Categorization of questions and responses types in intellectually disabled witnesses’ false confessions: an analysis of four statements from Central Park five and west Memphis three

Abstract

Past investigations have largely recognized and commented on the high-stake nature of the communicative interaction during police interrogations (Haworth, 2012), emphasizing different risk factors that can facilitate the elicitation of a false confession (Feld, 2013; Slobogin, 2017; Janzen, 2019). However, there is still ample space for more specific research on the interrogators’ techniques used on vulnerable young witnesses, who have been identified as more likely to falsely confess when faced with coercive tactics (Leo, 2008; Feld, 2013; Gudjonsson, 2018; Schatz, 2018). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine questions and responses formulated by interrogators and vulnerable suspects, respectively, during a police interrogation. The analysis focuses on identifying the manipulation orientation of interrogators’ questions, and their effects on the responses of intellectually disabled suspects. The corpora analyzed is constituted by four now legally determined coerced confessions; two statements are from the Central Park Five case, and the other two from the West Memphis Three case, two well-known criminal cases that took place in Central Park, New York and West Memphis, Arkansas. Findings indicate that during interrogations, interrogators and interrogated suspects formulated specific types and subtypes of questions and responses, respectively. Moreover, the amount of speech spoken by interrogators and suspects during interrogations also proved to be relevant for the analysis of false confessions. These findings were discussed in relation to the most and least typical realizations of each type and subtype of interrogators’ questions and suspects’ responses, as well as to the amount of speech of each interrogation, taking into consideration the number of questions and responses and the length of interrogation in terms of number of words and minutes. The study concludes that the asymmetrical power relationship between the interrogator and interrogated suspect during police interrogations increased the effects that questions with a manipulation orientation had on the intellectually disabled suspects’ responses in the context of a coerced confession. Although at the beginning of the suspects’ respective first statements a few attempts to resist interrogators’ coercive tactics can be perceived, the eagerness to please authorities —which is characteristic in people with intellectual disabilities (Leo, 2008; Feld, 2013; Schatz, 2018)— was apparent in the suspects’ responses, as they finally corroborated most of the crime details conveyed in the interrogators’ formulations, which led them to take responsibility for the alleged offenses, and therefore, produce a false confession.