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Background: The past decade has witnessed a recognition that unsafe criminal convictions may be occasioned by unreliable confessions.Aims: To present a case which illustrates the dangers of using abreaction interview techniques in a legal context and demonstrate the relevance of the memory distrust syndrome to an unsafe confession to murder.Method: We under took a detailed assessment of a person appealing against his original murder conviction, 'the appellant', and a careful scrutiny of all the relevant papers in the case.Results: The appellant served 25 years in prison before his conviction was quashed as 'unsafe' on the basis of fresh psychological and psychiatric evidence.Conclusions: Amnesia for an offence had been misdiagnosed, and the use of repeated abreaction interviews had further confused both the appellant and the original court. At the Appeal Court, the advice was that the man had experienced a form of source amnesia which resulted in an unreliable confession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with examining the differences between people who confess and those who deny offences during a police interview. The main hypothesis under investigation is that psychologically vulnerable suspects are particularly likely to confess. This paper is also concerned with identifying variables that might be related to the confession process. One hundred and sixty suspects detained at two London police stations were assessed psychologically prior to being interviewed by the police. The results of this assessment, an analysis of the interview procedure and biographic details were subjected to a logistic regression analysis. There was no evidence to support our main hypothesis. However, suspects were more likely to confess if they reported having consumed an illicit (non-prescribed) drug in the previous 24-hour period, and less likely to confess when interviewed in the presence of a legal adviser or if they had experience of prison or custodial remand. In this study younger suspects were also more likely to confess. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates some of the hypotheses generated by the Gudjonsson and Clark model of interrogative suggestibility. The subjects were 40 adolescent boys (11-16 years), who completed the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale and instruments measuring intellectual skills, memory, field-dependence, hostility, and attitudes towards persons in authority. Suggestibility correlated negatively with I.Q. and memory capacity, and positively with field-dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a case study which describes the cognitive functioning of a patient who suffered from retrograde amnesia covering 20 years of life. The patient had been assessed on many psychometric tests during the early stages of his amnesia and was retested eight months later. The patient's psychogenic component was precipitated by a series of traumatic events and a probable sudden mood change and was associated with strongly suicidal and homicidal impulses. His psychometric impairment might have reflected some organic dysfunction, providing the substrate for directing the form of his dissociative reaction.

This paper deals with an aspect of the law relating to the use of a mentally handicapped victim as a prosecution witness in a criminal trial. Here the particular question was of the victims competence to act as a witness, and the likely reliability, or otherwise of her evidence. The results of psychological testing were found to provide guidelines by which the court could distinguish between areas of the reliable and the unreliable in her evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new suggestibility test, potentially useful in the context of police interrogation, was administered to 45 subjects who also completed the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. Suggestibility was significantly related to low intelligence, poor memory recall, neuroticism and social desirability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are very few, if any, valid and victim-specific situation empathy measures available at present for use with mentally disordered offenders. The aim of this study was to validate a modified version (VERA-2) of the Victim Empathy Response Assessment (VERA) tool which was developed earlier Young et al., 2008) to enable victim-specific situation empathy measurement in offenders. A total of 55 mentally disordered in-patients residing in a maximum security hospital were assessed on VERA-2 as well as on measures of antisocial personality traits, global affective empathy, violent cognitions, and reported remorse for the index offence. The VERA-2 cognitive and affective empathy scales were negatively correlated with antisocial personality traits and violent cognitions, and positively related to remorse for the index offence. Global affective empathy was positively related to VERA-2 affective empathy. Participants with a history of sexual offending had significantly higher cognitive empathy than other offenders. Acceptance of violence and remorse for the index offence were the best predictors of both cognitive and affective empathy. The findings suggest that the VERA-2 is a valid instrument for measuring victim empathy among mentally disordered offenders, and may prove useful in the context of future risk assessment and outcomes in this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]