, two thirds of the sample actually had this exact experience, so they were able to garner a lot. So in terms of their findings with regard to circumstantial factors, they found that quote with respect to true confessions, so that's meaning someone who was actually guilty and confessing to it. The most commonly

reported reason was that the evidence was strong. This suggests that strength of evidence is crucial for the decision to make a true confession, and this is once more in line with already existing empirical evidence end quote.

big part of this discussion. But the research starts right off essentially saying that what we found there is way more research out there on false confessions than there is true confessions. And before we look at their main finding, I'm sure you're wondering what serious mental illnesses, which we'll be calling SMI, means, so that you can conceptualize this information.

So serious mental illness or SMI is going to refer to one or more mental, behavioral, or emotional disorders that result in serious functional impairment, something that interferes with a major life activity, like being able to hold down a job. So this could be a disorder like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder OCD, PTSD, even some personality disorders. When we say that about the ability to hold down a job, there's also a term

called ADLs activities of daily living. So activities of daily living would be can someone consistently care about their environment?

PTSD or any of the personality disorders. There's a lot more options out there, even with medication, even with treatment, there are some individuals that are likely going to be way more affected by adverse conditions when in the context of an interrogation, so okay. In regards to the circumstances of the interrogation, researchers found in comparison to true confessors

there were four main differences with false confessors. False confessors were questioned more times, they took longer to confess, they perceived the evidence against them to be weaker, and they reported significantly more external pressure and less internal pressure. In other words, true confessors, the people who were actually guilty, confessed earlier on in the questioning, and they were responding to internal pressures sort of what we were talking about earlier.

Maybe it was that moral imperative perhaps, or maybe it was an understanding of I'm screwed. They've got all this evidence against me, so I'm just going to get this over with. That's very different from those that were false confessions.

determine patterns and usage in that language. The authors are, you know, from little known places like Oxford and John Jay and Hofstra University. Actually the author from Hofstra is a professor of forensic linguistics. So you know, just some so and sos.

for instance, one should always be respectful. You can learn a lot from watching the news. They say you shouldn't eat red meat. Kind of that collective you or the collective they, that's the pronouns that they were using, while true confessors contained a significant high frequency of personal pronouns

and conjunctions. So definitely more I, me, myself, or even you, they him her, but in regards to an actual specific person rather than the collective they are you, and then conjunctions being words that connect a couple of thoughts, like and but because although, So we're starting to see a difference here when they start running these like literally through

a database, just kind of seeing what these patterns are. Lastly, another difference they found was that in true confessions, I was often followed by a lexical verb, which was less frequent in false confessions. So lexical verbs are just very like true kind of main verbs like run, eat, see, So a lot of very to the point statements without trying to distance themselves from the action when the confession

was true. And I feel like I'm helping my seventh grader with her grammar homework right now, but I just want to make sure we're like all thinking about the same thing here. So after they analyzed this collection of confessions and identified these nuances, they were able to go back and take this data and see if the findings could accurately predict which statement was false and which statement was true. So they ran a couple of different studies

doing this. The first study they conducted correctly predicted if it was a true or false statement with seventy four percent accuracy, and then their second study correctly predicted it eighty three percent of the time. So very interesting. But they noted this is just the beginning. This is not a call to start like running confessions through their model for diagnostic purposes, and that certainly more research is needed

in this area. There were also a couple of earlier studies that yielded very small to bits of information as it comes down to linguistics. In nineteen ninety eight, which also was a million moons ago, shoul we looked at the false and true confession statements from eighty five participants and he found that false confessions possessed fewer adjectives than the true confessions. And then back in twenty thirteen, vr at All found no differences for verbs as indicators of deception.

So just you know, no findings or findings. Still that might sound silly to kind of report that, but again, very limited data in this area.

of this. The idea of body language analysis. Body language experts for detecting deception. If you haven't had a chance to listen to episode one eight eight on this topic, feel free to go back and listen. We hash it out in great detail, but just to be thorough, we looked again for this specific angle, and there is no available data that has yet been identified about the behavioral characteristics of true confessors. A guilty person who told the

truth about the crime in a confession. Now, that would be a cool dissertation project if anybody's out there, grab that sucker up. So we thought we would take the opportunity to quickly highlight a hallmark study in this area to show how bad we humans are at observing someone's behavior during a confession and then making a determination about

innocence or guilt. Back in two thousand and five, casin Meister and Norwit conducted a two part study where they recruited male prison in May for a pair of videotaped interviews. Each inmate was instructed to go ahead and give a full confession to the crime for which he was incarcerated. Then they were asked to come up with a false confession for a specific crime they did not actually commit. So very interesting concept and a way to set up

this study right. The real study began when the researchers had observers watch ten of these confessions, a mix of both the true and the false confessions, and they found that neither college students nor police investigators had any statistically significant levels of accuracy.

all of their participants who were ever questioned when innocent, a quarter of them reported having made false confessions on at least one occasion. So they noted that this result was also in line with previous international research showing a high percentage of false confessions among suspects with a quote mental disorder. Now I don't know what percentage of their population had any sort of mental disorder or how they were defining that, but I mean just notable. Nonetheless.

that they did not commit. Guess what, there's not just one type of false confession. Again, this is what I love about research, is that they just break these things down into even more fascinating and complex ideas. So, first of all, we have coerced compliant false confessions, and these are confessions that result from intense interrogation tactics where the

individual confesses in order to escape the situation. Number two is voluntary false confessions, and that's given without external pressure, often due to a desire for notoriety.

talk about not approving of. I'm talking about from a clinical perspective.

been substantiated. We started off with coerced compliant false confessions than we had voluntary false confessions. Now we have internalized false confessions complex title, but what it means is that the individual being interrogated actually comes to believe that they committed the crime because of suggestive interrogation techniques. Paul Ingram, a former deputy sheriff in Thurston County, Washington, was accused in nineteen ninety eight by his daughters of sexual abuse

and satanic rituals. Initially, he had no recollection of these events, but under intense interrogation and suggestive questioning, he began to believe he was guilty. Ingram's confessions became increasingly elaborate, incorporating details suggested by interrogators, despite a lack of physical evidence. And this is what's really concerning to me, because if an adult can fall prey to this, can you imagine how easily a child can fall prey to this as well?

this term that we mentioned before, memory distrust syndrome. I wanted to parse it out obviously, because it's called something different from what you just covered, coerced internalized false confessions. I think they can be one and the same, perhaps, but I just want to kind of, I don't know,

split a couple of hairs here. I also heard this talked about on another podcast very recently as just internalized false confessions, and I feel like if that's more of the umbrella term, then maybe it can be coerced or not.

But good Johnson and Matt Keith coined the term in the nineteen eighties to describe a phenomenon where people developed a profound distrust of their own memory, and then they are in a place where they become susceptible to relying on external cues and information from others, basically putting them

in a very highly suggestible place. So the literature indicates that this distrust of memory can, under certain circumstances, lead to a false confession, particularly when there is intense external pressure they come to believe that they are guilty of the crime. Is essentially what that means. And in the psychology world, I mean, we know this already. We know it is confabulation, which is when a person creates false memories without the intention to deceive. So it is just

that phenomenon happening, but specifically to false confessions. And if we were to look at it just let's say, outside of the false confession world clinically seeing confabulation, we would view it as a distortion of the memory. And that's what we're talking about.

So while in solitary confinement, the man kept a detailed diary that provided unique insight into this gradual development of memory distrust syndrome, as well as kind of his overall mental state and overall thinking process. So it's fascinating that good Johnson was able to find this case. I mean, I'm sure he probably worked on it, or was retained on this case or what have you, as an expert.

But here we have someone writing about it and seeing this evolution or this decompensation, whatever you want to call it. So good. Johnson notes that a false confession as a result of memory distrust syndrome is quite rare, but it can occur in totally intellectually able and educated individuals, like this is not just us talking about a serious mentally

ill population. He also highlights that when it does occur, it involves delayed rather than immediate suggestibility, which also I couldn't find how he exactly defined that, so I'm not quite sure how to interpret that.

of anxiety attacks. I'm wondering if you're reprogramming your own memories by marinating in this false information you've been given. And I just feel like you're marinating in the anxiety and you're trying to make sense of it, and the easiest way to make sense of it is maybe to accept what's being said to you.

of things that get slapped with that label. So I thought it was really worth the effort just to say, like, yes, this is a real thing, and here's what it means. And I think it's going to click for a lot of folks of like, oh my gosh, yeah, that case really could have been this. And it also leads nicely into looking at some of the personal individual factors that might make someone susceptible to falsely confessing.

can lead to huge problems. And when we talk about false confessions, it's so important to understand that not everybody enters the interrogation room on equal footing, much like life right, even more so in the interrogation room, Some individuals are far more vulnerable to pressure, suggestion, and manipulation, just like we've discussed in previous episodes as well as our interviews with other true crime content generators. First and foremost young

people are especially at risk. Adolescents and children may not fully grasp the gravity of waiving their miranda rights or the long term consequences of what they say to law enforcement. And you know, law enforcement has the legal right to present falsehoods in order to get what they need to do.

to get the information that they get. But children's developmental stage makes them more likely to comply with authority figures, even if that means saying something that is just not true, because they want to end the discomfort or maybe even

please the interrogator. Right, many kids don't yet have the emotional or cognitive maturity to understand just how high the stakes are, let alone be able to endure intense psychological tactics that are often used in modern interrogations, so being open to suggestibility, the length of the interview, the belief in well, if you work with us, you can just walk out of here, which is an example of the deceptive high pressure technique.

So then back to what we were referring to earlier, there is the issue of mental help individuals struggling with disorders like schizophrenia, major depression, bipolar disorder. They often enter

the legal system already at a disadvantage. They're symptoms which can include a wide spectrum of presentations that would include things like delusions, which is incorrect beliefs or perceptions about the world around them, disorganized thinking, severe anxiety, suicidal ideation, all of those factors can distort reality and impair judgment, making those individuals much more susceptible to coercion, and in some cases, they may even confess to something that they

didn't do simply to escape the moment, or because they believe that they deserve punishment. After having this belief system, these false facts sort of pounded into their heads. It is important to differentiate those with cognitive impairments or developmental disabilities away from or differentiate them from people with mental health diagnosis, because cognitive impairments are not mental health diagnoses.

People with lower IQs, limited executive functioning, or challenges in processing information can fail to understand their rights or the implications of their statements. They may not realize that they can remain silent or ask for a lawyer, and in high pressure situations, they might give in just to escape the confusion, the pressure, the perceived threat, and these individuals' ability to distinguish truth from suggestion or resist leading questions is significantly compromised.

about already, is isolation. When suspects are left alone for long periods of time, their stress increases and they become more likely to comply just to escape the discomfort, or maybe even with your hypothesis, s gott the discomfort in their head due to anxiety. Add to that the use of deceptive practices like falsely claiming there's evidence or promising leniency, and you have a recipe for guilty and innocent people like confessing again just to kind of end the pressure.

We also have lengthy interrogation, often lasting hours without proper breaks. This can also wear people down mentally and physically. Fatigue and pair's judgment. You guys like you wouldn't believe I mean insomnia. Lack of sleep is just so critical in terms of your cognitive functioning. This makes individuals way more suggestible and more likely to say what they think interrogators

want to hear. Estimating the true number of false confessions really remains difficult due to underreporting and limited access to comprehensive data. And while not every false confession is identified or overturned, research consistently shows that they play a significant role in wrongful convictions at large. As we talked about

those numbers earlier. Although the exact figures vary by study, the consensus is clear false confessions are not rare, and their impact on the justice system is significant and does not obtain the attention that it needs.

interplay of psychological, legal, and neuro scientific factors. Thankfully, their recent emphasis on legitimate, statistically viable research has illuminated and just really brought to the surface how certain interrogation techniques can lead to false confessions by way of cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie these confessions, and that is a lot of implication that pans out for the justice system.

Let's begin by looking at the evolution of interrogation techniques. Historically, police have used coercive tactics what was once called the third degree right. These tactics included physical violence, and psychological manipulation, and that was all designed to illicit confessions. It wasn't designed to get the truth. It was designed to elicit confession.

But by the nineteen sixties most of these techniques were largely replaced by accusatorial methods that focused on psychological manipulation in order to obtain confessions. So, yes, it was a change of direction, but it wasn't enough and it certainly wasn't wildly different what was being done before.

what does accusatorial interrogation look like. Well, again, it assumes guilt and it is confession driven, and it involves six key points interrogator dominance and control, stress inducing isolation of the suspect, use of themes to rationalize guilt, like telling the individual, well, you had no choice. It involves deceptive tactics such as false evidence, which is allowed because police

can lie to you. Basically during interrogation and techniques like maximization, which is exaggerating the consequences and then minimizing as well, downplaying the seriousness. So accusatorial techniques also rely heavily on detecting anxiety based nonverbal cues to determine deception. And what does that sound like, doctor Shiloh?

The research by Cassin, Meisner, and good Johnson have shown that while these methods do result in true confessions, they also greatly increase the risk of false ones, especially among the young, cognitively impaired, and emotionally vulnerable. Other factors that can come into play with some of these cases are, as we mentioned, sleep deprivation. Huge sleep deprived individuals are more susceptible to suggest and may falsely confess to actions

that they didn't commit. High cognitive load. We haven't talked about this concept yet necessarily today, but under significant mental strain, individuals may experience impaired memory and decision making, increasing that risk of falsely confessing. Now, contrast this with the Mendez Principles, a new gold standard grounded in empirical research. These principles advocate for rapport based interviewing, active listening, transparency, and the

ethical collection of information. Instead of trying to break down a suspect, interviewers are trained to build trust and then obtain reliable facts. Such approaches aim to gather accurate and reliable information while also respecting human rights.

out of a Hollywood thriller. So in twenty twelve, the dismembered body of Hervey Mediine, a flight attendant, was found near the Hollywood Sign. The LAPD suggested Mediine's partner, Gabrielle Compost Martinez, but they had no solid evidence. The case went cold until two LAPD detectives, Greg Stearns and Tim

Marcia tried something new. They used the techniques that were developed by the FBI's High Value Detaining Interrogation Group or known as HIG, which were originally designed to ethically question

terrorism suspects without using coercion. So in science based interviewing, like the HAGUE technique, they focused on careful operation before the interview, create a calm, respectful atmosphere, ask opened into questions to encourage detailed memories, listening more than talking, right, and then focusing on what people say, not just their body language. You know, if you just listen to people, they'll tell you everything.

This technique is really in high contrast with some of the cases that we mentioned earlier, like the Central Park five or the case of Brendan Dacy from Making a Murderer where miners were subjected to hours long interrogations without counsel and then they confessed falsely under enormous psychological stress. So these are examples that demonstrate the danger of using outdated techniques versus the promise of reform.

The convictions were primarily based on confessions obtained under highly stressful interviews, with the accused subjected to intense interrogation tactics including physical abuse and threats against family members. In spite of the Belcom Street IRA unit confessing to the bombings in nineteen seventy five, the Guildford four remained incarcerated for fifteen years. Convictions were finally quashed in nineteen eighty nine after it was revealed that the police have manipulated interview

notes and suppressed exculpatory evidence. The case continues to be extensively analyzed in academic and media circles over the past decades. The article The Trial of the guild for Four Government Error or Government Persecution, published in the Journal of Law and Society, lays out the political and legal failures that led to this specific wrongful conviction. Additionally, the BBC has reported on the continued scrutiny of the case, including the

sealing of the related documents by the Home Office. This case prompted movement in Europe to explore and implement significant changes. Most significantly, it led to the development of the Peace model. PEACE which is used in the UK, Wales, Australia and now prioritizes information gathering over confession and employees tasks such as again, rapport building, evidence presentation, strategic questioning, all of this while emphasizing ethical and effective investigative interviewing.

saw clear improvements. By using techniques like tell, Explain and describe or TED for short, officers got richer and more profound stories and then they could cross check details way more effectively. She also emphasized the importance of listening, showing interest,

and being respectful, even to difficult suspects. This is so important to emphasize listen, be open, get information, take it all down, rather than creating this level of conflict and level of anxiety which is not going to contribute to your intended goal.

Tapping into academic research and real time feedback from experts, and then improving memory recall and the accuracy of the information through a number of different techniques that can be done as well.

should be grounded in science, not guesswork. Already a fan of mister Kleinman, clearly, he goes on to warn that false confessions damage not just the individuals that are in the room, but really entire communities, and which makes so much sense because when you do that, the word is going to get out just that there's going to be distrust, and that is what causes riffs between people whose duty is to protect the community. Therein right, so sign space

methods protects civil rights and they build trust in law enforcement. Now, the truth is, despite success stories, changing police culture is challenging.

one factor. There can be tons of other factors as well.

definitely learned my gift of gab there. And I probably have said this before, you know, being a five foot five female, I had to use my words a lot, especially to de escalate situations because I knew I wasn't going to be able to necessarily like fight it out. Not that I wanted any situation to get to that, but I was hyper hyper aware of it. And I think that also sort of spilled over into my clinical work.

And initially, you know, for all those years working with paroleis and probationers in a clinical setting that you know, as we're going through all this, I'm like, gosh, yeah, cops can kind of talk to anyone. I will give them that. When you're interviewing and interrogating. It's different, right in this setting in which you are trying to come to a determination of prosecution, because if you're a cop on the street, you're just trying to grab enough evidence

probable cause to maybe take somebody to jail. Being a detective and kind of going down the road as an investigating officer, is much more serious and different. And these are the times that you know, if I had just unlimited amount of years in my life, that I wish I had stayed in law enforcement longer, because as I kind of looked at like what's next in my career, I was starting to say, you know what, I really want to study interview and interrogation because I want to

be really badass at this. That was just sort of a thought, like a goal in the next few years for me. But of course, you know, I ended up taking the psychological route instead, But it would have been interesting. I think back on that Shiloh and what would she have learned, Like what was out there in two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, and how has that changed. So just this is a very reflective episode for a

lot of ways for me. But you know, just talking about letting people talk and sitting there and being empathetic, I mean, you and I worked with some very difficult clients. I know, we were clinicians, not cops interrogating them, but we're still trying to get them to tell us the truth about some really awful, shameful things that they had done.

I get that. I'm all for that in certain situations, at certain times, with certain individuals. There are so many circumstances that play a part in that. The work that I do clinically, you know, many times I'm working with like and this is I know this is a broad like reach, but I work with people that are in entertainment, which is where I used to work, and I have.

but I also see you doing this. And there's a parallel to what is happening in these interrogation techniques is if you listen long enough, you will be able to say, well, you know, I thank you for this information. What you said before was this, so help me understand what your perspective was then versus right now, and just being non confrontational and being curious is going to show a lot of deception more than yelling at somebody right when somebody

can't keep their story straight. Just think of all that information you've collected about it. I just I do think it's fascinating. I love your idea, that sort of sliding doors perspective of what.

and Sevarino recommend a few things. They say, expand access to training in science based methods, so I know this is definitely happening. There's a whole society now or an association for Evidence based Research in Policing and evidence based training and policing, So this movement is definitely happening. And then framing these new techniques as additions, maybe not replacements just yet, but adding the good stuff to your plate, like the broccoli, instead of taking away all the bad

for you stuff that tastes really good. So far, I'm sure that Yeah, that old like Dietitian trick, like just add the good stuff and then we'll take that away from you. Also, they suggest creating opportunities for cops nationwide to learn from each other. Right, So, if you have people that have done this successfully, then they go out and do the training. That makes for way more buy in than some researcher or doctor getting up there and

saying like, hey, you should try this. Lastly, they suggest making sure science based techniques are explained in operational terms that cops can use.

how research and practice can work together. When science backed interviews start solving cases and protecting rights, that's when the rest of the country will take notice.

And secondly, and maybe just as importantly, we need cultural change Steve Kleinman that we noted earlier. He says that law enforcement has traditionally prized confession driven methods, but modern policing just has to shift towards truth seeking rather than confession seeking. Those two things can work together, but they're also problematic if the confession driven part takes.

the research is there, start using it, make policy for it. Second, a legal standard that makes mandatory recording of interrogations and ensuring legal access to council can protect individual's rights. That's going to be vital. So again, there is no mandatory recording of interrogations. I'll leave it there. I mean, I think there's some pros and cons to how that plays out in court and to jurors. But what it does is just in this sort of like little box that

we're talking about here, it makes interviewers accountable. Lastly, training and education for law enforcement personnel on these tactics as well as the psychological and maybe even the neuroscientific aspects to interrogations we think will go a long way in preventing coercive practices if they know that those techniques can cause these outcomes just because of that's the way the brain works, or that's because a thing like memory distrust

syndrome actually exists. It's going to give them some pause of like, oh my gosh, okay, I didn't you know. This wasn't my intention, and now the science is saying here's what it could lead to. We think that would be really instrumental. So normally at this point we kind of transition into a criminal case or two that has the phenomenon we've talked about. We've covered a few in passing through this episode today already and then in other episodes.

I mean, Amanda Knox just came to my mind over and over again as we were formulating this episode and writing it out. So instead of covering another one, we just leave this question to you guys, what false confession case has made the biggest impact on you? Let us know through social media posting on this episode, email us, tag us, pop it in the comments on Patreon, whatever wherever. I feel like we all kind of have that one

that is stuck out to us for various reasons. And you know, the reason for doing this episode and episodes like this is to encourage the research field, hopefully to keep doing good work to then inform policy and procedure so that this stops happening. I mean, we're not too

big for our bridges. We know our part is really small here, but please support content creators who are bringing attention to these devastating impacts of false confessions and wrongful convictions that are really amazing people out there doing great work. The more you give that attention, even if it's just in one case that gets more attention on it, or if it's something like this like talking about the science

and police training. That's if you feel like you can't do anything, sometimes that's the little part that you can play as well.

plays the lead Jerry Conlin. The show follows his being coerced into confessing into the crime and then being sentenced to life in prison. Not only that, but his father Giuseppe Conlin is also imprisoned as part of the alleged conspiracy, and then while in prison, he begins to fight for justice and to clear their names, aided by a determin lawyer played by Emma Thompson, who is never bad, she's

always great. And this film very, very succinctly explores themes of injustice, family and perseverance, and it was nominated for seven Academy Awards. Daniel day Lewis is an intense actor, and of course this is one of his intense roles. It's really really good.

I just want to put in here recommended listening. So Truth and Justice with Bob Ruff we already mentioned he just put out an episode called The Science of False Confessions. Very sarenedipitous. Again, like you said, Scott, this was all kind of weaving together. But he speaks with a false confessions expert Alan Hirsch, who has his own podcast called The Truth about False Confessions that he has done a

number of episodes on looking at Cases. He's not currently doing any more episodes, but it sounds really interesting if you want more content, So we'll put links to all of that, as well as all the commentary that we've done pretty recently in the show notes. We'll put them in the show notes, and then of course on our website, you guys can always always go to our Spotlight tab and that has every single guest YouTube, podcast, written article,

all the above. We have cataloged those for you if you just want to see where else we have kind of been yup in our mouths.

We've been having a blast doing our sort of off the cuff shrink wraps that are available to our Patreon members. We have not released those to the general public. We kind of like to keep it as a special little bonus, so you know, if you're up for some extra listening, you can always join for a month and just knock yourself out on all the additional content we've created and then take a break.