Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Police Interrogation Works

Episode Date: July 31, 2021

Every year, police across the U.S. get thousands of criminals to confess to their crimes. The trouble is, the procedure that almost all departments use is grounded in bad science and can produce false confessions. Learn about ways of making you talk in this classic episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home now The extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it But you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca Slash host hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I hard podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation if you do you've come to the right place? Because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life

Tell everybody yeah, everybody About my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to frosted tips with the Lance Bass on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts Hey everybody, it's Josh and for this week's sysk selects. I've chosen how police interrogation works from back in 2014 it's a really fascinating look into how the cops get people to Admit that they did the worst thing they ever did in their entire life and some people who didn't do anything at all To admit that they did something if you thought that was confusing just wait till you hear this episode But it is pretty mind-blowing so buckle up. Hope you enjoy and as much as anything. I hope it really opens your eyes

Welcome to stuff you should know a production of I heart radio Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant And Noel guess producer Noel is over there, which makes this stuff you should know Jerry's on the beach Good for her. Yeah, I'm jelly. Yeah, be nice to be on the beach right now. Sure would podcast me on the beach Yeah, Jerry's a beach person for sure, isn't she? Okay, she was flip-flop like in the dead of winter. Yeah, that's true. It's a beach person. She's got nice feet Can I say that I guess fired for saying that I don't think so, okay? If you said it like alone in a room or something she didn't feel like she could leave you probably get fired for that

But yeah saying it on the podcast everybody. It's probably in the clear, okay? We'll find out I mean she edits stuff She'll say thanks Juckers. There you go. So Chuck. Yes Have you ever been interrogated by the police? No, that's good. No, it's a good way to be I was shaking down on the street once but they didn't ask us any questions Stop and frisk. Yeah in New York in Athens Just walking to the car after being out Through us all against the wall, Fristus then left

Sure was a real cop Yeah, they were cops man. I was like what's going on? I don't even know. I still don't know what happened Well, I guess they were just stopping and frisking it little known fact Athens, Georgia is the real home of stop and frisk Well five minutes after it happened. We didn't care, you know, these were college days Yeah, now though you must be burning with a sense of injustice over there Well, I ask you if you've ever been interrogated by the police because we're about to talk about police interrogation So it seems appropriate and before we get started I have some side reading that I think might interest some people

Okay, there is a New Yorker article called the interview. Yeah There's one called Joe Erity was the happiest man in the world There is a New Yorker article called the interview. Yeah, there's one called Joe Erity was the happiest man on death row. It's in westward There's something called Brooklyn's baddest which is in GQ and then lastly looking left or right doesn't indicate you're lying in Smithsonian So all those articles are awesome and they all have something to do with this police interrogation which is it turns out becoming an increasingly controversial subject Yeah, and I think this probably brings our police suite to a close or close to it, don't you think? I think so every time I know and I didn't even know this existed and then I saw it and it turned out to be one of the more interesting ones I think

Yeah, and it kind of falls into this law enforcement category into the subcategory of largely debunked armchair psychological or armchair psychology techniques Yes, like polygraph Yeah, we did that fingerprints We did that Truth serum We did that Yeah, like there's all these episodes that we've done out there about just law enforcement techniques. We're doing them. We were like, oh, wow, this is, this should not be the way it is Yeah

And apparently police interrogation is similar Yeah, it's a bit of a shake down So let's talk about this, like in the United States there is a long and storied history of rather intense interrogation And I think, you know, this comes before the United States too, we did a medieval torture episode as well There were plenty of interrogations going on. We did the Spanish Inquisition. That was pre-United States Yeah, I would say that falls into the banner though of police and crime Interrogation Yeah

So the United States though has, it will carry it on the torch of basically beating suspects up to get confessions Yeah This is where the term the third degree comes from actually Like when somebody's like, hey, why you give me the third degree? Yeah They may or may not know it, but they're speaking about interrogation techniques that cops used to use Yeah, those third degree techniques, a lot of them were involved deprivation Or, you know, the one where they shine the bright light in your face, that's old school

Yeah That's an old movie trope Yeah But, you know, no access to food and water, long periods of isolation, we might beach up a little bit, we might threaten you That's the third degree Right, and then starting in about the thirties, the public started to say, I don't know if this is such a good idea Because I might end up in a police interrogation one day and I don't want to get beat up And then I guess the straw that started to break the camel's back came in 1937 in the case Brown versus Mississippi

Where Brown said, hey, your thug cops tied me up to a tree and whipped me more than once Not just whipped me more than once, strung me up in a tree to whip me more than once This happened repeatedly and I don't think that the confession they got should stand Yeah And the Supreme Court said, we agree with you The Keynes two buddies were accused of murdering, there were tenant farmers, murdering their boss basically And of course they were black guys and the boss was a white guy, so they were pretty determined And we'll see over and over, a lot of these cases of coerced false confessions are mainly because someone really wants to tab somebody as the criminal

Well, yeah, for a lot of different reasons, there can be a sense of injustice Yeah There's a genuine conviction that this person is guilty Yeah And then there can be the, you know, the case clearance percentage that a cop needs to keep up But there's a lot of reasons why a cop might say, you need to confess Yeah, I think a lot of them too that I've seen documentaries on at least are because of the public Like, hey man, we really need to finger somebody for this

Yeah Because people are scared Right They're more scared than this person who might not be too smart or might be kind of poor and can't afford and doesn't, you know, representation Yeah They don't know what's going on, so let's just run them up Run them up, ring them up Sure

Run them up a flagpole Right, and see if it sticks to the wall Yeah, but despite the fact that it is not easy to get someone to confess, they estimate between 42 and 55% of suspects do confess And that's the one thing you don't want to do and up to 55% still do it Yeah, so we should say supposedly up to 80%, 80% of suspects in the United States wave their right to silence and counsel Yeah, that's just agreeing to be interrogated Right Not necessarily confessing

Right, yeah So, but you can get around the whole idea of a false confession or of being coerced into confessing or whatever just by remaining silent Not being part of that 80% Demand your lawyer I mean, we're going to give you some tips, not how to get away with a crime Right But some tips on if you are rounded up and put in a room, there are some things you can do Right

This is a public service announcement with guitars By the 1950s, the confessions that were involuntary, they considered involuntary, not just if you were beaten and threatened, but if you were all the deprivation, third-degree techniques were no longer allowed, like even if you couldn't use the bathroom Or if you've been promised something in return for confessing Sure, we'll go easy on you, buddy Or if you'd even just been threatened, that counts as coercion too Yeah And so in about the 50s, the United States said, hey, this kind of gentler interrogation technique thing is starting to work out Let's put a bow on the whole thing and say that for a confession to be admissible, the confessor has to sign it

Yeah And say, yeah, I didn't do anything under coercion, this is my own full free confession, and here's my signature Which helped, but certainly didn't stop false confessions Right So the thing is, law enforcement replaced the physical coercion with what amounts to, plainly, psychological manipulation And it's predicated on the idea that when you are saying you didn't do something and you're guilty Yeah Then you become stressed out and that stress is derived from anxiety over knowing you're guilty and having to lie

Because when you're being interrogated and you're denying that you're guilty, the cops don't just say, oh, okay, well, thanks for coming by Sure If they think you're guilty or they want to think you're guilty, they're going to keep pressing you Like interrogations aren't necessarily brief things, right? So the more they press you, the more stressed you should get and the more stressed you get under this idea of interrogation technique The more obvious it is that you're guilty, which means the more they press, so this feedback loop starts, right? Yeah, I mean, they're basically relying on a few basic human things inherent to humans, tendencies inherent to humans One is, you're going to probably open up more to someone who is like you

Two, if you start talking, it's going to be hard to stop And three, if you're telling the truth, it's going to be harder to lie Right So they kind of prey on that with some age-old techniques like the good cop, bad cop Right, if you feel like you're being persecuted but then you're also being rescued by somebody else, you're going to identify with the rescuer, trust them That's a classic move And here's the thing, a lot of this stuff, like the good cop part is predicated on this complete and utter deception That cop understands where you're coming from and sympathizes with you

That cop does not sympathize with you That cop may understand where you come from, but he or she probably despises that And they are not your friend But one of the whole points of interrogation is for the cop to pretend like they're right there with you They understand where you're coming from, they feel for you This is just, you're jammed up and I want to help you get out of it Oh yeah, you see, I mean, if all this sounds super familiar from every TV show or movie you've ever seen is because it's been written so much That it's almost like they don't need to do their own, like writers don't even need to do their own research into how this is done

Because it's just how it is in the movies And how it is in the movies is how it is in real life When I was reading this, I was like, oh, yeah, I've seen that before I've seen that technique before It made me actually researching this article, made me appreciate that there are some TV cop show writers out there who really do their homework Like The Wire It was a little more nuanced, like Law & Order, what is it? I don't watch those

The one with Vincent D'Onofrio Oh, I can't remember what it's called Criminal Minds Something like that, it's not it Like it's a little more overt But all the factors are there Yeah, another one of the tried and true techniques is maximization That's when they try to scare you if you've ever heard like, oh, you're pretty, Josh, they're gonna love you in prison

I hear that almost every day That is a classic maximization Or just, you know, they're gonna throw the book at you for what you've done Unless you start playing along, you're gonna get the max penalty Exactly They may also go the exact opposite route, which is minimization Which is to create the idea that society will commiserate with you Because anybody in your position would have done the same thing

That little old lady was asking for her purse to be taken And this day and age and this economy, that kind of thing Polygraph was used for a while, and they still use that But most times, if you listen to our show on polygraphs, they're not admissible in court So a man named John Reed, he was a polygraph analyst Said, you know what, there's a lot of things that happen during a polygraph exam that we can use without the machine Just to root out the truth or lies Yeah, basically John Reed said, hey, I've noticed through all of my experience

All of these things that a person who is guilty or who confesses at least goes through And here are some ways to really make this more efficient To make them react more strongly, to get them to confess faster, more forcefully And he came up with what are called the Reed technique, nine steps of the Reed technique Register trademark of John Reed and Associates Yeah, really, because John Reed and Associates is like this business that's still very much around Yeah, I don't know if I need to say that, but It is their technique

And they train the CIA, the FBI, the local law enforcement They're like the, in the United States, the Reed technique is the gold standard for police interrogation The problem is, it is also being increasingly proven to be based on basically armchair psychology and not science It's going through the same thing right now that a lot of the forensic sciences are going through Based on intuition that doesn't really hold up to scrutiny And I should say the Reed technique has not been across the board debunked And it makes sense in a lot of ways, but there are studies out there that have said like, this doesn't really hold up Yeah, he defends it, he says it's a very sound technique, but false confession comes from improper use in bad police work

And it's not necessarily like the Reed people are treated like they're out to get anybody and everybody The Reed technique is criticized because the whole foundation that it's built on is the presumption of guilt And it has been shown to prove or produce false confessions That's right Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca-host Seriously, I swear, and you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you And so my husband, Michael, and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy, you may be thinking, this is the story of my life

If so, tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts Alright, if you sit down in a room to get interrogated by the cops, one thing that they're probably going to start doing is lying to you And saying, we have evidence that they may not have, we have witnesses that put you at the scene that don't exist Basically, with a few exceptions, cops can lie and say whatever they want in there And that is going to make someone nervous, even though you wore surgical gloves when you broke into that house If they say your fingers are all over the place, you're going to start second guessing yourself and get nervous Even if you weren't in that house ever, and you know that you weren't in that house, you're going to start to wonder if maybe you suffer from blackouts

And do horrible things like this cop is saying, wow, you're blacked out And yeah, the courts have upheld the cop's right to deceive And I read about a study that found that 92% of 630 detectives in the US and Canada that were polled say they use false evidence ploys How many? 92%? I'm surprised it's not 100 Yeah, you would guess, I mean maybe the other 8% were just like, they didn't even look at what they were saying But yeah, you can and they do say we have your fingerprints, we have a witness, we have DNA They can completely lie about what they have and that they have it on you to get you to confess That's right, because after you confess and sign it, it doesn't matter

You can't say, well that cop said he had evidence, it doesn't matter And the whole legal basis for this idea, for letting the cops deceive is this long standing notion that no innocent person would ever sign a confession Even if they were lied to about physical evidence of their guilt being at the scene of the crime because they know they're not guilty The problem is that long standing idea is coming under more and more scrutiny and is being found to be not the case Like people, it's been shown, people will, when lied to in situations like that, they will confess to things that they did not do I know, it seems crazy for people like you and me, because I know I would never do that But you know, I'm not mentally challenged or I'm not poor and I haven't, you know, there's a lot of reasons why someone might falsely confess Yeah, and I think though also it's not just necessarily like going, how you are going into it, like yes, a lot of the mentally ill people make up a decent amount of false confessions

Same with mentally handicapped, cognitively impaired people, people of low socioeconomic status There are a lot of factors that set you up to be more likely to give a false confession Not knowing your rights But if we took you and ran you through a long enough interrogation with people who knew what they were doing, who knows what you would sign I'd be alright We'll see Because I understand this all, I know my rights, I have a very strong mind Well you would probably say I want a lawyer

Well yeah, I'd just end it all Yeah And then I'd be like, hmm, I don't know any lawyers Do you know a lawyer? I have an entertainment attorney, does that count? They know lawyers Yeah, exactly, this is the whole network So once they bring you in the room, the room itself, and this is all from Reed's manual, he wrote a manual in 1962 with a Northwestern law professor named Fred Inbaugh called Criminal Interrogation and Confessions

I imagine every writer in Hollywood has a copy of that on their shelf But the room that you see on TV, that's what they suggest, you know, nothing on the walls, a very plain desk, a very uncomfortable chair on one side, two chairs on the other for the detectives, that one-way mirror that's going to serve a purpose of letting people spy on you and just to make you nervous even if there's no one on the other side And put you out of reach from, this one I didn't really, I had never really noticed, but out of reach from just light switches and maybe the AC, what do you call those? Thermostat Thermostat, yeah Just to make you feel powerless, it's all a mind game to make you feel helpless Okay, so far, seems pretty intuitive, pretty logical Sure

Like if you can't flip the lights on and off, it's not something I would think that I would want to do right then, but maybe knowing, seeing that it was that far away Would just give me this, reinforce the idea that like, I couldn't even if I wanted to because it's all the way over there That's probably a smaller one You need a detective in between me and that light switch Yeah, exactly But it makes sense, but I point that out because that's the read technique Right Stuff like that

Sure Keep the light switches away from the criminal because it'll make him feel helpless Right Does it? Sounds a little hinky But it makes sense in a way Sure That is the read technique encapsulated

So let's continue Chuck So that was, that's just the room Yeah, yeah That they suggest If you follow the read technique to a T, and this is one of the saving graces of it You are supposed to do what's an initial interview Right And if you're the detective and you go into an initial interview of an interrogation

You are, the read technique tasks you with going in without a presumption of guilt yet That's the point of the initial interview is you're supposed to be sizing your guy up Yeah And determining for yourself as a seasoned investigator Right Whether you think initially they're guilty or innocent I'm sure that happened some Yeah, there was another study that found that it's often skipped as well

And that's They just start like hammering right away Well, yeah, you're throwing out the potential for this person to be treated as possibly innocent Right And if you're not sizing up, you're going in assuming they're guilty So, but if you do go through that initial interview The other point of it is that you're supposed to be creating a baseline Yeah

Which I think is, that showed up in the polygraph one too Yeah, yeah Which isn't surprising because John Reed was a polygraph expert for a while too Yeah, and you've ingratiated yourself, you know, in the first few minutes by this point Like, if you're in Philadelphia and your suspect has on like a Philly's cap You might talk about the game last night Right, exactly And that throws back to the suspect being more likely to trust someone

That shares their same views that they feel they can identify with So the detective will do whatever they can to make it seem like Oh, you're a Catholic, I'm a Catholic too That kind of thing, you know Yeah, and so once you've got a little bit of rapport going on Is when you're going to set your baseline And I thought this was pretty interesting And I'm going to start looking for this on cop shows

To see if they don't overtly talk about it, if they're just how good they are With their, you know, with their acting Because if they're looking at the eyes Then they're going to be accurate Because that's one of the ways, supposedly, you can create a baseline You're going to ask some questions that require memory recall And you're going to ask other questions that require more creativity And you're going to look at where their eyes go

Supposedly, if your eyes move to the right That is just recall Because you're, I guess, looking in the direction of your memory center Of your brain If it's more creative, you might look to the left And then you're going to use these later on To see if your suspect is creatively making up a lie They might look to the left

Or if they're just truthfully recalling something They might look to the right Is that bunk? Yes Alright It's very dangerous, too Because they, that is incredibly widespread It's a popular misconception

If you ask anybody, if you move your eyes a certain way Does it indicate you're lying? Most people are going to say, yes, yeah, it totally does I can't remember if it's right or left But if you look a certain way, it means you're lying Yeah So that's a long-standing thing That's based actually on a self-help philosophy from the 70s

Oh, really? It's nothing to do with science And actually, Richard Wiseman, who we incorrectly said Did some research that proved that ghosts exist In our ghost episode Yeah, that guy He's done some ones to debunk this He did a couple studies

And in one of the studies, he found He used footage of people who were holding press conferences Searching for lost relatives But the person pleading for their relatives' return Was later convicted of like killing or kidnapping Their relatives So they were obviously lying They were committing a huge lie

In front of the public And he found that they were just as likely to look to the left or the right There was no correlation whatsoever Yeah, I'm sure there are facial cues or pantomimes If you're Christopher Walken But it all depends on the person too, right? Yes Like you could be really good at lying

Yeah Or really good at throwing people off with facial cues Yeah, or the idea that your eyes move in a certain direction at all Because you're coming up with a lie Or because you're remembering something might not It doesn't mean anything necessarily Yeah, we also did one of micro expressions This is a culmination of a lot of shows I'm realizing

Yeah, it really is So that was another one You've got the baseline set You're watching the eyes Even though you really shouldn't be But for the most part, you're seeing what your suspect appears like when they're stressed Or I'm sorry, when they're relaxed And the reason you're creating this baseline

Of what they act like when they're relaxed Is because if you ask them questions And they answer them and appear relaxed Then supposedly they're telling the truth Again, this is predicated on some faulty ideas Because here's the problem Anxiety is not necessarily linked to lying Like yes, you may appear anxious if you're lying

But that doesn't mean that if you're anxious, you're lying Right You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I would do that I would do the Chuck technique would be the fast thing Like I would set him up, I'll call him and be like Hey, did you watch the game last night? Yeah, oh cool

Why'd you kill that old lady? Yeah, you like the Phillies? Yeah Yeah, it was a pretty good game How do you think they're gonna go far yet? Did you kill your wife? Wow Boom That was pretty good

You almost said yes Yeah, really? And you didn't kill your wife No, I mean jeez That was thrilling The Chuck technique I like the Colombo Oh well, you're just like, that's great

I'm glad you like the Phillies I just want to thank you for coming by It was good to meet you Right If we need anything, can we call you? And they're like They're so relieved that they get to leave And then you're, oh I'm sorry

One more thing Why'd you kill your wife? Was that Colombo dude? Yeah, he was a little better at it than I was No, that's pretty good He would say there's one other thing It's not making sense to me If you didn't kill your wife

Why were you found standing over with the knife? Yeah, so you That's what Colombo would do Catch him off guard Like really get them to let their guard down I like that So you said No wait, Colombo was, I was about to say

He went on and killed his wife But that was Robert Blake Yeah, that was Beretta Yeah What was his technique? I don't know, I never watched Beretta Check your gun with the maitre d Isn't that what he did?

No, what'd he do? I think he left his gun with the maitre d That's what he said he did Like you know, I'm here, table for two Here's my coat and here's my gun We can hang on to that for me Will you be my alibi? I think we're at the reed technique now, right?

We are So the other stuff was from the book That's based on the reed technique Criminal interrogation and confessions But now we are at the actual reed technique The nine point technique That is designed to maximize Discomfort

Which leads to more frequent confessions Yeah, and it's illegal in a lot of European countries For children Which it should be Because that's another risk factor going in That can produce false confessions at this age Of course And we'll get to some of those later

Those are kind of maddening When you read about like a 14 year old That's interrogated without their parents For like a full day Yeah But it happens So step number one in the reed technique is the confrontation And this is after the initial interview

You're going to present the facts of the case You're going to tell them about the evidence What they're faced with All the evidence against them Even if you're making some of it up You might want to invade their personal space at this time If you're Matthew McConaughey And then you start looking for things like fidgety suspect

In their lips or they like mussel with their hair And then if you're an investigator You might say, alright I've got this guy just where I want him That guy ran his fingers through his hair He's guilty Exactly And that's kind of part of the issue

That a lot of critics of the reed technique bring up Is that basically if you strip non-verbal stuff out Then you've got some sound stuff there The biggest problem is when you're trying to read The verbal cues because it's not rooted in science It's rooted in armchair psychology and pop science Totally So the idea that somebody's fidgeting

Means they're guilty in their lying Not necessarily They could be fidgeting because Any human being would be really uncomfortable When placed in that situation And interrogated by cops who are experts at it So step number two is theme development And you're going to be a little more soothing here

With a softer voice And this is when you come up with some theories And a story maybe of why they committed this crime Like you just couldn't go on any longer Knowing your best friend had sex with your wife You just couldn't live with that, could you? And if the suspect latches onto that In some verbal or non-verbal ways

And they'll continue If they don't Then they'll just create another theme Yeah And the detective will basically just kind of While they're creating this story For the suspect to latch onto They're also actively listening

To the suspect to see if the suspect Will latch onto it in any way, shape or form And if they don't They try another one If they do Then they start to kind of beef that one up And that leads to alternatives Which actually comes later

Yeah But in the meantime One of the main techniques of the read technique Is stopping denials But I didn't do it, Josh Yeah Listen I'm telling you, I was...

Imagine my finger on Chuck's lips right now That's why You would never do that No, you stop denials because It creates a sense of hopelessness Like don't you feel hopeless with my fingers on your lips? So hopeless, you have no idea It makes you feel hopeless that

You don't even have the opportunity To reason with this cop Yeah, you can't defend yourself Not at all So you have a sense of hopelessness Plus the other upside If you're an interrogator Is that you're keeping the person from talking

Meaning they also can't ask for counsel then I don't see why people don't just do that The first thing over and over Say I need a lawyer, I need a lawyer, I need a lawyer I read this article in, I think, The Stranger Aren't they out of Seattle? I don't know It wasn't a great article

It was kind of It was just kind of misleading Like the author really wanted you to sympathize With the guy who was guilty And didn't really reveal that he really was Pretty guilty toward the end But it had this really great explanation For why people don't ask for a lawyer in this article

Makes you seem guilty? Yes, really And I've seen it before But this article really got the point across That this guy was like, I mean, he'd done some stuff before Like he dabbled in drugs And like ran an illegal poker game And stuff like that

Sure, light malfeasance Yeah, and he So enough so that he was like He knew he was technically guilty in the eyes of the law But not for this thing that they wanted him on So he had that guilt to begin with And then these cops saying like You're going to really look guilty if you ask for a lawyer

Yeah, that's true And then the other aspect was If you lawyer up, we can't help you Oh, yeah, I've seen that one on TV If you talk to us, that's the only way we can help you Get out of this jam And we want to help you get out of this jam Like we know we might

We would have done the same thing you did But the cops never want to get you out of a jam No, that's not what they're trying to do And so what they were saying was Like if you clam up, this Like who knows what's going to happen to you They were doing all sorts of really effective psychological manipulation And the guy they were talking to was a lawyer's son

And this guy, like 40 years old, a lawyer's son So he'd known his whole life to ask for a lawyer And even this guy didn't immediately ask for a lawyer Because these cops got him You know, I probably wouldn't either actually If I was arrested today after work And obviously completely innocent of anything Mind-blowing if that happened

And I was completely innocent I would, at first, my first instinct would probably be like I don't need a lawyer, I didn't do anything Like why that expense? Well, I think that's another aspect of the initial Initial consultation That initial discussion where it's like Oh, it's all friendly, we're talking about the Phillies

Why would you need a lawyer for that? I retract my statement, I get it now But you should stick to your original statement No matter what Like, you have a right to counsel And there's no reason you should not invoke it Your punishment is not going to be worse For asking for a lawyer

Yeah, you should open up You sound like one of those legal commercials Called Josh Clark That reminds me, we should do We should mention the ACLU episode That was a pretty good one too Yeah man, this thing is just so many tangential podcasts So the stopping denials

That's a big part of the read technique And then there's something that's similar That John Reed noticed But is a little nuanced There's a difference And that's objections To read denials were different than objections And objections were something to be treated differently

As a result Yeah, an objection that example they gave here Was like, I would never rape somebody Because my sister was raped And it destroyed our family So of course I wouldn't do something like that So to a cop, that's not a denial A denial is like, I didn't do that

I didn't do that That's not me, you got the wrong guy Those are denials and the cop would try to stop you From completing those sentences That objection you just said Is a denial, but it's encapsulated with Like a reason Yeah, a justification

Something to it Do you remember when you used to take multiple choice tests In high school They always said that if you don't know the answer Usually the one with the most Verbiage, the one with the most words Is the right one I never heard that

That was not good at taking tests either We need to get in the way back You can go take some more multiple choice tests Knowing that now But I think that's kind of the same premise For an objection It's not just a denial There's more to it

And the fact that somebody put that much more thought into it Means that there's something to that The cop will take that and cultivate it And try to turn that around Right And they would say I know you love your sister And you stood by her

While she was raped Of course this wouldn't be like a recurring thing This is just one time thing that you did And you were out of your head or whatever Because you care about your sister So you would never do this all the time And so all of a sudden You're giving the suspect

Like a Something to latch on to Something for them to Basically Re-enter society to an extent Because at this moment, especially if they're guilty They are totally On the outs with society

And the sole representative of society And who's speaking with them right now Is the cop that's interrogating them And everybody wants to be included Yeah And if you don't then you're a sociopath They're going to get you anyway Yeah, but they're going to have a hard time

Through interrogation So number five is getting the suspect's attention Are these the real titles Or is this just The liberties of the author of this article I don't know We'll call it getting the suspect's attention And this is when you pretend

To be the ally of the suspect Because at this point They're probably looking for a way out And that's when you might go If I caught my best friend having sex With my wife, I'd kill him too I understand where you're coming from And

Maybe a little pat on the shoulder A little rub on the back Or maybe a pat on the back And just some reassurance Like I get to where you're coming from And it could happen to any of us And you're in big trouble at that point Yeah, and that's probably going on

Like throughout And the themes run, these all overlap quite a bit But if there's an objection That you've noticed that you're working You've turned around and you're working That objection with an extra layer Of compassion and commiseration Can, I guess, really

Kind of start to ensnare The suspect a lot more Yeah, it's weird because I'm repulsed by a lot of this But I'm also very impressed By what I've seen on TV What you can tell is someone who's really good at it Oh yeah, it's effective

In art form I believe something like 76% Of suspects Who are interrogated in this manner When you take out people who Invoke their Miranda rights Confess

Like it has an enormous Confession rate And there's a lot of people Who, the vast majority The study I saw Or the number I saw 39.6% Of those confessions

Are from guilty people That's something like 0.04% Are false confessions The problem is, there's still such a thing As false confessions, there's no safeguards It just so happens that The false confessions are In that small of an amount

Yeah, and that percentage isn't high But if you think about how many people are interrogated That's like several hundred per year in the US Up to several hundred per year That's a lot of people, interesting falsely Yeah, and it's not like That those people just It gets found out at trial

Or somewhere down the road that they're Innocent, like those people may spend The rest of their lives in jail At the worst case, they may be executed Which has probably happened in the history Of the US, although it hasn't been Irrefutably proven yet Yeah, and you can listen to

How the Innocence Project works From June 2010 We interviewed Paula Zahn Oh yeah, that's right I wish I'd known a lot more about The Innocence Project back when we did that episode Yeah I kind of got it and understood it

But just over the last few years I've kind of, I've understand it Even more, I wish I would have known Better than, it's still a good episode We talked to Paula Zahn Yeah, she's a real pro Yeah, she's Zahn's sister No, it's not, is it?

Okay, that's how rumors get made Well, I just liked her like 50% more after you said that Oh yeah? Yeah, I love Steve Zahn He's great All right, and back to the read technique At this point, number six, the suspect might lose resolve And

This seemed really obvious to me If the suspect has Shoulders hunched, or Got his head in his hands, or is crying Then You've got them just where you want them Right, you are going to get your confession Whether it's a false confession or not

That's not guaranteed by These outward signs Again, if you strip away the non-verbal stuff From the read technique, it's pretty Pretty good stuff And apparently this is where you really want to regain Their attention, like if they start crying Like force them to look you in the eye

Because I guess that works, that increases the stress level So Remember we talked about That theme development? It's like here's what happened And they object to that And then you take that objection, you turn it around And they start to latch on to that theme

Couched in that objection You take that next And as you're developing it It becomes one of two Or more alternatives But basically you're taking The theme that the person latched on To

And you're making that the minimal Example It's almost like a good cop, bad cop Version of reasons why you did it Exactly, so it's You shot that lady in the back Because she was a horrible person Nobody is going to think

That you did it because You just wanted to insurance money Exactly, anybody in your position Would have done this And everyone's going to understand This is why you did it Not this horrible reason This reason

Society can live with Maybe you'll go to jail for a year or two But when you come out everybody's going to say Hey, that Bernie guy is okay I would have shot that old lady in the back too Did you see that movie? It's not Hey, that Bernie guy needs to burn in hell

For the rest of his life because he killed some poor old lady For her insurance money So with the cops Sitting there saying We're saying you're agreeing to Here's this horrible interpretation That I can't control But this I've created

And sculpted with your help So let's throw this horrible big thing away And this thing that doesn't seem nearly as bad Is what the press will hear They'll start to put it down on paper Yeah, but here's what you're not thinking about What you're doing It's the same in both cases

Is you're confessing to a murder And you are just at a point To where you think Man, that sounds way better than a newspaper And this other thing And also it's coming out of the mouth of this detective That is appearing To commiserate with you

That has empathized with you That maybe told you on the side like I hated that old lady too And I'm glad you did it The cop can totally say that And to win the trust of the suspect So all of these factors combine All of a sudden you have a story

You're working out with the cop You may not even realize that that's what's going on And then the cop's going to say I have A piece of paper and a pen here And I want you to write down What we just talked about I want you to write down your confession

Yeah, well they're going to bring someone else in there first Well there's probably already someone else in there They may bring a third person in there Yes To try and force them to retell their story Which they probably won't want to do And that's when you can introduce Like hey, you don't want to tell the story again

To this new detective I know you're tired Just take this pen By this time The person will likely want to Do just about anything to get out of that room And from Writing and signing this confession

There's salvation on the other end There's a light at the end of the tunnel Even if it's possibly jail They can get out of this room They can get out of this horrible Interrogation They may promise like a hot meal Like something as simple as that

Can get someone to sign a confession At the end of a long, long day Right So you've got the written confession You have it signed They probably have to sign an additional waiver That says I didn't write this under coercion Or else they'll include that in the confession

And then you have Basically what amounts to A slam dunk conviction in court Yep, and that is the read technique And we're going to talk about some real cases Of interrogation Right after this break Yeah, you might not realize it

But you might have an Airbnb too Find out what your place could be earning At airbnb.ca Alright Chuck, so that's the read technique Yep, you've got your perp Super effective And It has been used in plenty of cases

Like we said, the number that I saw Is like 0.04% Of confessions Or false confessions Which is extraordinarily small Which means that a lot of truly bad guys Get caught through the read technique Right?

That's right And there's this one in this article On how police interrogation works And it's with A woman named Nicole Michelle Frederick It's between her And a detective named Victor Lauria And it takes place in Detroit

In September of 2003 And Nicole Michelle Frederick Was the stepmom To a two year old daughter And the two year old daughter had Shown up in the hospital I believe unresponsive With bruises all over her body

Had clearly been physically abused And the stepmom was saying She falls down a lot And anybody heard her Like she just gets bruised like that And it certainly wasn't me But not only was it not me I don't think it was anybody

The little girl just falls down She does it to herself And with that Detective Lauria Took her to be blaming the victim That she was trying to Go free by blaming this little girl For being clumsy

Well, clumsy and difficult Was that sounds By trying to get some Empathy going like hey, I get it Like this is a tough baby And I'm sure it's trying And it's very difficult So all of a sudden

Detective Lauria has this I guess this theme This justification that was set up By the suspect He starts to play it out He's saying like This girl, she was a difficult baby She's crying

You lose your head for a minute And you get a little rough It could happen to anybody And Ms. Frederick says That's not right at all Nobody hurt this kid I don't understand why you don't believe me

You seem to be not listening to me From what I understand You're in the danger zone right there In your interrogation If somebody's saying You're the detective You're not in control right then They are

So Lauria started to look for another theme And it was along the same lines But rather than losing your head for a minute It was a split second Something happened in a flash of a minute Or flash of a second And she perked up a little Yeah, she started to latch on to that one

Yeah, so then he knew he had her In a pretty tough spot And she started nodding her head And said, you know what If you don't explain this thing Everyone's going to just assume That you're this awful, abusive person I think people might understand more though

Because everyone's been there If it was just a split second thing And you lost control People are going to get that So those are the alternatives all of a sudden And then it came out That her daughter had Had brain damage

And was likely not going to die And then all of a sudden The suspect started saying They're going to get me for murder Yeah, well, he pointed out to her He's like, by the way, you haven't even asked About the condition of your daughter And she was like, no, I have it, totally have

And he's like, no, you really haven't And she's like, well, how is she? She's not going to make it And that's when she goes, oh, no I'm going to be tried for murder I'm going to be She confessed, I believe, right? Yeah, she admitted to shaking

Shaking the baby And then said out loud, I killed the little girl I killed her So she was convicted Of killing her two-year-old stepdaughter And last I saw I found an appeal in 2005 That was denied

That was the last I saw of her After her conviction So it does work It takes steps And got A bad guy in this case Yeah, and so a lot of times It goes down just like it should

But it is super controversial Which we've talked about some And you mentioned at the beginning One of the biggest problems is It's guilt presumptive They go in there thinking, alright, this person's The goal of the interrogation Is to get a confession

Not to find out whether or not In many cases they go in there Thinking this person's guilty And If you're going in there thinking you're guilty Even if you don't mean to You're going to start to filter out Any reasons why they might be innocent

Even if they're good reasons And valid reasons No, it's not Well, it's a pretty huge flaw Really Even if it does result in only 0.04% Of false confessions You also mentioned that

The whole purpose of the interrogation Is to make someone stressed and uncomfortable And then when you notice people Behaving stressed and uncomfortable That's a presumption, an indicator of guilt Supposedly when It's like you said what you call a feedback loop Right

I want to make you stressed and uncomfortable You're being stressed and uncomfortable That means you're guilty Exactly, yeah, it's An odd way to approach things Is coercion And then there's also been a lot of people To point out that a lot of these techniques

Are the same thing that are used In brainwashing Which we did a show on July 2009 Did a brainwashing show Invading personal space Not allowing the person to speak Using contrasting alternatives To have them come to

Make them feel like they're Making a decision That they have a choice or some sort of power I think you brainwashed me in that episode too We did a little role play It was awesome I turned you into a prep That was five years ago

And then position and confession Is a means of escape That was the last step Before resolution Was to say Denounce your family And you'll be saved In this case it's signed this thing

And you're going to get that hot meal And you'll figure it out The thing is It does produce false confessions And I saw somewhere That 20 to 25% Of people who've been exonerated With DNA evidence

Gave a false confession So people go to jail For years for this kind of thing Here's a few of the more famous cases Peter Riley in 1973 Was an 18 year old Whose mother was murdered I think no siblings

And no father So like the only parent he'd ever known And after eight hours of interrogation By Connecticut police He confessed to brutally murdering her And was convicted on manslaughter Based on the confession alone There was no evidence, no motive

Medical findings suggested there were at least Two attackers And the town really got behind Him apparently and like Said this kid didn't do this And let's have bake sales and raise money And Arthur Miller The famous playwright lived in the town

And he championed it Because he did a lot of work with ACLU And eventually new evidence Came out that exonerated him And he was set free After three years in prison Three years, not too bad That's better than Earl Washington Jr

Who in 1982 He was described as in police everybody I'm using scare quotes here And Earl just as mildly retarded He had an IQ of 69 Which is a whole other kettle of fish That doesn't mean anything anyway But he confessed

To raping and murdering a 19 year old woman Under interrogation He was convicted on the confession alone Right? Just on the confession And spent 18 years in prison Some of it on death row And was apparently rescued from

The executioner With like nine days to go Yeah, but at the same time as a jury What are you to do when someone says I did this You know? I mean hopefully I don't know maybe add some other evidence too No, I agree

The thing is Is Earl Washington's thing He was Somebody else was caught doing it using DNA That's been a huge change To this kind of thing At least exonerated people Free and clear

But that brings up another problem With false confessions Guilty people stay free And they accumulate more victims Over time How many more children Would that lady in Detroit Have abused

If she'd gotten off or something And the guy who Created The read technique Actually had a false confession Wrongful conviction under his belt A guy If you read the article

The interview The first thing it talks about Is this guy in the 50's who was in jail For 20 years for murdering his wife Even though he didn't do it Who was interrogated by John Reed himself Wow The guy who actually did do it

Went on to rape pregnant women And commit all these other Horrible crimes He wouldn't have Done had he Been caught the first time Or had the cops still been looking for him It's a huge point

It's not just innocent people In prison, it's guilty people out Still If you really want to see This all firsthand I highly recommend the documentary From Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon The Central Park Five

And this is the famous story in 1989 Of Five young African American men Who were set up the river For a rape in Central Park And they did not do it And it's a great documentary And it just summarizes

How you can get a false confession Very nicely And it all plays out and you see these interviews And get really angry But that was definitely a case Of sort of like with the Atlanta child murders Like people are scared And we've got these five youths

Who aren't so smart And they're poor And we can We think they did it and I don't care what the evidence says We need to finger them for the crime And put them all over the news So people will feel safe again But they were eventually exonerated

Thanks to DNA again And they spent Depending on which guy Between six years and twelve years in prison And really great documentary I think it's on Netflix It is Have you seen it?

So Chuck this We've basically been talking mostly about the read technique But there are alternatives There's some law enforcement agencies Have lost faith in The read technique And in Britain apparently in 1990 There was a bunch of false confessions

That came to light And the British government said We need to figure something else out So they created a blue ribbon task force And said come up with An alternative to the read technique Which ironically is A technique in the read technique

But what they came up with Was called peace Which this is the worst Acronym of all time but preparation And planning engage and explain Account closure evaluate Clearly spells peace Yes

So they Came up with it after a couple of years And by 2001 it was pretty widespread But the peace technique Is predicated on the idea That you're not going after a confession I love this technique Like you as an

Investigator an interrogator You're going in to just Get the whole story out And as much detail as possible And you're not going after a confession You're not accusing the person of the crime You're being polite Here's another thing

And a lot of people think that this will Cure false confessions Almost in and of itself Video taping the confession from beginning To end And so what the cops do is they interview The suspect They say well what about this

Here's a discrepancy what about this And they're not being accusatory They're just putting everything out there And letting this person explain it In front of the video tape The theory apparently decides whether the person is lying Or not And this is all built on the

What I think is A pretty rock solid theory That it is really hard to lie And lie and lie And keep it all straight And keep it all In that congruous line That's believable

At some point if you keep talking And you're lying a bunch you're going to mess up And that's what they prey on They just spent the last eight hours Like drinking cruddy coffee And eating a few ho-hos And being asked questions by Intergears even if they're being polite

Like yeah You're going to have a really hard time keeping up With what you've already said Like you've got to be a real skilled Sociopath to lie for hours And hours and hours And then they'll bring them in again a week later And say you know let's have some more tea

And let's sit down and talk A week later you might forget some of the things you said Oh yeah And the cops have the video and they're writing down all the details Seems pretty solid to me So good on you Britain and there are some people here In the US trying to teach it to cops here But apparently it's just like word of mouth

And the particular Jurisdiction has to be down with it And support it and It's just not super widespread here yet I mean the read technique isn't the force of law It's just the gold standard It's the one that everybody uses I don't want to be like the cops on the shows

I don't want to do the peace technique In Canada I found a completely different technique too It's called the Mr. Big Technique Have you heard of it? It's extremely involved Basically You, the suspect

Will meet an undercover cop Who's posing as a criminal While you're out and about and free And easy or whatever And you guys are going to become friends And over the course of the next several months This undercover cop Is going to gain your trust

And get you to ultimately confess That shows how little crime there is Or like, so would you cut down your neighbor's tree Right, exactly They can spend like three months on A single confession, you know But it's called the Mr. Big Technique And the reason it's called Mr. Big is

In its ideal form You The suspect Will become like kind of criminal compatriots With this undercover cop Who then introduces you to Mr. Big This crime boss Who wants you to step up to the next crime level

But is going to get you to talk about this murder That you did or whatever And then you confess it and you're being secretly taped And you don't know it And you've just entrapped yourself I love Canada I might have to move there, man Are you going to stick around after

Toronto or Vancouver? One way flight So we said earlier we were going to give some tips I think we'd be remiss if we didn't They seem a little silly but They recommend you just don't talk You don't talk They said, imagine the words I invoke my rights

To remain silent, paint it on the wall And stare at them Ask for counsel Ask for a lawyer And then the number five thing they say to do Is cultivate hatred for your interrogator Who's that from? Is there something weird like that?

Yeah, it's for recommendations for animal rights activists Who get arrested Oh, gotcha It seems kind of basic to me It is, but I think it's one of the things Where they can easily go out the window When you're in that situation You know?

And again, if you're in the United States And you invoke your right to counsel That's that They have to stop, and if they don't That's a big problem I don't want to know how I would hold up I know it's no laughing matter And I shouldn't joke around about it

But I would like to be interrogated Just to see So, I guess that's it If you want to learn some more about Police interrogation Check out this article, Police Interrogation On howstuffworks.com It's a good one

And you can find that by using the search bar Of course, and since I said that I'm going to call this Jittery Joe's Coffee Hey guys, so Paul as well My wife Cassie and our big fans, y'all And we've been listening for years

This summer we took a two month honeymoon To Southeast Asia, it was a blast Your podcast kept us sane Thanks for that We sent you a postcard from Angkor Wat In Cambodia It was bought there, written in Borneo And mailed from Malaysia

And loved to hear your stories about Athens We actually live in Five Points On the shortcut road Where Chuck told about his mystery Creepy old lady ghost story I drive by there every day and I always keep an eye out for her So scary But my day job is with Jittery Joe's Coffee Roasters

A local Athens institution And he brought A huge box of Coffee and shirts And hats And hand delivered it to the office I think he was surprised to know That I remember when Jittery Joe's first opened

He was like, oh well that was before my time I think he Didn't think I was as old as I was But I remember Jittery Joe's opening up It was a big deal, it was like the first kind of Good indie coffee house in Athens I didn't know they were the first But I'm not surprised

The first one I remember at least But he suggests the Sumatra Wahana He said it's unlike any coffee I've ever had People either love it or hate it So That is from Mike Lord And you can just look up Jittery Joe's online I'm sure you can order this stuff

Thanks for the coffee Mike, it's good And thank you to your wife Cassidy For all the support If you want to give Chuck and I free stuff We are happy to accept it You can get in touch with us to ask for Our physical mailing address And we'll give it to you

I have to say showing up at the office unannounced Was a little weird Since he had a huge box of coffee It was all for gifts You come bearing gifts It's social lubricant Gifts are Especially good ones like Jittery Joe's coffee

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