I want to say first and foremost, that I am not against coercive interrogation techniques. 98% of the time, the cops have the real perp in front of them, and coercive techniques, upto and including the cops lying... I actually have no trouble with.
And it's with this said that an interrogation IS NOT about eliciting further information. It's about confession. Why do you who claim knowledge of law enforcement not acknowledge this.
What's at issue are a couple of things: one is that whatever technique is used, Reid Technique or others, what is the check and balance within it which guards against the 2% - guards against simply eliciting a false confession? American law enforcement claims that since the lessons of the Central Park Five false confessions; they now take special care to be as coercive in their questioning, while at the same time looking for the telltales signs that the questioners themselves are not causing the result they've set out to want falsely.
The trouble I have with the Sollecito/Knox/Lumumba interrogations is not thatthey were coercive - it's that they were illegal.
None of them had lawyers. Machiavelli went through dietrological gyrations here to position Amanda Knox as "all but suspected", because Machiavelli knows that for Knox to make "spontaneous statements", she cannot do them while already suspected. For Knox to be denied a lawyer she cannot be denied one while already being suspected. For Knox to be denied a competent translator (ie. one who would not act as a mediator!) she cannot be denied one while already being suspected.
Yet, guilters and Machiavelli alike need to also show that (especially) Knox was corrected suspected from the beginning. The bit about the alleged "staging of the crime scene" was supposed to have uniquely pointed to Knox from Nov 2 onwards.... John Follain writes a book with the subtext that the PLE was right to suspect Knox from the beginning, etc, etc, etc, and on cop says that at interrogation, "she buckled and told us what we already knew."
The illegal part of this is the error, not the coercive part of it. Not videotaping it (ie. flipping the switch)made the thing unusable, yet could slipinto court against Sollecito and Knox because of Lumumba's parallel calunnia charge, adjudicated at the same time by the same court.
Everything about the interrogation said that the cops had the wrong people. Knox had lied about the drug use in the upstairs of the cottage - but then again so did everyone else, except for Filomena who at trial had to admit she "had sinned". Filomena knew the score on that with her legal career ahead at stake.
It was the patent illegality of the interrogation which is the problem - virtually admitted to by Mignini himself in the 2010 CNN interview with Drew Griffin. Mignini said he'd quoted the law to Ficarra which forced him to shut down the interrogaiton leading to the 1:45 am statement, then incredibly Mignini tells Griffin that he continued.... all to effect a second "spontaneous" statement at 5:45 am. That statement betrays the importance of all this by even putting that word right at the front of the 5:45 am statement.
Mignini said he'd not coached or asked a single question - and we're to believe that a 20-year-old foreigner who did not speak the language or understand the subtleties of Italian interrogation law remembered to put that in!!!!???
What was going on that night was illegal and Mignini knew it. His behaviour that night and explanations to Griffin in 2010 prove it.
Mignini is a criminal. Demonstrably so.
But..... in theory interrogations are just fine, coercive or not. No one would have complained if they had got Guede to confess using these means.
Bill this is the rest of the link Strozzi posted successfully of LashL
Alibis: Alternatives to coercive methods rendered the statements elicited
involuntary, unreliable and therefore inadmissible. In his ruling,
Justice Fletcher Dawson found that, notwithstanding that the KGB
criteria (R. v. B. (K.G.) [1993] 1 S.C.R. 740) had been met, he was
left with serious misgivings about the reliability of Cox’s recantation
of his alibi. He found that the disputed part of the Cox interview was
inadmissible. He also excluded the Allison interview “for the truth of
its contents” but he did permit the prosecution to use the statement
for the limited purpose of testing the witness’s credibility during
examination, but with the jury being expressly prohibited from
relying on the statement to make any findings of fact.
The Morgan case demonstrates that the Reid interrogation method
can be used to extract inculpatory statements from eyewitnesses and
retractions from alibi witnesses. Because the trustworthiness of
such statements is compromised by the pressure tactics and threats
used to procure them using the Reid Technique, the criminal justice
system is ill-served by such methods. There are viable interviewing
methods for suspects and witnesses that do not rely on
oppressive or accusatory methods (e.g., the Cognitive Interview).
Criminal defence lawyers should be alerted that using coercive interview
practices could possibly imperil trial fairness.
Brian Cutler is professor and associate dean at the University of
Ontario Institute of Technology, where he teaches in the forensic
psychology program. Timothy Moore is professor of psychology at York
University’s Glendon College, where he teaches psychology and law.
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THE LAWYERS WEEKLY June 6, 2014 • 15
