Falling through the cracks: Failing to identify compromised Miranda abilities for defendants with limited cognitive capacities

Custodial suspects must be informed of their Miranda rights (Miranda v. Arizona, 1966) prior to police questioning. Since this landmark decision, scholars have rigorously studied Miranda comprehension and reasoning among vulnerable groups including those with intellectual disabilities (ID). However, the focus on ID has left arrestees with limited cognitive capacities (i.e., LCCs with IQs between 70 and 85) entirely overlooked. The current dataset addressed this oversight using a large (N = 820) sample of pretrial defendants who had completed the Standardized Assessment of Miranda Abilities (SAMA). Traditional (i.e., ID and no-ID) criterion groups were first analyzed with the standard error of measurement (SEM) removed. Second, a nuanced three-group framework included defendants with LCCs. Results indicate that LCC defendants are vulnerable to impaired Miranda comprehension (i.e., limited recall of the Miranda warning and deficits in Miranda-related vocabulary knowledge). Not surprisingly, their waiver decisions were often impaired by crucial misconceptions (e.g., seeing the investigating officers as beneficently on their side). The practical implications of these findings were underscored with respect to Constitutional safeguards for this critically important group, who have appeared to fall through the cracks in the criminal justice system.

Remaining silent during interrogation

In many Western jurisdictions, criminal suspects undergoing police interrogations have the right to remain silent. In this experiment, we examined the effects of remaining silent during police questioning on laypersons' perceptions of a suspect. Participants (N = 126) read one of three mock-interview transcripts (i.e. admission, denial or silence) and indicated the extent to which they agreed or disagreed that a male suspect in a missing person case was guilty, cooperative, trustworthy and rational. Participants expressed stronger agreement that the suspect was guilty when he admitted guilt than when he denied involvement or remained silent. When the suspect remained silent, participants viewed the suspect as less cooperative than when the suspect denied or admitted guilt and as less rational than when the suspect denied committing the crime. Our findings provide some support for the notion that remaining silent during police questioning may be viewed unfavourably by external observers.

Miranda Warning Comprehension: The Influence of Verbal Aptitude and Hearing Status

The Miranda warning was drafted in order to inform people of their rights upon arrest in an easy to understand manner. However, to understand the warning a person needs a high school level reading comprehension (which is above the level of most offenders). Among these offenders, deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) individuals are particularly prone to misinterpreting the Miranda warning due to language barriers with law enforcement and below average English literacy compared to hearing individuals. Two studies were performed. The first compared Miranda warning comprehension between hearing and DHH participants, and it was found that DHH participants showed overall lower comprehension. The second study, consisting only of DHH participants, compared the effectiveness of four different presentations of the Miranda warning: signed in American Sign Language (ASL), signed in Signed Exact English (SEE), oral presentation, and written presentation. The written presentation demonstrated the lowest comprehension scores while the other three methods showed no significant difference in comprehension. The results suggest that the Miranda warning is best administered to DHH individuals with the assistance of a certified sign language interpreter. Limitations of the sample and directions for future research are discussed.

Cumulative Disadvantage: A Psychological Framework for Understanding How Innocence Can Lead to Confession, Wrongful Conviction, and Beyond

False confessions are a contributing factor in almost 30% of DNA exonerations in the United States. Similar problems have been documented all over the world. We present a novel framework to highlight the processes through which innocent people, once misidentified as suspects, experience cumulative disadvantages that culminate in pernicious consequences. The cumulative-disadvantage framework details how the innocent suspect's naivete and the interrogator's presumption of guilt trigger a process that can lead to false confession, the aftereffects of which spread to corrupt evidence gathering, bias forensic analysis, and virtually ensure wrongful convictions at trial or through pressured false guilty pleas. The framework integrates nascent research underscoring the enduring effects of the accumulated disadvantages postconviction and even after exoneration. We synthesize findings from psychological science, corroborating naturalistic evidence, and relevant legal precedents to explain how an innocent suspect's disadvantages can accumulate through the actions of law enforcement, forensic examiners, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, juries, and appeals courts. We conclude with prescribed research directions that can lead to empirically driven reforms to address the gestalt of the multistage process.

The Killing of Kitty Genovese: What Else Does This Case Tell Us?

Well known in popular culture, the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens, New York, became famous because not one of an alleged 38 bystanders called police until it was too late. Within psychology, this singular event inspired the study of bystander intervention. With the spotlight of history focused on Ms. Genovese and bystanders, other events, also profound for what they tell us about human social behavior, have escaped public notice. Based on archival records and current interviews, this article describes the three issues linked to Genovese. First, three false confessions, taken from two individuals, led to their wrongful convictions and imprisonment. One of these individuals was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona (1966); the other individual is alive and well and wants to clear his name. Second, the narrative of the unresponsive bystander was initiated by police, not by journalists, in response to probing questions about one of these confessions. Finally, there is the ironic fact, which somehow has slipped through the cracks, that the killer of Genovese was ultimately captured as a result of the intervention of two bystanders.

False confessions

As illustrated by numerous cases in recent years, DNA exonerations of innocent individuals have cast a spotlight on the counterintuitive problem of false confessions. Studying the underlying psychology scientists have found that (1) innocent people are often targeted for interrogation because police make erroneous but confident judgments of deception; (2) certain interrogation techniques-namely, lengthy sessions, presentations of false evidence, and minimization themes that imply leniency-increase the risk that innocent people will confess; (3) certain individuals are particularly vulnerable to influence-notably, those with mental health problems or intellectual impairments, which render them overly compliant or suggestible, and children and adolescents, who exhibit 'immaturity of judgment'; (4) confession evidence is highly persuasive in court as a matter of common sense, increasing perceptions of guilt, even among judges and juries who see the confession as coerced, and even at times when the confession is contradicted by exculpatory information; (5) Miranda rights to silence and to counsel are not sufficiently protective, so proposals for reform have centered on the mandatory recording of interrogations, from start to finish, and a shift toward using investigative interviewing-a less confrontational, less deceptive means of questioning suspects. WIREs Cogn Sci 2017, 8:e1439. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1439 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.