Interviewing strategically to elicit admissions from guilty suspects.

Abstract

In this article we introduce a novel interviewing tactic to elicit admissions from guilty suspects. By influencing the suspects' perception of the amount of evidence the interviewer holds against them, we aimed to shift the suspects' counterinterrogation strategies from less to more forthcoming. The proposed tactic (SUE-Confrontation) is a development of the Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE) framework and aims to affect the suspects' perception by confronting them with statement-evidence inconsistencies. Participants (N = 90) were asked to perform several mock criminal tasks before being interviewed using 1 of 3 interview techniques: (a) SUE-Confrontation, (b) Early Disclosure of Evidence, or (c) No Disclosure of Evidence. As predicted, the SUE-Confrontation interview generated more statement-evidence inconsistencies from suspects than the Early Disclosure interview. Importantly, suspects in the SUE-Confrontation condition (vs. Early and No disclosure conditions) admitted more self-incriminating information and also perceived the interviewer to have had more information about the critical phase of the crime (the phase where the interviewer lacked evidence). The findings show the adaptability of the SUE-technique and how it may be used as a tool for eliciting admissions.

Interviewing Suspects in Denial: On How Different Evidence Disclosure Modes Affect the Elicitation of New Critical Information

“…As in previous studies using the SUE framework to elicit new information (Tekin et al, 2015, 2016), all mock suspects in this study were guilty. The rationale behind this was that previous studies using a similar design have shown innocent suspects to be forthcoming to a very high extent (Luke et al, 2014; Tekin et al, 2014), and we had no reason to assume that innocent suspects would be less forthcoming in the present study.…”

“…In suspect interviews, the use of evidence is often at the core. Unfortunately, to date only few studies have provided knowledge on the link between evidence disclosure and information elicitation (e.g., Tekin et al, 2015; Walsh and Bull, 2015). Therefore, this study was designed to examine how different evidence disclosure modes affect the elicitation of new critical information.…”

“…In the first study examining how the SUE framework could be used to elicit new information from guilty suspects, a SUE confrontation condition was compared against an Early disclosure condition (Tekin et al, 2015). To illustrate the implementation of the SUE protocol, consider a crime that can be divided into three different phases (A, B, and C).…”

“…Finally, the interviewer asks about Phase C, for which s/he lacks information. Importantly, in the study by Tekin et al (2015), for the SUE confrontation condition, the suspects were not given any opportunity to comment on their in/consistencies. For the Early disclosure condition, the interviewer disclosed the evidence about Phase A and Phase B before asking questions about it.…”

Strategic disclosure of evidence: Perspectives from psychology and law.

“…Meanwhile, an experimental study has also found that strategic evidence disclosure led mock suspects to reveal more information compared to when the interviewer disclosed STRATEGIC DISCLOSURE OF EVIDENCE 13 the evidence early or not at all (Tekin et al, 2015). By strategically disclosing evidence, the interviewer manipulated the suspects' perceptions of how much evidence the interviewer held.…”