An exploration of laypeople’s perceptions of confession evidence and interrogation tactics.

Abstract

For a confession to be admitted as evidence, the confession must be voluntary, procured when a suspect is aware of his or her right to silence and counsel, and the methods that obtained the confession should not shock the conscience of the public. We conducted 3 studies on samples of Canadian citizens to begin to examine what the public does or does not find inappropriate in the context of police interrogations. Findings suggest that overtly coercive tactics are viewed as less appropriate than psychologically manipulative tactics. Crime severity and evidence strength influenced these perceptions. Of the psychologically manipulative tactics, only police lying about evidence appeared particularly negative to participants. The findings are discussed in the context of confession evidence admissibility and the possible implications for false confessions. Public Significance StatementA key aspect for determining the admissibility of confession evidence includes deciding whether or not the practices used to obtain a confession "shock the conscience" of the public. We found that the perceived appropriateness of a police interrogation tactic differed based on the severity of the crime and evidence of guilt. Thus, laypeople's subjective perceptions of police practices are not fixed, and seem unlikely to protect the rights of suspects, facilitate due process, or reduce miscarriages of justice.

Minimization, The Trojan Horse of Interviewing? Measuring Perceptions of Witness Interviewing Strategies

“…Despite the clear impact of minimization on sentencing expectations, surveys of laypeople suggest that they do not view minimization tactics particularly negatively. For instance, studies have shown that laypeople accept the use of some forms of minimization in police interviews (Homant & Witkowski, 2011;Moston & Fisher, 2007), that they do not view minimization as being overly coercive (kaplan et al, 2020), and that they do not recognize the risks of using implicit tactics against suspects (e.g., involuntary confessions; Blandón-Gitlin et al, 2011;Costanzo et al, 2010;Hall et al, 2020;Leo & Liu, 2009). Furthermore, research shows that when a suspect confesses, conviction rates increase even when the confession was elicited using coercive methods (e.g., minimization; Jones & Penrod, 2016kassin & Sukel, 1997;Wallace & kassin, 2012).…”