TV show depicts deception detection science as too exact

FOX TV is heavily running previews for a new mid-season drama called "Lie to Me" that purports to portray a scientist with perpetual five o'clock shadow and his hotter-than-thou research team who are experts in the "science of deception detection" - i.e., telling whether someone is lying.

Says a promo: "Dr. Cal Lightman and his team are effectively human polygraph machines, and no truth can be concealed from them." Of course, as human "polygraph" machines that would make their work discredited, pseudoscientific and too unreliable to use in court, but I'm sure that's not what the producers meant by that line.

The lead character is based on the work of behavioral scientist Paul Ekman whose landmark research cataloging and interpreting facial expressions has led him to create a lucrative consulting business teaching lie detection techniques to various official and corporate entities. FOX TV, naturally, has turned Ekman into a crime fighting detective type. Even more of a stretch, the show takes to absurdist extremes a concept from Ekman and Maureen O'Sullivan's work hypothesizing a small number of people are "truth wizards" who are exceptionally accurate at deciphering lies. In fact, the story goes so far as to pretend the lead character, Dr. Cal Lightman, himself enjoys such abilities.

Inarguably, deception detection using "microexpressions" is a big part of how humans identify deception in an interactive environment. But it can never be 100% accurate, or even close. In practice it's more art than science.

To use a Shakespearean analogy from Ekman himself at a recent MIT conference on security and human behavior, Othello’s error was to read Desdemona’s fear correctly but to misunderstand its cause. We may indeed pick up on these cues, but that doesn't mean they will be interpreted correctly.

Reading micro-facial expressions to identify deception is a core method used in the "Reid technique" of police interrogtion, an approach that provides the basis for most police interrogation training in America. But with the possible exception of a handful of "wizards," there's little evidence police are better at detecting deception than the rest of us. According to the (highly recommended) recent book by Richard Leo, Police Interrogations and American Justice (pp. 98-99):

Numerous controlled studies have shown that people are not good intuitive judges of truth and deception, typically performing at no better than chance levels of accuracy. Controlled studies have also shown that even investigators and other supposed experts who routinely evaluate deceptive behavior are highly prone to error. Moreover, Kassin and Fong have shown that police interrogators and others specifically trained in the [Reid technique] not only fail to discriminate accurately between true and false statements much of th time, but also that behavior analysis training actually lowers the ability of police interrogators to discriminate accurately between true and false denials. Further, such training inflates their confidence in their judgments. (citations omitted)

Indeed, researcher Aldert Vrij thinks overreliance on Ekman-esque micro-expressions ignores more probative cues to deception and may lead to false accusations. According to this abstract from a recent paper:

deception research has revealed that many verbal cues are more diagnostic cues to deceit than nonverbal cues. Paying attention to nonverbal cues results in being less accurate in truth/lie discrimination, particularly when only visual nonverbal cues are taken into account. Also, paying attention to visual nonverbal cues leads to a stronger lie bias (i.e., indicating that someone is lying). The author recommends a change in police practice and argues that for lie detection purposes it may be better to listen carefully to what suspects say

"Lie to Me" premiers on Jan. 14 in FOX's sweet spot right after American Idol, and I'll be watching with interest if also a slightly jaundiced eye. Until then, for those interested in the actual science of deception detection, the always excellent (when the author gets around to posting!) Deception Blog supplied a superb end of the year roundup of deception-related research:

• Part 1: Catching liars
• Part 2: New technologies
• Part 3: Magic
• Part 4: When people lie
• Part 5: Polygraphy
• Part 6: Kids' lies
  

Police interrogation a 'guilt presumptive' process

The raft of DNA exonerations nationwide has focused greater discussion in recent years on a handful of common sources of provably false convictions. While erroneous eyewitness IDs dominate among causal factors, more than a few erroneous convictions have resulted from false confessions.

While the fact of false confessions is inarguable (in Austin's infamous yogurt shop murders, for example, dozens of people confessed to the same crime), the mechanics of how that occurs are only just beginning to be understood. While some false confessors are mentally ill or seeking publicity, others succumb to pressure to confess by police interrogators.

Hoping to "to educate potential clients about police tactics and the psychology of the confession," Texas attorney and blawgger Stephen Gustitis examines new research on police interrogations from an article called Mourning Miranda by Charles Weisselberg analyzing training and tactics used by California police. (Others have commented on this writing here and here. ) Writes Gustitis:

Weisselberg started by distinguishing between an “interview” and an “interrogation.” An interview is non-accusatory. It's “free-flowing and relatively unstructured.” Its purpose is to gather information. An interrogation, on the other hand, is “accusatory,” conducted “in a controlled environment,” and involves “active persuasion.” Officers are trained and understand the difference between an interview and an interrogation. During an interview police establish rapport with a suspect and use verbal and non-verbal information to decide whether, in their view, a suspect is telling the truth. If officers become “reasonably certain of the suspect’s guilt,” they may initiate an interrogation. Consequently, an officer’s initial judgments about truth, guilt, and culpability determines whether the suspect will be interrogated. In contrast to interviewing, interrogation is a “guilt-presumptive" process.

Next consider the nine potential components, or steps, used in many police interrogations. First is the confrontation statement by the interrogator. Then the interrogator interjects a reason for the commission of the crime, usually a morally acceptable one. Then the interrogator prepares to overcome the suspect's denials. Steps four through six guide the investigator in overcoming the suspect's reasons why he would not, or could not, have committed the crime. In step seven the police offer a statement supporting the suspect's morally acceptable reason for committing the crime. And the final steps are take the oral statement and convert it into a written confession.

In a followup post, Gustitis further described common interrogation practices, declaring that typically:

police wanted to first isolate a suspect, allowing them to sit alone and in sparsely furnished surroundings. This increased stress and increased the person's incentive to free themselves from the situation. Then by confronting the suspect outright the police hoped to increase anxiety and induce a sense of hopelessness.

Investigators regularly confront suspects and emphasize to them the only question remaining open is "why" (and not "whether") they committed the crime. In other words, the police presume the person under interrogation is guilty. Additionally, some of the most common police tactics include appealing to the person's self-interest, confronting them with actual (or purported) evidence of guilt, undermining their confidence in denials, appealing to the importance of cooperation, offering moral justifications for committing the crime, and minimizing the seriousness of the offense.

The Miranda court recognized the prevalence and use of these police interrogation tactics and concluded isolation was one of the most significant aspects of these methods. They concluded custodial interrogations contained inherently compelling pressures that undermined a person's ability to make free and informed choices whether to speak to the police.

Weisselberg's description of interrogation tactics jibes closesly with that offered earlier this year by academic Richard Leo in his book "Police Interrogations and American Justice," who argued that police routinely use coercion, fraud and deception in ways that contribute to false confessions. Lying to suspects in particular can generate false confessions as well as other negative outcomes. Such practices are prominent features of the so-called Reid technique (see a description here) which forms the basis for most police interrogation training in the United States.

Recording interrogations would solve some but not all of these problems; many police interrogation techniques are based on inherently coercive approaches that lack scientific support. Particularly suspect is reliance on the interrogating officers' ability to detect deception that supposedly justifies use of more coercive techniques. Ironically, then, one of the main arguments against recording interrogations has been that police want to keep those suspect tactics secret for fear the public won't support them:

The F.B.I., in documents defending its policy [not to require taped interrogations], argued that taping was not always possible, particularly when agents were on the road, and that it was not always appropriate. Psychological tricks like misleading or lying to a suspect in questioning or pretending to show the suspect sympathy might also offend a jury, the agency said.

“Perfectly lawful and acceptable interviewing techniques do not always come across in recorded fashion to lay persons as proper means of obtaining information from defendants,” said one of the once-secret internal Justice Department communications made public as part of the investigation into the dismissals of the United States attorneys.

That's not an acceptable reason to oppose taped interrogations, particularly in circumstances where a suspect has been isolated and read their Miranda rights. Just like cockroaches scatter when you turn on a light, my guess is that recording and thus exposing these tactics to scrutiny by judges and juries would, in the long run, result in their defenestration. At a minimum, recording would allow more comprehensive post-investigative analysis by researchers to identify unproductive approaches and best practices. Until then, for the foreseeable future, coercive tactics will remain a routine part of American police interrogation.

Police lied, falsified documents during interrogation that led to teen's untimely death

Lying to suspects during police interrogations is a common practice that courts have long supported, but the tactic carries with it serious risks that are frequently understated or overlooked.

Having focused recently on police interrogations practices that lead to false confessions and other negative outcomes, I'd be remiss not to point readers to an article from the LA Times about a 16-year old girl who was murdered because police falsely told a gangbanger/murderer during interrogation that she'd picked him out of a lineup ("Interrogation, then revenge," July 2):

When [detectives] Pinner and Rodriguez stepped into the interrogation room with Ledesma [the suspect], they had little real information to work with.

So they made up what they needed.

The photo six-pack was a complete fake. Rodriguez had doctored it, circling Ledesma's photo and forging Puebla's statement and signature.

The "ruse," as Pinner would later call it in court, was a legal move. Federal and state courts throughout the country have repeatedly upheld the right of police officers to lie to people they have in custody.

Interrogation rooms, experts say, are freewheeling places. Detectives lie frequently, typically telling a suspect that they have DNA evidence or video footage or witnesses. Sometimes they go the extra step of making up documents to bolster their lies.

So if police hadn't lied about Ledesma's girlfriend allegedly ratting him out - even phonying up official documents and forging her initials - she'd almost certainly still be alive today. That's enough reason right there for police to avoid telling lies in the interrogation room that misrepresent the actions of others. They're not the ones who must pay the ultimate price if some thug decides to murder the supposed witness against them. In this case, the sixteen year old detectives falsely accused had actually refused to substantially cooperate with police.

Ironically, reports the Times, in the investigation of the girl's murder LA police initially identified and accused the wrong suspect, once again using phony documentation to lie to him during the interrogation:

Before federal prosecutors and the LAPD sorted out Puebla's murder, however, Pinner and Rodriguez had arrested an innocent man in connection with Puebla's slaying. Based on bad information from sources, the detectives pinned the slaying on Juan Catalan -- Mario Catalan's brother. Juan Catalan sat in jail for five months awaiting trial until his lawyer turned up video footage showing Catalan was at a Dodgers game at the time of the shooting. A judge threw out the case, and Catalan was awarded $320,000 in a wrongful-arrest suit.

The day the detectives arrested Juan Catalan, they thought they had the right man. They brought him into an interview room in the same North Hollywood station where they had grilled Ledesma nine months before. Once again they switched on a recorder. Catalan begged the detectives to believe him, that he had nothing to do with Puebla's death. He asked to take a lie-detector test.

But Pinner and Rodriguez weren't having any of it. Pinner told Catalan that people had seen him shoot the girl. He pushed three six-packs in front of him. His picture was circled. Witnesses had signed their names.

They were all fake. But Catalan, of course, didn't know that.

"You see," Rodriguez told Catalan, "the pictures don't lie."

Well, perhaps the pictures don't. The problem is that police officers do.

These kind of coercive, manipulative tactics result directly from police training and the common interrogation practices that have (questionably) received the courts' seal of approval. Police look for deception cues during the early portion of the interrogation, then ramp up more coercive or mendacious tactics once they decide s suspect is being deceptive. But this case shows the enormous downsides to that tactic, potentially endangering or falsely accusing innocent people. Perhaps it's time to reconsider the practice altogether.

(Hat tip to Rebecca)

Deception detection is weak spot in security, police interrogation techniques

How good are police at judging when suspects lie? Indeed, how good is anybody at detecting deception by other people?

Having written yesterday about false confessions, I sat up and took notice when (via Bruce Schneier) I saw this post from Ross Anderson at Light Blue Touch Paper, liveblogging from the Interdisciplinary Workshop on Security and Human Behavior at MIT last month on problems related to deception and computer security. (Here are photos from the event if you weren't on the exclusive invite list.) According to Anderson:

The first session, on deception, was fascinating. It emphasised the huge range of problems, from detecting deception in interpersonal contexts such as interrogation through the effects of context and misdirection to how we might provide better trust signals to computer users. ...

The first session brought home what a huge subject deception is. The first speaker, Paul Ekman, pretty well established the study of how people deceive each other in face-to-face contexts, and how we detect deception. We observe a social hot spot - a discrepancy or an implausible statement, say - and this prompts us to look for an emotional leakage, via something like a microfacial expression.

However the error rate can be high, as the hot spot can come from a context switch and the emotion being leaked could be (say) anger at being interrogated rather than fear of being caught in a lie. Othello’s error was to read Desdemona’s fear correctly but to misunderstand its cause. ...

In particular - and Paul Ekman agreed to this in the panel discussion - the best way to tell a lie is to deceive yourself into believing it. This should get a lot more research. Charlatans in particular - such as spirit mediums who pretend to talk to the dead - operate by inducing self-deception.

That last observation identifies a key flaw in using behavioral cues for lie detection: Probably more people people deceive themselves into believing lies of all shapes, colors, sizes and motivations - particularly when justifying their own actions faced with accusations - than the rationalists among us would like to believe.

There's little doubt that detecting deception or mitigating the harm it causes (e.g., fraud) constitutes a major part of security of all types, not just computer security. The comments about deception, in particular, apply directly to day to day crime and punishment topics, not the least of which is the subject of police eliciting false confessions or identifying them after the fact.

A core method of modern American police interrogation relies on questioners judging verbal and nonverbal cues to determine if the interrogation subject is being deceptive, then developing an interrogation strategy grounded in that hypothesis. The most coercive tactics are reserved for offenders judged deceptive by police.

The problem is just as Anderson identified: The error rate is high, risking the same mistake committed by Othello when he falsely accused Desdemona. According to the (highly recommended) recent book by Richard Leo, Police Interrogations and American Justice (pp. 98-99):

Numerous controlled studies have shown that people are not good intuitive judges of truth and deception, typically performing at no better than chance levels of accuracy. Controlled studies have also shown that even investigators and other supposed experts who routinely evaluate deceptive behavior are highly prone to error. Moreover, Kassin and Fong have shown that police interrogators and others specifically trained in the [Behavioral Analysis Interview technique taught by John Reid and Associates] not only fail to discriminate accurately between true and false statements much of th time, but also that behavior analysis training actually lowers the ability of police interrogators to discriminate accurately between true and false denials. Further, such training inflates their confidence in their judgments. (citations omitted)

Assuming police can accurately judge lie detection leads directly to false accusations and confessions. That realization led law enforcement in some European countries to switch to an information gathering rather than an inquisitorial approach to interrogations over the last couple of decades, in addition to recording the entire process.

If the total rate of wrongful convictions turns out to fall on the higher end of the range of estimates, it will be in large part because police are little better at judging deception or its causes than Othello when he murdered poor Desdemona, protesting her innocence to the end.

BLOGVERSATION: Scott Greenfield responds that it's not just police who can't accurately tell when someone is lying, but also judges and jurors.

When does the adversarial system commence?

Even most non-lawyers know that the United States uses an a adversarial system of justice in both civil and criminal law. Recently in Rothgery v. Gillespie County, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments regarding the question of precisely when the investigative function of police ends and the adversarial legal system commences - is it upon indictment, at the bail hearing, upon arrest?

Doc Berman has used the phrase "comfortable legal fictions" to describe high-minded but empirically erroneous theories undergirding the legal system, and one such fiction is the idea that, under an "adversarial" system, investigation and prosecution of crimes are separate functions. Police are "fact finders," under this theory, while the adversarial system as it's usually understood commences when formal court proceedings begin.

To judge by the oral arguments, Justices on SCOTUS appear inclined to decide that the adversarial functions of the criminal justice system commence sometime after arrest, either at the initial bail proceedings or perhaps weeks later upon indictment. The case should be decided later this year, so we'll get their official answer then.

But an excellent new book I'm reading right now, "Police Interrogations and American Justice" by Richard Leo, makes a strong case that the adversarial system really begins well before the point in the process discussed in Rothgery. "Once police have decided to interrogate a suspect," he argues, "they have, in effect, crossed the line that separates police work from prosecutorial work. They have aligned themselves with the prosecution in orientation and goal; their function at this point becomes more prosecutorial than investigative."

Leo says that "American police interrogators are adversarial in the sense that they are committed to the goal of incriminating the accused in order to assist the state in its prosecution"; they are "highly partisan, strategic, and goal directed."

Why is that a bad idea? "If police act as partisans or become committed to a prosecutorial agenda in their investigations, it is not just prosecutors whose perceptions and decisions may be distorted. Defense lawyers, judges and juries may also end up relying on biased, incomplete, erroneous, or one-sided information in forming judgments, making decisions, and dispensing justice."

Leo describes how police are trained and encouraged to use "fraud" and "deception" to elicit incriminating statements, an analysis even prosecutors would find hard to deny. Indeed, "unlike courtroom lawyers, police interrogators do not represent themselves as the suspect's adversary. Instead, in what must be one of the deepest ironies in American criminal justice, they portray themselves as the suspect's advocate."

Strong stuff, and Leo provides the evidence and concrete scholarship to back it up. As Anne Reed over at Deliberations declared, "There are briefs to be written out of this book. If enough of them win, the reforms Leo proposes in his final chapter might begin to take hold."

At a minimum, the portion of the book I've read so far tells me the debate over when the adversarial system commences will likely not be finally decided in Rothgery, save to preserve the comfortable legal fiction that police activities in the interrogation room are not aligned with the prosecution.

El Paso conference brought together top minds to prevent false confessions

Ed. note: Thanks to Edwin Colfax, the Austin director of the Justice Project, for providing this excellent update from last week's conference in El Paso on interrogations and confessions.

I believe it was Jeff Deskovic, a recent DNA exoneree from New York, who said he felt like he was at the Super Bowl, his way of saying that we were in the presence of the best of the best. Jeff was talking about the international conference titled “Interrogations and Confessions: A Conference Exploring Current Research, Practice and Policy,” held last week at the University of Texas at El Paso. Having been to a fair number of conferences on issues related to wrongful convictions, I have to say he was really on to something. The conference lineup was a who’s who of leading researchers on interrogations and false confessions, including most of the pioneering social psychologists and legal experts who have helped us understand the reality of false confessions and how they occur.

And, of course, Jeff was there to tell us his story about a grueling interrogation he endured at 17 after a classmate was murdered in Peekskill, New York. His eloquent effort to provide a glimpse into his experience is in many ways a tall order, given that most people have a hard time wrapping their head around how an innocent person (especially one who is not mentally disturbed) can be led to confess to a serious crime. Of course, the reality of the phenomenon is increasingly well known and well documented.

Saul Kassin, Richard Leo, Gisli Gudjonsson, Steven Drizin, Ray Bull and Allison Redlich are among the leaders in the field, and anyone interested in learning about interrogations would be well served to review their pioneering work and recent publications. Below are some highlights of the conference Grits readers might find of interest.

Recording Interrogations Benefits Everybody

Confessions are regarded as the most powerful evidence that can be presented at trial, and can even overcome other exculpatory evidence, even forensic evidence, as was the case in the Norfolk Four case.

One of the most straightforward policy responses to false confessions is to electronically record custodial interrogations, thereby creating a complete record of suspect statements and the process that led up to them. Having a complete record eliminates the swearing contests about who said what, when and in what context, and allows judges and juries to make fully informed calls about the voluntariness and reliability of suspect statements.

My own presentation reviewed the unmistakable national trend toward requiring recording of complete custodial interrogations, which is driven in large part by an increasing awareness among law enforcement that the policy serves their own interests as well as the protection of the innocent. My review showed at least 10 states plus the District of Columbia with some statewide recording policy, either in statute or by court ruling, the most recent being North Carolina. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has a recording bill on his desk now.

Recording modernizes police procedures in a way that ensures the best evidence possible against the guilty, and protects police from bogus claims of misconduct. The Justice Project’s Policy Review on recording is a great overview of the issue, including case profiles, a model policy, and an overview of the research.

While police and prosecutors in jurisdictions that do not record often express skepticism, those who do record give unequivocal endorsements to the policy. Thanks to the hard work of Thomas P. Sullivan, a former federal prosecutor who has extensively interviewed experienced detectives who record, we know that recording is a valuable law enforcement tool. Sullivan has published several must-read articles on the benefits to law enforcement, available here and here. This work is sure to move us toward more recording as law enforcement hears from peers about the benefits and practicality.

Since Grits reported recently on Prof. Daniel Lassiter’s 20 year’s worth of research on camera angle bias, I’ll only mention that recording needs to be done carefully and properly to ensure that the evidence is documented in a complete, fully objective way. (Prof. Lassiter was one of the organizers of the El Paso conference, along with Prof. Christian Meissner, both of whom have made important contributions to the development of the literature.)

The Reid Technique and the Detection of Deception

Any serious discussion of interrogations in the U.S. will quickly move to the Reid Technique, which Grits has discussed before. Reid is the dominant interrogation methodology used by law enforcement in the U.S., and delivers trainings all over the country. The President of Reid and Associates, Joseph Buckley, gave an overview of the Reid Methods to a tough audience. Many of the researchers there have been highly critical of the Reid Technique because of the substantial risk of its generating unreliable statements from suspects.

One part of the Reid Technique involves asking a series of particular questions to suspects which are designed to elicit signals of deception from suspects. In fact, a fundamental assumption of the Reid Technique is that these questions, asked early on, are a reliable way to determine if the suspect is truthful or deceptive. If the interrogator determines that the suspect is deceptive, the Reid system moves into a confrontational interrogation mode, in which the interrogator does almost all the talking, and in which the suspect is offered to choose between alternative accounts, which maximize and minimize the suspect’s culpability (but each of which presupposes the suspect’s guilt).

One presenter, however, pointed out that the assumptions about outward signals of deceptive behavior that Reid relies on are based on paltry and questionable research, and what little there is uses a very small sample size and ignored ground truth about when a confession is true or false. Professor Aldert Vrij’s research actually shows that police are “generally rather poor” at distinguishing deceptiveness. Vrij has published a new edition of his book which he characterizes as an alternative to the Reid Technique that has a much more solid empirical foundation. Given that the high-powered interrogations that have elicited false confessions got cranked up as a result of a mistaken judgment about the truthfulness of a suspect, this research may help to put fewer people in the inherent jeopardy of those psychologically coercive interrogation sessions.

One of Vrij’s examples I found particularly interesting. Many people think that excessive blinking may be a sign that someone is deceptive, presumably because they are more nervous about the situation and what they are saying. But research suggests otherwise. First off, innocent people are very nervous in interrogations, too—they are nervous about not being believed! But Vrij has pointed out that lying is, cognitively speaking, harder work than truth telling. Because the liar has to think more about what he is saying, he actually tends to blink less, while focusing all that cognition on keeping his story straight.

Many other bits of ‘folk psychology’ about deception are similarly dubious.

Juvenile Interrogation Tactics Ignore Developmental Vulnerabilities

Another significant criticism of the Reid Technique is that juvenile suspects (as well as those who are mentally retarded or mentally ill) are especially vulnerable to deceptive and psychologically coercive interrogation techniques now standard because they are more compliant and suggestible. There is significant research to show that juveniles are more susceptible to false confessions, but Reid training does not address the relevant differences between kids and adults, and indicates that their standard methods are appropriate for juveniles.

In what I thought was one of the most instructive studies presented, Professor N. Dickon Reppucci from the University of Virginia demonstrated that American police officers, while they generally demonstrated a decent understanding of the developmental differences between youth and adults, seemed to ignore those differences in the context of interrogating young suspects. Repucci and his colleagues did an extensive national survey of police in representative jurisdictions across the country, asking their knowledge about child development and developmental limitations, as well as their views about interrogating youths. There was an unmistakable disconnect between their general appreciation of some basic and relevant developmental factors and their belief that youth can be dealt with in the same manner as adults when it comes to interrogation.

England's Different Approach

Professor Ray Bull gave an overview of the evolution of practices in England, which contains important lessons for those of us in the U.S. who are concerned about false confessions. After some high profile exonerations, the British revised policies in the 1980’s away from confrontational, accusatory models of interrogation (like Reid’s) to an information-gathering model. And, of course, the British have required recording of custodial interrogations for many years now, too. According to Prof. Bull, these changes have been embraced by the police service and have proven effective, and there is no effort to go back to the old ways of doing things.

How Innocence Can Work Against You

Saul Kassin gave a fascinating presentation on how the “phenomenology of innocence” can actually contribute to false confessions. Kassin described research that shows that innocent suspects are much more likely to waive their rights and to be open and forthcoming. This seems to be the result of a somewhat naïve but natural faith in the transparency of their innocence. While innocent people are able to offer more plausible denials, they actually seem to trigger harsher tactics from guilt-presumptive interrogators (see Kassin’s study from 2003).

On top of all this, there is a distrust of what are perceived as “weak” alibis, such as that one was at home, sleeping in bed, or with family members or friends watching television. Those kinds of things are the reality of most people’s everyday lives, yet investigative tunnel vision can make them seem “weak.” All these factors contribute to what Kassin calls an innocence/confession paradox.

Even misrepresentations of evidence, a common, legally permissible interrogation tactic, can, under the right conditions, actually contribute to a false confession. If one is told that his fingerprints are on the gun, or his DNA is at the scene, if he believes in the criminal justice system and in his own innocence, he may actually be more likely to confess to get himself out of a particularly nasty, confrontational interrogation. Such a confession is motivated by the belief that the physical evidence will, when reviewed properly, clear up the mistake. But often that evidence does not exist at all, and was only a bluff by the interrogator to extract a confession. Youths and others with developmental disabilities, in particular, are susceptible to such an ill-advised short-term strategy for getting out of a nasty interrogation.

- Edwin Colfax

MORE on the conference from Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer.

Everyone Knows Kids Don't Lie

Every parent knows children won't lie, right? Obviously!

Children's opinions and statements cannot be manipulated by others and they're always truthful. Everybody knows that. I'm sure that's why Texas' just-passed Jessica's Law does not require corroboration for child victim witnesses in cases that henceforth will carry a 25 year minimum sentence.

According to The Deception Blog, by the ages 11-14, children are able to successfully deceive adults 54% of the time.

Lies and the Brain

With the Texas Legislature gone I've had time to poke around the blogosphere a little more and ran across these interesting links on the subject of lying. I wanted to record them for myself and perhaps they may also interest Grits readers:

• The Deception Blog: "Collating information about applications of psychological research on deception."
• Anti-Polygraph.org News: Documenting research about "lie detector" tests and challenges to their use.

On a related note, I've become increasingly interested in the last couple of years in recent advancements in brain science and the implications for crime, punishment and justice. (After all, some liars convince themselves they're telling the truth, while memory tricks even honest observers.) This afternoon I discovered several websites that at least tangentially address these topics:

• Mind Hacks: "Neuroscience and psychology tricks to find out what's going on inside your brain."
• Neuromarketing: "Where brain science and marketing meet"
• Developing Intelligence: I especially liked his item on the autobiographical blur between fantasy and reality.
• Neurevolution: "Chronicling the Cognitive Revolution in Brain Science."

Found via Corrections Sentencing