Interviewing and Testimony
Chapter 10
Interview vs Interrogation
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Interview:
 Designed
to elicit information from witnesses
and persons of interest. No implication of
guilt.
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Interrogation:
 Involve
persons thought to be perpetrators of
crime. Guilty knowledge generally assumed.
Police Investigations
Rely on witnesses, victims, and suspects to fill
in the details surrounding the crime
 Who was involved, what happened, where
and when did it happen, how did it happen,
why did it happen
 Evidence is collected through interviews,
interrogations, and confessions

Police Interviews

There are two goals of a police
interviews/interrogations:
 Obtain a confession
 Gain information that will further the
investigation (e.g., the location of
evidence)
Interviewing Suspects
Why Would A Suspect Confess?
 Believes evidence against them is strong
 Is sorry for their crime
 Is reacting to pressure (from police or
stress)
Interrogation Techniques

In general, interrogations techniques (tactics)
can be broken down into two categories:
 Minimization: (‘manipulation’)
 Soft
sell tactics that provide a sense of false
security

Maximization: (‘intimidation’)
 Scare

tactics that attempt to intimidate suspects
‘Appeal’- in the suspect’s best interest to
confess
The Reid Model of Interrogation
Most common interrogation method used in
Canada
 Involves 3 general stages:
 Gather evidence
 Conduct a non-accusatorial interview to
assess deception/guilt
 Conduct an accusatorial interrogation to
obtain a confession
(continued)

The Reid Model of Interrogation

The psychology behind this technique is
to make the anxiety associated with
deception greater than the anxiety related
to the consequences of confessing
Problems with the Reid Model of
Interrogation
Assumes that police officers can accurately
detect deception when little evidence supports
this assumption
 Officers enter the accusatorial interrogation
with the belief that the suspect is guilty, which
can lead to inappropriate biases
 Coercive techniques used in this model may
elicit false confessions

Recent Changes to Interrogations
Videotaping interrogations is becoming
more common
 Benefits include:

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Protects police against false
allegations of abuse
Protects citizens from police coercion
Allows courts to make informed
decisions
Interviewing Victims and Eyewitnesses
o
Question style can have a substantial
effect on kinds of information produced
o
o
Open questions – “what happened?”
Closed questions – “were you scared?”
o
o
‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers
Leading questions – “was the car red?”
o
Misinformation effects
Interviewing Vulnerable or
Intimidated Victims/Eyewitnesses

Who are they?
 Those
under 17 years old
 Those with learning/physical disabilities
 Those with mental disorders/illness
 Those suffering from fear or distress
History of Child Witnesses
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In the early 1900s the prevailing negative
attitudes towards child witnesses were tested
Results indicated children were highly
suggestible and capable of providing inaccurate
testimony
Research in the area increase during the 1970s
when expert testimony was gaining acceptance
and adult eyewitness research was getting noticed
Also, the legal community showed interest in
research regarding child witnesses, due in part to
the number of reported abuse cases involving
children
Stepwise Interview
Interview commonly used in Canada
 Initially, children are asked free recall
type questions, followed with more
specific questions, as needed
 Interview procedure is consistent with
knowledge about children’s recall
abilities and how to elicit accurate
information

Cognitive Interview
Based on memory retrieval techniques:
 Cognitive reinstatement
 Report everything
 Recall event in different orders
 Change perspectives
 Changing perspectives has been called
into question for facilitating inaccurate
information

Enhanced Cognitive Interview

The following components were added to
the original Cognitive Interview:
 Rapport building
 Supportive interviewer behaviour
 Transfer of control
 Focused retrieval
 Witness compatible questioning
Cognitive Interview: Results
Both types of cognitive interviews elicit
more information than “standard police
interviews”, without an increase in
inaccurate information
 It still remains unclear as to which
components of the cognitive interview
elicit this increase in accurate information

Problems with the CI Approach
Errors if used inaccurately or by untrained
interviewers
 Police officers not trained in appropriate
interview techniques
 Time consuming

Testimony
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Evidence produced by a witness or suspect in a
criminal case
Act of memory retrieval
Subject to misremembering
When testimony by a witness is given in a
criminal trial, chances of a suspect being
convicted are very high
Factors Affecting Eyewitness Performance
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Amount of time for observation
Distance from person or event
Visibility and/or obstruction
Known or seen before
Salient or novel more memorable
Time lapse
Errors or inaccurate testimony
Stress/fear (narrows focus)
Violence/presence of a weapon
Factors relating to the person (witness)
 Age
 Children
& older adults not so good
 Race
 Same
race or across race identification
 Expectations
 What
is most likely given the situation?
 Pressure
 The
to perform
helpful witness!
Factors Influencing Retention of Info
Length of retention interval
 Post-event suggestions

 Available
to witness between original event
and subsequent attempts to recall it
Confabulations and distortions
 Retrieval factors

 Actions
vs. physical descriptions
 Confidence-accuracy relationship
Factors Influencing
Eyewitness Identification
Format of the line-up
 Instructions given the witness
 The influence of line-up administrators
 Exposure to suspects in line-ups through
previous identifications

Line-up Procedures
Witnesses are frequently asked to identify
a culprit from a lineup
 Lineups contain the suspect who is placed
among a set of individuals who are
known to be innocent for the crime in
question, called foils or distractors

Line-up Procedures
Simultaneous line-up: Present all line-up
members at the same time to the witness.
Encourages witnesses to make a relative
judgement
 Sequential line-up: Members are
presented one at a time, must decide if it
is or is not the criminal before seeing
another photo/person. Encourages
witnesses to make absolute judgements

Summary for line-ups
Line-ups should be presented sequentially
 Individual conducting line-up should not
know the identity of suspect
 Warn witnesses that suspect may or may
not be in line-up
 Additional line-up members should be
based on description of perpetrator
 No feedback given during or after a line-up
 Confidence ratings
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