The 2010 white paper by Saul Kassin and colleagues, endorsed by the American Psychology-Law Society, is the authoritative statement of what accusatorial interrogation does and it is the source for this chapter.
Its most important finding for a defender is counterintuitive, and Part 4 states it too: innocence increases risk.
Innocent suspects waive their rights at substantially higher rates than guilty ones, because they believe they have nothing to hide and that the truth will protect them. They talk without counsel, they submit to searches, they agree to polygraphs. And when an interrogator asserts evidence that cannot exist — which is lawful for police in the United States — an innocent suspect has no explanation for it except that something happened they do not remember.
The techniques to recognize are specific and the paper names them.
Isolation, and extended duration. The risk of a false confession rises sharply with interrogation length; most reliable interrogations are short, and most documented false confessions followed sessions of many hours.
Confrontation with certainty. The interrogator asserts that guilt is established and refuses to hear denials, because denial rehearsal sustains resistance.
The false evidence ploy. Fingerprints, a witness, a failed polygraph, a co-defendant who has implicated you. Chapter 95 is the experimental demonstration of what this does.
And minimization. Sympathy, a face-saving theme, the suggestion that this was understandable and that anyone might have done it. Kassin and McNall demonstrated in 1991 that minimization communicates leniency by implication at levels comparable to an explicit promise, without anything being promised.
The counter-response is short and it is not a technique.
Ask whether you are free to leave. Say that you are exercising your right to remain silent and that you want a lawyer, using those words, unambiguously — hedged requests have been held insufficient. Then stop talking, including small talk, and do not resume when the questioning becomes friendly again.
Request that the interview be recorded in full, from the beginning. Recording is the single reform with the strongest evidence behind it, and its absence is what made chapter 96 possible.
If you are the parent of a minor or the carer of someone with a cognitive impairment: they are in the highest-risk category that exists, they should not be interviewed without a lawyer under any circumstances, and Illinois and several other states now bar police from lying to minors in interrogation precisely because of chapters 96 and 97.
This counters Law 4.
Counters Law 4, Ask For Too Much So the Real Request Feels Like Mercy