Suspects In Custody Research Articles

False confessions among suspects in police custody: Implications of anxiety and perceived stress

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to examine the effect of anxiety and stress on false confessions among police suspects in custody.
 Design/Methodology/Approach: The study adopted an ex post facto design. Participants were one hundred and nine (N 109) suspects in custody at the State Criminal Investigation Department of Kaduna State Police Command, Kaduna State, Nigeria. The present study included three measurement tools to assess different constructs: The Gudjonsson Confession Questionnaire-Revised (GCQ-R) was utilized to evaluate false confession, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) was employed to assess anxiety levels, and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) was utilized to measure perceived stress.
 Findings: Results revealed that state anxiety positively predicted false confession (β =0.191, p < 0.05), whereas trait anxiety has no significant effect on false confession (β=- 0.050, p > 0.05), while perceived stress positively predicted false confession (β =0.273, p < 0.05).
 Conclusion: The study concluded that state anxiety and perceived stress contribute to a suspect’s predisposition to make a false confession. It was recommended that police officers be more cognizant of when and under what conditions they use interrogation methods in view of the level of anxiety and stress the suspect might be in.

Reconsidering Miranda rights: Modeling strategic action during the invocation stage of a police interrogation

This paper develops a method to identify manipulation of custodial suspects who attempt to invoke the Miranda right to legal counsel during a custodial interrogation. The method, developed from a combination of framing theory and hypergame theory, first documents the point where custodial suspects’ preferences shift and second identifies the proximate cause of that shift using excerpts from legal cases. The method applies linguistic analysis within a hypergame framework to reveal rational behavior of custodial suspects who, despite owning an initial preference to invoke, waive their right to counsel without explicit pressure from police. The paper terms this shift in preferences “manipulation” adding the concept to hypergames and to the literature on noncooperative discursive exchanges.

Falling through the cracks: Failing to identify compromised Miranda abilities for defendants with limited cognitive capacities.

Custodial suspects must be informed of their Miranda rights (Miranda v. Arizona, 1966) prior to police questioning. Since this landmark decision, scholars have rigorously studied Miranda comprehension and reasoning among vulnerable groups including those with intellectual disabilities (ID). However, the focus on ID has left arrestees with limited cognitive capacities (i.e., LCCs with IQs between 70 and 85) entirely overlooked. The current dataset addressed this oversight using a large (N=820) sample of pretrial defendants who had completed the Standardized Assessment of Miranda Abilities (SAMA). Traditional (i.e., ID and no-ID) criterion groups were first analyzed with the standard error of measurement (SEM) removed. Second, a nuanced three-group framework included defendants with LCCs. Results indicate that LCC defendants are vulnerable to impaired Miranda comprehension (i.e., limited recall of the Miranda warning and deficits in Miranda-related vocabulary knowledge). Not surprisingly, their waiver decisions were often impaired by crucial misconceptions (e.g., seeing the investigating officers as beneficently on their side). The practical implications of these findings were underscored with respect to Constitutional safeguards for this critically important group, who have appeared to fall through the cracks in the criminal justice system.

An Appraisal of Emerging Issues in the Law and Practice Relating to Bail, Bondspersons and Forfeiture of Recognizance in Nigeria.

Abstract A basic constitutional right of a suspect who is being held in the custody or is arraigned in court on criminal charges, is the right to be admitted to bail, pending the final determination of the case against him. This right is founded on the accusatorial criminal justice system, and the constitutional principle that an accused person is presumed innocent until his guilt is proven beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law. In exceptional circumstances, bail may even be granted also to a person who has been found guilty of a criminal offence, pending the determination of his subsisting or proposed appeal. Bail is granted to the accused person either unconditionally or subject to some conditions usually referred to as the terms of bail, which may include production of surety, sureties or bondspersons, among other conditions. The terms or conditions of bail are considered necessary for purposes of guaranteeing the availability of the accused person to face his trial, or until the final determination of the charge against him. Where an accused person who has been granted bail upon production of sureties or bondspersons, thereafter jumps bail, there is an obligation on the part of the surety/bondsperson to produce the accused person; else, the surety may be liable to show cause why the surety should not be made to forfeit the recognizance the surety entered into as a condition for admitting the accused person to bail. A lot of controversies and confusions has arisen from the practice and use of sureties/bondspersons, the abscondment of accused persons, the practice of revocation of bail and forfeiture of recognizance in Nigeria. This paper is aimed to explain as well as to examine the law and practice as they relate to grant of bail to suspects in custody and persons charged to court on commission of criminal offences, the use of recognizance, sureties or bondspersons, jumping of bail and the concept of forfeiture of recognizance in Nigeria. The aim of the authors herein is two-fold; to clarify the law and principles on these subjects, for the benefits of researchers, practitioners and stakeholders in criminal justice administration, to analyse the practical application of the law in these fields with a view to determining on the one hand, to what extant the practice in Nigeria is in tandem with extant law and principles of reasonableness, and on the other hand, the extent of conformity of the Nigerian law on same, to international best practices.

Unemployment and Drug Trafficking Among Suspects in Custody of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, Cross River State Command, Nigeria

The objective of this study is to determine the relationship between unemployment and drug trafficking in Nigeria with particular reference to suspects in custody of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), Cross River State Command. Purposive sampling technique was adopted to select one hundred and twenty-seven (127) respondents (suspects) from the study area, to which standard questionnaires were administered. The generated data were statistically analysed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation analysis to estimate the relationship under study. The findings of the study revealed that there were significant direct relationships between unemployment and drug trafficking and between un-employability and illicit drug trade. Lack of entrepreneurial skills had a positive link with drug trafficking. As a solution, the study recommended that government at all levels should create or encourage the private sector to offer, more jobs for the teeming unemployed youths, promote small and medium scale enterprises for the unemployed through empowerment programmes and provide unemployment benefits for the jobless.

Accessible biometrics: A frustrated total internal reflection approach to imaging fingerprints

Fingerprints are widely used as a means of identifying persons of interest because of the highly individual nature of the spatial distribution and types of features (or minuta) found on the surface of a finger. This individuality has led to their wide application in the comparison of fingerprints found at crime scenes with those taken from known offenders and suspects in custody. However, despite recent advances in machine vision technology and image processing techniques, fingerprint evidence is still widely being collected using outdated practices involving ink and paper – a process that can be both time consuming and expensive. Reduction of forensic service budgets increasingly requires that evidence be gathered and processed more rapidly and efficiently. However, many of the existing digital fingerprint acquisition devices have proven too expensive to roll out on a large scale. As a result new, low-cost imaging technologies are required to increase the quality and throughput of the processing of fingerprint evidence. Here we describe an inexpensive approach to digital fingerprint acquisition that is based upon frustrated total internal reflection imaging. The quality and resolution of the images produced are shown to be as good as those currently acquired using ink and paper based methods. The same imaging technique is also shown to be capable of imaging powdered fingerprints that have been lifted from a crime scene using adhesive tape or gel lifters.

'Voluntariness with a Vengeance' the Coerciveness of Police Lies in Interrogations

In this note, I analyze the philosophical, legal and psychological literature regarding police lies to suspects in interrogations. I argue that all forms of police lies to suspects in custody are coercive and all confessions resulting from these lies should not be admitted in court.

Current Problems on Legal Communication between the Accused or Suspects in Custody and the Defense Lawyers

Current Problems on Legal Communication between the Accused or Suspects in Custody and the Defense Lawyers

Law Enforcement and the Rights of the Accused: Are the Police Getting a Bad Rap?

Nationwide, law enforcement professionals have endured increasing scrutiny regarding their treatment of custodial suspects and their alleged abridgement of suspects’ Constitutional rights. At the same time, in the interests of community safety, many members of the public fully expect police officers to function efficiently in arresting and facilitating the prosecution of likely perpetrators. These perspectives reflect due-process and crime-control models respectively. Very little is known, however, about how law enforcement professionals actually view the rights of the accused when not acutely immersed in the cross-currents of public opinion. Using an anonymous survey, the current investigation addresses both Miranda rights as well as the European Union’s (EU) much more comprehensive approach to the rights of the accused. In general, this sample of 209 urban police officers favored protections of criminal suspects that went considerably beyond Miranda safeguards.

Investigating Miranda waiver decisions: An examination of the rational consequences

Millions of custodial suspects waive their Miranda rights each year without the benefit of legal counsel. Miranda understanding, appreciation, and reasoning abilities are essential to courts' acceptance of Miranda waivers (Grisso, 2003; Rogers & Shuman, 2005). The question posed to forensic psychologists and psychiatrists in the disputed Miranda waivers is whether a particular waiver decision was knowing, intelligent, and voluntary. Despite the remarkable development of Miranda research in recent decades, studies have generally focused on understanding and appreciation of Miranda rights, but with comparatively minimal emphasis on Miranda reasoning and attendant waiver decisions. Research on defendants' decisional capacities constitutes a critical step in further developing theoretical and clinical models for Miranda waiver decisions. The current study evaluated Miranda waiver decisions for 80 pretrial defendants from two Oklahoma jails to study systematically how rational decision abilities affect defendants' personal waiver decisions. In stark contrast to what was expected, many defendants were able to identify a rational decisional process in their own legal cases, yet cast such reasoning aside and chose a completely contradictory Miranda waiver decision.

The Relationship between the Constitutional Right to Silence and Confessions in Nigeria

Abstract The extraction of confessions from suspects under torture by security agents is a notorious fact in Nigeria. Ironically, the Constitution of the country guarantees a right to silence, but courts in Nigeria predicate the admissibility of confessions on the common law-based Judges Rules and Evidence Act 2011 without linking it to the constitutionally guaranteed right to silence. This article reviews the legal rules on the admissibility of confessions in Nigeria and contends that without attaching constitutional flavour to the admissibility of confessions, the legislature and the courts in Nigeria unwittingly water the ground for the systemic extraction of confession from suspects in custody in Nigeria. The article suggests that the courts in the country consider the implication of the guarantee of the right to silence in the country’s constitution in the determination of the admissibility of confessions to promote fair trial in criminal cases in the country.

An investigation of implied Miranda waivers and Powell wording in a mock-crime study.

To guard against coerced self-incrimination, the Supreme Court of the United States outlined in Miranda v. Arizona (1966) what arresting officers must convey to custodial suspects for resulting statements to be admissible into evidence. During the ensuing decades, the Court has continued to grapple with the requisite wording and practical enforcement of these Constitutional rights. In Florida v. Powell (2010), the Court upheld the conviction of a defendant whose Miranda warning affirmed that before questioning he had the right to an attorney, but failed to specify that during questioning he had this right as well. In Berghuis v. Thompkins (2010), the Court ruled that the right to silence must be invoked explicitly, while valid Miranda waivers could be "implied" by a suspect's actions as well as words. The current study employed a mock crime design to assess the practical effects of these 2 rulings on waiver decisions. The wording change enabled by Powell had little effect on Miranda knowledge and reasoning. With regard to Thompkins, the type of waiver profoundly affected subsequent decisions: 13.7% exercised their rights following implied waivers versus 81.1% with explicit waivers. Importantly, the implied waiver condition produced much higher percentages of confessions (17.6% vs. 3.8%) and of admissions about incriminating information (29.4% vs. 9.4%).

Investigating the Effects of Repeated Miranda Warnings: Do They Perform a Curative Function on Common Miranda Misconceptions?

In Miranda v. Arizona (1966), the Supreme Court of the United States required that custodial suspects be apprised of their Constitutional rights against self-incrimination. The Court could not have anticipated the rampant popularization of Miranda warnings in subsequent movies and television dramas. Influenced by public media, many arrestees assume that they already "know" their rights, with no awareness of their misconceptions. The current investigation examines whether repeated exposures to Miranda warnings performs any "curative" function (i.e., dispelling common Miranda misconceptions held by pretrial defendants). The accumulative effects of five different Miranda warnings were tested over a several-hour period on 260 detainees. For the nearly half (113 or 43.5%) with three or more misconceptions, improvement (i.e., ≥2 fewer misconceptions) occurred for only 35 defendants. Predictably, this improved group also tended to display a better understanding of Miranda-relevant vocabulary words and a better recall of the administered Miranda warnings than their unimproved counterparts. On average, the improved group also performed better on general measures of intelligence, and listening and reading comprehension, while still evidencing substantial cognitive deficits. The curative function of Miranda advisements is considered in light of these findings.

Getting it wrong about Miranda rights: False beliefs, impaired reasoning, and professional neglect.

Television and other media inundate Americans with innumerable yet fragmentary examples of Miranda warnings; however, familiarity born of repeated exposures cannot be equated with accuracy or understanding. The intended purpose of these warnings is to inform and caution rather than to pacify and reassure--a purpose that cannot be realized when most custodial suspects assume that they already know everything the law insists they should be told. Painstakingly negotiated Constitutional safeguards are further imperiled when attorneys, judges, and forensic evaluators are lulled into complacency by the commonly held misconception that everyone understands their Miranda rights. This article elucidates certain false beliefs and misapprehensions regarding Miranda comprehension and identifies widespread neglect of these issues by the professional community. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved).

What do potential jurors know about police interrogation techniques and false confessions?

Psychological police interrogation methods in America inevitably involve some level of pressure and persuasion to achieve their goal of eliciting confessions of guilt from custodial suspects. In this article, we surveyed potential jurors about their perceptions of a range of psychological interrogation techniques, the likelihood that such techniques would elicit a true confession from guilty suspects, and the likelihood that such techniques could elicit a false confession from innocent suspects. Participants recognized that these interrogation techniques may be psychologically coercive and may elicit true confessions, but believed that psychologically coercive interrogation techniques are not likely to elicit false confessions. The findings from this survey study indicate that potential jurors believe that false confessions are both counter- intuitive and unlikely, even in response to psychologically coercive interrogation techniques that have been shown to lead to false confessions from the innocent. This study provides empirical support for the idea that expert witnesses may helpfully inform jurors about the social science research on psychologically coercive interrogation methods and how and why such interrogation techniques can lead to false confessions.

UK Police Interviews: A Linguistic Analysis of Afro-Caribbean and White British Suspect Interviews

UK Police Interviews: A Linguistic Analysis of Afro-Caribbean and White British Suspect Interviews

Spanish translations of Miranda warnings and the totality of the circumstances.

Spanish-translated Miranda warnings are administered annually to thousands of Hispanic custodial suspects. In examining 121 Spanish translations and their English counterparts from 33 states, the lengths of Miranda warnings were generally comparable but marked differences were observed in the reading levels for individual Miranda components. The adequacy of Miranda translations varies markedly from minor variations to substantive errors. The most serious problems involved the entire omission of Miranda components; several omissions were observed in the Spanish translations for even the basic rights to silence and counsel. More commonly, Miranda discrepancies involved dissimilar content with a substantial trend toward more information in English than Spanish versions. Findings related to the Miranda translations, different word lengths, and varied reading levels are discussed using the totality of circumstances as its framework.

Confession Evidence

Confession evidence is powerful but flawed, often in nonintuitive ways. Contradicting widely held beliefs, research reviewed in this article suggests the following: Despite special training in how to conduct interviews, police cannot distinguish better than the layperson whether suspects are lying or telling the truth. Suspects in custody routinely waive their self-protective rights to silence and to counsel—especially if they are innocent. Certain legal but deceptive interrogation tactics increase the risk that innocents will confess to crimes they did not commit. Judges and juries are easily fooled, unable to distinguish between true and false confessions. Appellate courts cannot be expected to reasonably determine whether the error of admitting a coerced confession at trial was harmless or prejudicial.

An analysis of Miranda warnings and waivers: Comprehension and coverage.

Miranda warnings enshrine the constitutional rights of custodial suspects against self-incrimination. However, the wording and sentence complexity of Miranda warnings and waivers vary dramatically from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. This study is the first extensive investigation of Miranda warning variations examining 560 Miranda warnings from across the United States. With Flesch-Kincaid reading comprehension as a useful metric, Miranda warnings varied from very simple comprehension (i.e., grade 2.8) to requiring postgraduate education. Miranda warnings are composed of five components (e.g., silence and evidence against you); marked variations were also observed in the comprehensibility of individual components. On average, the Miranda warning component on "continuing rights" requires a reading comprehension level six grades higher than the comparatively simple expression of the right to silence. Similar analyses were conducted on Miranda waivers. The content of these warnings differed on such issues as communicating (a) when access to an attorney would be granted (e.g., 45.9% specified only "during questioning") and (b) explicitly that indigent legal services were free (e.g., 31.8% directly informed suspects). Finally, the study identified representative Miranda components at different levels of reading comprehension as a template for further research.

Of Rights and Roles

Although the rules governing police interviews with suspects in custody have been well regulated since the introduction of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) in England and Wales and Northern Ireland, concern has been expressed over the years about the vulnerable position of young suspects within the PACE regime and about the adequacy of the safeguards provided. This paper discusses the nature of police interviews with young people in Northern Ireland, drawing on the findings of a recent research project. The paper focuses particularly on the roles of the various participants (the interviewing officer(s), the appropriate adult and the solicitor) within the dynamics of advising young persons before and during the police interview and calls for a reconstruction of the role of the appropriate adult.