How the timing of police evidence disclosure impacts custodial legal advice

Abstract

Presently, the police in England and Wales disclose their evidence at different points during the arrest and detention of a suspect. While the courts have not objected to this, past field research suggests that lawyers can only advise their clients accurately when the police disclose their evidence before the police interview. To examine this from a law -psychology perspective, we recruited 100 criminal defence lawyers to participate in an online study.Lawyers read fictional scenarios and provided custodial legal advice to a hypothetical client (Christopher) when given either pre-interview disclosure or disclosure at various points during the police interview (early, gradually, or late). Lawyers given pre-interview disclosure provided considerably more informed legal advice compared to those who were only provided with disclosure during the hypothetical police interview. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this paper provides further evidence that pre-interview disclosure is essential for lawyers to deliver case-specific legal advice to suspects.

Truth-tellers stand the test of time and contradict evidence less than liars, even months after a crime.

“…Further research is needed, however, to explore whether lie detection techniques that rely on suspects’ inconsistencies, such as SUE, might work in a variety of forensically relevant conditions—including when suspects are questioned weeks or months after a crime (e.g., Shawyer, Milne, & Bull, 2009; see also Sukumar, Hodgson, & Wade, 2016 and Sukumar, Wade, & Hodgson, 2016 for other concerns about the strategic disclosure of evidence in practice). Up until now, the time delays used in published strategic evidence disclosure studies have been typically short.…”