无罪项目是一个致力于通过DNA测试被错误定罪的组织,迄今为止负责使197人免于监禁。通过检查不法定罪案件的细节,无罪项目还确定了导致这些司法流产的几个因素。一个因素是虚假的供词,当无辜的嫌疑人屈服于当今美国警察讯问的无处不在的巨大心理压力时,可能会发生这种情况。实际上,犯罪嫌疑人在拘留期间发表的虚假罪名陈述在超过25%的错误定罪案件中发挥了作用。为了回应这些令人不安的事实,许多科学,法律和政治领导人呼吁对监护审讯进行强制性录像。支持者认为,录像审讯将阻止警察使用高度强制性技术来引起供词,而由此产生的视听记录将允许后来的审判事实发现者更准确地评估犯罪嫌疑人陈述的自愿性和真实性。但是,应仔细考虑需要进行录像的政策,以最大程度地减少心理学研究建议的程序的潜在缺陷。
执法部门对录像的混合反应
Over the past 25 years, there has been considerable ambivalence within the law enforcement community concerning the videotaping of interrogations and confessions. Long before the first DNA exoneration case in 1989, the police in some jurisdictions took the initiative and began experimenting with the videotape recording of at least portions of the questioning of detained suspects. For example, by the early 1980s, the district attorney’s office in one borough of New York City had access to approximately 3,000 videotaped admission statements. According to statistics maintained by that office, videotaping produced an 85% guilty-plea rate and a nearly 100% conviction rate. In contrast, other jurisdictions have adamantly resisted the call for mandatory videotaping of custodial interrogations. Those in law enforcement opposing the videotaping movement have argued that the cost of equipment, storage, and transcription of videos is an undue burden for jurisdictions with limited budgets. Moreover, they fear that suspects will be hesitant to talk in the presence of a camera; judges and juries will disapprove of certain legally permissible interrogation tactics commonly used (e.g., lying about the amount and kind of evidence incriminating a suspect), thus rejecting the confession evidence as unreliable; and requiring videotaping will impugn the integrity of law enforcement agencies that have worked diligently to earn a reputation for honesty.
In the past 15 years, two large surveys have been conducted to assess the extent to which law enforcement agencies were videotaping at least some interrogations and/or confessions and their reactions to this procedural modification. The first was a report to the National Institute of Justice in 1992 by William Geller, who estimated that approximately one-third of law enforcement agencies serving populations of 10,000 or more recorded interrogations, or parts thereof, on some occasions in the late 1980s. Importantly, Geller found that the police, who had experience with videotaping, expressed strong support for the practice. As a member of the San Diego police put it, “Not using video would be like not using state-of-the-art fingerprint analysis equipment. If better technology comes along, and its cost is reasonable, the police should experiment with it if there is a reasonable chance that it can assist them in their work” (p. 153).
托马斯·沙利文(Thomas Sullivan)律师在2004年的第二份报告类似地发现,这些部门录制了监护审讯的积极回应。以下是沙利文报告中官员们在接受录像实践中提到的一些原因:这简化了公众对如何对待拘留嫌疑人的担忧;它消除了广泛的注意的需求,因此官员可以更好地观察嫌疑人的非语言行为;录像带是一种有用的教学工具,用于展示适当的审讯技术;随后观看录像带可以揭示在实时审讯过程中错过的罪名信息。沙利文认为,一旦警察尝试进行录像,他们将不想回到较旧的方法,他认为对这种做法的广泛接受将“受益于嫌疑人,执法人员,检察官,陪审团,审判,审判和审查法院法官,以及在我们的司法系统中搜索真理”(第28页)。
Compelled Recording of Interrogations by Court Order or Legislative Statute
阿拉斯加最高法院首次要求审讯的电子记录。法院于1985年发布的裁决是基于州宪法的正当程序条款。The justices reasoned that “recording…is now a reasonable and necessary safeguard, essential to the adequate protection of the accused’s right to counsel, his right against self-incrimination and, ultimately, his right to a fair trial” (Stephan v. State, 1985). Nine years later, the Supreme Court of Minnesota also ruled for compulsory videotaping, stating that “an accurate record makes it possible for a defendant to challenge misleading or false testimony and…protects the state against meritless claims” (State v. Scales, 1994). Decisions by state Supreme Courts in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New Hampshire fell short of ruling that their state constitutions mandate recording of interrogations. Nevertheless, in each of these states, the highest court held that failure to offer a custodial recording at trial could be a basis for the presiding judge to suppress any purported confession offered by the prosecution. Furthermore, should the judge admit an unrecorded confession into evidence, it was held that the jury would be instructed to exercise great caution in the weight given to the prosecution’s claim that the defendant made self-incriminating statements. These decisions have generally led many police departments in these states to implement custodial recordings to avoid the possibility of their confession evidence being thrown out or having it greatly diluted by unfavorable jury instructions.
In 2004, Illinois became the first state to require by statute complete custodial recordings. Following Illinois’s lead, Maine, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia have since enacted similar recording legislation. Several additional states have prorecording bills currently under legislative consideration.
录像练习的可能缺点
正如上述讨论所表明的那样,所有迹象表明,对顾问的录像将成为标准的执法实践。因此,谨慎考虑与录像过程相关的任何可能的弊端,或者与它可以专门实施的方式相关。
回顾偏见
一个问题是警察选择记录嫌疑人的最终认罪的潜在偏见,但没有在此之前进行审讯。Geller和Sullivan在他们的调查报告中都指出,这种“回顾录像带”并不罕见。回顾录像带可能有问题,原因有两个。首先,回顾可能会传达出审判事实发现者,即供认比他们原本要说的更为自愿,如果审讯的整体可以让他们观察到。其次,在要求嫌疑人多次叙述他们的故事后,通常会记录回顾。到摄像机滚动时,他们的陈述可能伴随着很少的情绪和激动,这可能是他们第一次透露自我提示的信息时可能出现的。因此,回顾录像带可能会使嫌疑人看起来比实际上更加冷漠和不可原谅,而实际上,这反过来又可能对陪审团偏向于他们。对这个问题的认识导致大多数法院和立法机构都强迫宣布保管记录,以清楚地阐明必须记录整个审讯,从米兰达警告到会议结束。
基本归因错误
即使法官和陪审员有机会观看整个审讯录像带,对于他们来说,准确评估是否自愿进行认罪仍然可能是一项非常困难的任务。A vast amount of research on social judgment demonstrates that observers tend to attribute people’s actions to internal causes (i.e., to their dispositions or intentions) even when external forces or pressures in the situation (e.g., orders from an authority figure) could readily account for their actions—a phenomenon known as the fundamental attribution error. The U.S. Supreme Court in Lego v. Twomey (1972) expressed the view that jurors are readily capable of differentiating voluntary from involuntary confessions and thereby discounting the latter. However, the pervasive tendency for people to commit the fundamental attribution error should serve as a warning that the task of evaluating the voluntariness of suspects’ statements made during an in-custody interrogation designed explicitly for the purpose of extracting a confession is not necessarily as straightforward as it might seem. Consistent with this point, laboratory research has shown that mock jurors asked to consider a suspect’s self-incriminating statements, which came on the heels of very obvious high-pressure tactics on the part of an interrogator (e.g., he waved his gun in a menacing manner), were unable to completely discount the confession in rendering their verdict.
与虚假的自白区分开
正如首先指出的那样,录像练习的支持者如此坚持采用这种方法的主要原因之一是他们的信念是,审讯的录像带记录将使法官和陪审团更容易地捕捉到虚假的案件。进入系统的自白。然而,多年来人们对人们准确区分真实性与不真实陈述的能力的科学研究,再次表明,常识性观念可能在很大程度上是不正确的。研究发现虚假的研究人员的共识是,在将谎言与真理分开时,人们通常比机会要好得多。即使是那些接受特殊培训以提高撒谎技能的人,也很少显示出显着的改善。令人震惊的是,他们有时在训练后的表现要比以前更糟。
An especially disturbing implication of the literature on lie detection for the videotaping practice is that people perform relatively worse when they rely primarily on visual cues, particularly those emanating from a person’s face, when trying to make veracity judgments. Consistent with this pattern, a recent study found that people were better at differentiating true from false mock confessions when they listened to an audio recording or read a transcript of an interrogation than when they viewed a full videotape version that featured a close-up of the suspect’s face. People tend to believe that they can tell from closely observing another Peterson’s face whether he or she is speaking untruths, but the scientific evidence suggests otherwise.
Camera Perspective Bias
有关录像实践的最后一个问题应考虑到应考虑的录像实践,这是审讯最初记录时相机的视角。最初,这似乎是一个无关紧要的因素,但是越来越多的研究表明,它可能会对事实的triers得出的结论产生深远的影响,他们后来评估了录像带的供词。一项相当大的研究表明,观察者在自己或她的视野中脱颖而出时,将不必要的因果关系(影响)归因于对象和其他人,或者是他或她注意的重点 - 这种现象称为虚幻的因果关系。
Based on such demonstrations, Lassiter and his colleagues (2006) hypothesized that videotaped confessions recorded with the camera focused on the suspect would lead observers to assess that the suspect’s statements were more voluntary and conclude that the suspect was more likely to be guilty than if the camera focused on the interrogator or on both the suspect and the interrogator equally. Two decades of research have confirmed this hypothesis. Videotapes that show both the suspect and the detective in profile (an equal-focus camera perspective) produce evaluations that are comparable with those based on more traditional presentation formats—that is, audiotapes and transcripts. Lassiter and his colleagues have therefore recommended that any legislation requiring videotaping of custodial interrogations should also specify that an equal-focus camera perspective be used at the time of the initial recording.
参考:
- Geller,W。A.(1992)。警方录像可疑审讯和供词:对问题和实践的初步审查(致美国国立司法研究所的报告)。华盛顿特区:美国司法部。
- Lassiter, G. D., Ratcliff, J. J., Ware, L. J., & Irvin, C. R. (2006). Videotaped confessions: Panacea or Pandora’s box? Law and Policy, 28, 192-210.
- Lego诉Twomey,404 U.S. 477(1972)。
- State v. Scales, Minn. 518 N.W.2d 587 (1994).
- Stephan诉State,Alaska,711 P.2d 1156(1985)。
- Sullivan,T。P.(2004)。警方经历记录监护权审讯的经历。芝加哥:西北大学法学院,不法定罪中心。
还给警察心理学概述。