I have a couple of questions for you

"It is the king of evidence. If you can get someone to confess to a crime, the court is going to find them guilty." -- Jeff Kingston, Temple University in Tokyo

Japan has a 99% conviction rate and the vast majority of those convictions are supported by confessions. But, as the onion is peeled back, the truth emerges about the ways in which those confessions are obtained.

False confessions aren't just an American phenomenon. We have long seen them on display in show trials in totalitarian nations. Officials who find themselves on the outs with the regime leaders have long been given a choice - confess now or your family will pay.

In Japan a slightly sanitized version of that technique has been found quite effective in obtaining confessions from the innocent. Appeals are made to the suspect to think of his family - to think of the shame his alleged actions would bring upon his parents or his wife or his children. As preserving face is of the utmost importance in Japan, getting the signature on a sheet of paper is often a mere formality.

The very interrogation itself is often so coercive that a suspect will gladly sign a confession prepared by his interrogator just so the torment will end. We're not talking physical torture. We're talking psychological torture. We're talking hours on end in an interrogation room with one or more police officers subjecting a suspect to accusations and implied threats.

But while the Japanese police and prosecutors are not widely accused of resorting to more aggressive forms of interrogation such as torture, no-one outside the small interview room really knows what happens inside because suspects' interviews take place behind closed doors - without an attorney.

And that is the crux of the problem. Without an attorney in the room there is no way to find out exactly what happened. The suspect signed the confession. He's now a convicted criminal. Of course he's going to say he was coerced. Why should anyone believe him?

In Japan, and other countries, it happens because the law doesn't recognize the right of the accused to consult with an attorney before being subjected to interrogation. In the United States it happens because suspects choose to take their chances in the bright lights of the interrogation room. Not being familiar with the psychological tools of the interrogator, they think they can outsmart the officer in the room. They don't understand the ways in which interrogators are trained to take you down a path in which the only option available is to confess.

Throw the suspect a rope. Let him know there's only one way out of the room. Then give him the opening. We know you were there. The crime techs are recovering your fingerprints as we speak. We know it was self-defense.

Before you know it, they've got the signature on the piece of paper and the only question left is how much time will he have to do.

Manipulating the innocent through video

"You might as well confess. We have you on video."

"Okay, okay. I did it. Can I go home now?"

Maybe that's not exactly how it goes, but a new study indicates that people who did nothing wrong are more likely to confess if they are told they were caught on video. In the study, a group of subjects were asked to complete a task. They played a game in which they were asked a series of questions. For every question they answered correctly, they were told to withdraw money from a bank account. For every question they answer incorrectly, they were told to deposit money in that account.

After completing the task, each test subject met with a researcher. The researcher debriefed the test subject and then told him or her that there was evidence the test subject stole money from the bank. Some test subjects were told there was a video showing their dishonesty while others were shown a doctored video showing the thefts.

The test subjects were asked to sign a confession - and 87% of the test subjects signed it when asked the first time. The remaining 13% signed it on the second request.

It is very disturbing that researchers were able to obtain confessions from innocent persons by merely telling them that there was a video. It is even more disturbing that innocent persons were convinced to confess their "guilt" after seeing a doctored video. These folks knew they had done nothing wrong but confessed anyway.

Regardless of the mechanisms involved in creating our see-video versus told-video effect, the results show that doctored videos, or simply the proposition that video evidence exists, are potent forms of suggestion that can contribute to false confessions and foster false beliefs. According to these results, our advice to those who receive digital footage of themselves is: be warned, digital images from untrustworthy sources are like a box of chocolates; never know what you are going to get. -- Robert Nash and Kimberly Wade

Those of us who practice criminal law already know that a person who can't post a bond is more likely to confess to a crime than a person who bonded out. The lure of "time served" is very powerful for those folks in the holdover.

Factor in the threat of video evidence and that poor schmuck doesn't stand a chance.

* A special thanks to Dennis C. Elias, Ph.D. and Zagnoli McEvoy Foley, LLC for the tweets.

Interrogation and false confessions

I came across some interesting articles on police interrogation methods and false confessions after my trial was continued this morning (see what The Innocence Project has to say about the matter).

There's this one from Grits for Breakfast. Stephen Gustitis wrote this piece on the psychology of confession. Charles Weisselberg, a professor at the University of California School of Law authored this article on police interrogation tactics in California.

The Reid Technique sets out 9 steps of interrogation. This method seeks to coerce a confession by use of moral justification. The interrogator limits the suspect's responses and presents him with a way out by offering him two choices -- one of which is less morally challenging than the other.

For a practical lesson in interrogation techniques, check out Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon. Simon spent a year with the homicide detectives of the Baltimore, MD Police Department. The television series Homicide: Life on the Street was based on his book. There is a chilling interrogation scene in the book which, if you close your eyes, you can see Andre Braugher's character, Det. Frank Pembleton, conducting.

I tell friends, clients and potential clients that if they are being accused of committing a crime, NEVER talk to the police without consulting an attorney. I have had cases in which my client all but made the case against him because of what he said to the cops. Those who are actually innocent of the charge do themselves the most harm because they have nothing to hide -- and they hide nothing.