Police Science in the Interrogation Room: Seventy Years of Psuedo-Psychological Interrogation Methods to Obtain Inadmissible Confessions
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Police Science in the Interrogation Room:
Seventy Years of Pseudo-Psychological
Interrogation Methods to Obtain Inadmissible
Confessions
BRIAN R. GALLINI*
Nearly all confessions obtained by interrogators nationwide are inadmissible, but
nonetheless admitted. In the process, police arrest the wrong suspect and allow the
guilty to go free. An unshakeable addiction to pseudo-scientific interrogation
methods-initially created in the z940s-is to blame. The so-called Reid technique of
interrogation was initially a welcome and revolutionary change from the violent third
degree method it replaced. But we no longer live in the 194os and, not surprisingly, we
no longer drive 194os automobiles, practice early-twentieth-century medicine, or dial
rotary phones. Why, then, are police still using 1940s methods of interrogation?
Moreover, the outdated Reid technique was premised on the very same principles that
underlie the lie detector. At the time of its creation, then, the Reid technique was crafted
from a science already discredited by nearly every court in the nation. From a policy
standpoint, continued reliance on the Reid technique does a disservice to our justice
system and unnecessarily risks obtaining inherently unreliable confessions. From an
evidentiary standpoint, the methodology underlying the Reid technique fails every
aspect of the Supreme Court's standards governing the admission of expert evidence.
This Article therefore contends that all confessions obtained pursuant to the Reid
method are-and were-absolutely inadmissible.
* Assistant Professor of Law, University of Arkansas-Fayetteville. The Author first thanks
Professors James A. Shellenberger, Rick Greenstein, Stephen M. Sheppard, Joshua Dressler,
Christopher Slobogin, Scott Dodson, and Rick Swedloff for their insightful comments on previous
drafts. Second, the Author thanks the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville School of Law for a
summer research grant that provided support for this project. Third, the Author thanks the School of
Law's library staff for their invaluable research assistance. Finally, the Author thanks his wife, whose
patience in discussing this topic was unending.
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