Police interviewing techniques, false confessions, and wrongful convictions have been a controversial topic both here and around the globe.
There have been countless high-profile cases where someone has been convicted but later exonerated, and their interrogations have been questioned either in front of a judge or in a Netflix documentary.
In New Zealand, Teina Pora was wrongfully convicted of murder and rape largely based on a confession given during a police interview.
Alan Hall spent 19 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. An admission of the potential ownership of items left at the crime scene during a lengthy police interview contributed to his conviction.
And more recently, Harry Matchitt had his manslaughter conviction quashed after a so-called “false confession”. He spent three years behind bars and is now seeking at least $600,000 in compensation.
So, why do people sometimes confess to things they didn’t do?
Forensic psychologist Ghazi Metoui told The Front Page that there are different types of confessions.
“You can get a full confession. You’ve accused me of X, I’ve admitted it, and I’ll tell you why and all the details that you want. But then you can also get tentative confessions. So, I’m not telling you that I did it, I’m not necessarily saying I didn’t do it, but I give some information that supports that I did it.
“So I might say something like, ‘Well, if you say so then I did’, or, ‘I probably did it’. So, we’ve gotta be careful of that,” he said.
Metoui said many people “confess” to small things they didn’t do, like taking the blame for something in the schoolyard or apologising to avoid conflict. This could be to protect somebody or because of a yearning for notoriety.
“What you’ll probably find is the reasons that you did [take the blame] can be the same mechanisms for why somebody might confess to a brutal murder or something very serious with far more devastating consequences than getting a punishment exercise at school,” he said.
Another reason, he said, is simply that sometimes people are mentally unwell.
“They’re psychotic, they’re delusional, and they come to believe, because of mental illness, that they have been responsible for something they didn’t do.
“I’ve seen that in my career a good handful of times. Usually, it’s always high-profile cases, where somebody has been convicted of that offence, there are compelling reasons for that person to have been incriminated of that offence, and I see somebody who has schizophrenia, who’s very unwell, and through their own delusional processes, they’ve decided that they did it and in an interview might tell me that they did it,” he said.
Retracted confessions, Metoui said, can also come about when people are placed under pressure, coerced, or given incentives.
“We used to think that false or unreliable admissions would only come about by harsh interventions, harsh interviewing styles. So, literally beating somebody, assaulting them, depriving them of food for days, electric shock treatment, all sorts of deprivation.
“That level of coercion has high incidents of people agreeing to whatever’s put to them because they just can’t take it anymore.
“What we know now, and we’ve known for a while, is that it could be far more subtle than that. Inducement, being offered a bribe, being offered, ‘If you confess, this interview can stop’, or, ‘you can go home to your family’. Inducements like that can make people admit to all sorts of things that later they retract,” he said.
When it comes to interviewing methods in New Zealand, Metoui said that overall, officers are “excellent”.
“I read police interviews most week of my career... I have to say, overwhelmingly, I see excellent police processes in their questioning, and they take great care in instructing the suspect of their rights.
“I don’t think an interview should go on for hours. It shouldn’t go on if it’s obvious that the suspect is fatigued... I think it’s a good process for police to insist on breaks... And in my experience, the police are quite good at doing that,” he said.
NZ Police is heralding in a new era of investigative interviewing practices, with the hiring of a new, specified role to oversee the process.
It was one of the recommendations made as part of two reviews of investigative interviewing: a report led by the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) and an internal police review.
Police have confirmed that recommendations from each review will be implemented, and as part of that, a manager of interviewing and innovation has been hired.
“The programme of work will focus in implementing these recommendations. This will be a substantial piece of work, and timeframes cannot be provided at this time,” a spokesperson said.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about your rights in a police interview.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.