Questioning a suspect is the next level of interaction. For a suspect to be questioned, there will be some type of circumstantial evidence that allows the investigator to detain that suspect. In our previous scenario of the young man found at 3AM standing under the tree in a residential area at the boarder of an industrial complex one block away from the building where a break-in was confirmed to have taken place, that young man was properly detained, chartered, and warned for the investigation of the break-in.
However, there was no immediate evidence that could link him to that actual crime at that point. He was only suspected by the circumstantial evidence of time, conduct, and proximity to the event. He was obligated to provide his name and identification. If he had tried to leave, he could have been arrested for obstructing a police officer in the execution of duty. The investigator at the scene of that incident would have questioned this suspect, and by his rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms , the suspect would not be obliged to answer questions.
This right to not talk does not preclude the investigator from asking questions, and the investigator should continue to offer the suspect an opportunity to disclose information that may be exculpatory and enable the investigator to eliminate that person as a suspect in the crime being investigated. As an example of this, again, consider our young man who was detained when found standing under the tree near a break-in.
If that man had answered the question what are you doing here by stating that he lived in the house just across the street, and when he heard the break-in alarm, he came outside to see what was happening, this would greatly reduce suspicion against the young man once this statement was confirmed. Subsequent confirmation by a parent in the home that they had heard him leave when the alarm sounded could eliminate him as a suspect and result in his release.
Interrogation is the most serious level of questioning a suspect, and interrogation is the process that occurs once reasonable grounds for belief have been established, and after the suspect has been placed under arrest for the offence being investigated.
Reasonable grounds for belief to make such an arrest require some form of direct evidence or strong circumstantial evidence that links the suspect to the crime. Of course, where an arrest is made, the suspect will be provided with their charter rights and the police caution, as per the following:. You may call any lawyer you want. There is a hour telephone service available which provides a legal aid duty lawyer who can give you legal advice in private.
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If the suspect has already had communication with the police in relation to the offence being investigated, they should be provided with the secondary caution. This secondary caution serves to advise the accused person that, even if they have previously made a statement, they should not be influenced by that to make further statements.
Once the accused has been afforded the opportunity to speak with a lawyer, the caution obligations of the police to the accused have been met, and the suspect may be questioned with respect to their involvement in the offence.
These cautions and warnings may sound like a great deal of effort aimed at discouraging a suspect from saying anything at all to the police, and, in many cases that is the result.
However, if the cautions are properly administered, and the opportunities to speak with counsel are properly provided, a major obstacle to the admission of any future statements has been satisfied. Interrogation generally takes place in the formal environment of an interview room and is often tape-recorded or video-recorded to preserve the details of what was said.
A video recording is the preferred means because it accurately represents the environment of the interview room in which the interrogation was conducted. In challenging the processes of an interrogation where a statement has been made by an accused, defence counsel will look for anything that can be pointed to as an oppressive environment or threatening conduct by the investigator.
Within the appropriate bounds of maintaining an environment of safety and security, the investigator should make every effort to demonstrate sensitivity to these issues.
Seating in the room should be comfortable and balanced for face to face contact. The investigator should not stand over the suspect or walk around the room behind the suspect while conducting the interview. More than one investigator in the room with the suspect can be construed as being oppressive and should be avoided. The suspect should be offered a beverage or food if appropriate and should be told that a bathroom is available for their needs upon request.
The demeanour of the investigator should be non-aggressive and calm, demonstrating an objective professional tone as a seeker of the truth. Setting a non-aggressive tone and establishing an open rapport with the suspect is not only beneficial to demonstrate a positive environment to the court, it also helps to create a positive relationship of openness and even trust with the suspect.
This type of relationship can be far more conducive to gaining cooperation towards a statement or even a confession. Prior to beginning the actual interrogation, the investigator should prepare an interrogation plan by:.
Preparing the interrogation plan can assist the investigator in developing a strategy to convince the suspect to answer questions or confess to the crime. Those uninitiated to the process of interrogation might wonder why anyone would possibly choose to answer questions or confess when they have been provided with their Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the standard caution that they are not obliged to say anything, and anything they do say may be used as evidence.
There are several reasons that can motivate or persuade a suspect to answer questions or confess. Statements or confessions are often made despite the warnings that would seemingly deter anyone from saying anything.
These reasons include:. Investigators who are familiar with these reasons and motivations can utilize them in assessing their suspect and developing a strategy for their interrogation plan. After making an arrest, an objective investigator must always be prepared to hear an explanation that will challenge the direct evidence or the assumptions of the circumstantial evidence that led to the reasonable grounds for belief to make that arrest. The best reason an arrested suspect can be offered to answer questions is to be exonerated from the crime.
It is possible, and it does occur, that persons are arrested for a crime they have not committed. Sometimes, they are wrongly identified and accused by a victim. Other times, they are incriminated by a pattern of circumstantial evidence that they can ultimately explain. The interrogation following the arrest is an opportunity for the suspect to put their version of events on the record, and to offer an alternate explanation of the evidence for investigators to consider.
Exoneration is not just an interrogation strategy; it is the duty of an objective investigator to offer a suspected person the opportunity of make an explanation of the evidence that led to their arrest. If there is an alternate explanation for this evidence, please tell me what that is. Conducting these investigations is also the duty of an objective investigator. Some experienced criminals or persons who have committed well-planned crimes believe that they can offer an alternate explanation for their involvement in the criminal event that will exonerate them as a suspect.
An investigator may draw answers from this type of suspect by offering the same proposition that is offered for exoneration. This is the opportunity for a suspect to offer an alibi or a denial of the crime and an alternate explanation or exonerating evidence. It can be very difficult for a suspect to properly explain away all the evidence. Looking at the progression of the event, an interrogator can sometimes ask for additional details that the suspect cannot explain.
The truth is easier to tell because it happened, and the facts will line up. In contrast, a lie frequently requires additional lies to support the untrue statement. Examining a statement that is believed to be untrue, an interrogator can sometimes ask questions that expose the lies behind the original lie.
This, too, is dubious. The Senate investigation revealed that the CIA learned most of the valuable intelligence it gathered during this period through other means. Military leaders have known about the pointlessness of torture for centuries.
A quote by Napoleon, which was widely shared after the report's release, reads, "The barbarous custom of having men beaten who are suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished.
It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know. Still, there will always be terrorists in the world, and we will always need to pump them for information. So if we don't torture, what should we do instead? Pretend to be their friends. A study published this year by Jane Goodman-Delahunty, of Australia's Charles Sturt University, interviewed 34 interrogators from Australia, Indonesia, and Norway who had handled 30 international terrorism suspects, including potential members of the Sri Lankan extremist group Tamil Tigers and the Norwegian-based Islamist group Ansar al Ismal.
Further, the pain, stress, fear, and fatigue associated with coercive measures makes it physiologically harder for the suspect to accurately remember or cogently communicate valuable details. Torture invariably changes denials, even from innocent people, into confessions.
Further, the interrogator is not in a position to know what he does not know. Coercive or disrespectful treatment creates resistance rather than cooperation on the part of a suspect. Yet then the interrogator is limited to getting confirmation of things he already suspected again, regardless of whether the confirmation is accurate ; the suspect does not provide a full narrative of his network and operations.
The interrogator also will never know if he would have gotten better information using non-coercive methods. Unreliable information may waste state resources as agents are sent to chase down errant leads. Falsely implicated people may be arrested, all while the real criminals or militants are still on the loose. Investigators grow lazy and incompetent since they can just beat a confession out of a suspect.
Information produced through torture cannot be used in trial in a liberal-democracy, meaning that the torture victim has to be released, held indefinitely incommunicado, or secretly executed.
If he is released, he may make public what happened to him, bringing discredit to the government. Secret executions or secret prisons invite scandal, obviously, and, at the minimum, invite all manner of corruption and deception since the enterprises are illegal and have to be kept in the shadows.
Torture is a moral horror, involving a fundamental assault on human dignity. The purpose of most coercive interrogation is to produce regression, a corruption of adult human faculties. Torture exceeds any kind of just use of violence as it involves an assault on a defenseless person. A suspect may be an innocent person, who cannot be modeled as consenting to being exposed to extreme violence as part of an enterprise meant to separate the innocent from the guilty.
The practice treats the innocent as if they were guilty—and then treats them in a way no civilized country treats even its worst convicted criminals. Also, since torture is not a reliable interrogation method, its use fails to provide inhabitants of a state security and justice.
Finally, the infliction of torture tends to cause moral injury to torturers, leaving them nearly as shattered as its victims. While there are no comprehensive studies to the effect, experience shows that confession-based approaches have a high rate of efficacy. Yet studies have also linked the approaches to an indeterminate rate of false confessions.
The Reid method in particular, allows for blatant lying, particularly with the introduction of fake incriminating evidence. Yet the approaches contain morally problematic aspects that should prompt the search for alternatives. Neither the suspect nor the community is served by unreliable methods resulting in innocent people being put behind bars.
The moral risk to interrogators is a further strike against the approaches. Research into lie detection and non-coercive interrogation techniques over the last two decades have yielded a new generation of interrogation techniques focused more on the suspect than the interrogator. The confession-based approach leads an interrogator to structure an interrogation based on what the interrogator believes about the suspect and oriented toward the confession or intelligence the interrogator desires.
The techniques are non-accusatory and rapport-based: the interrogator seeks to gather information about the incident in question rather than directly obtain a confession.
To an extent, the interrogatee is treated as a partner in this truth-seeking endeavor rather than an adversary whose psychological defenses have to be overcome.
As they are fairly new, there is not a lot of broad-based research about the efficacy of the information-gathering techniques used in some Commonwealth countries. There is no convincing evidence that confession rates have dropped in the UK after police services switched from confession-based to information-gathering approaches in the s.
Clinical trials have shown that information gathered through this approach tends to be more reliable than that garnered though confession-based approaches. Information-gathering interrogation also includes an emphasis on honesty and transparency. This means that deception in general, and false evidence ploys in particular, are not permitted. These reforms remove most of the rights-infringing concerns raised above with respect to confession-based techniques.
There is still a degree of psychological pressure associated with being in police custody, but this degree of pressure would be present in any kind of police interrogation. As with information-gathering approaches, strategic interviewing has been in use for a relatively short period of time—and only by a few agencies. The rapport the interrogator develops with the suspect, coupled with his open-ended questions, tends to produce more information from the suspect than alternatives.
The absence of coercive, threatening, or disrespectful treatment improves the reliability of the information the suspect reveals. These practical aspects suggest strategic-interviewing ably serves the interests of the community.
Strategic interviewing is rapport-based and provides suspects a good deal of autonomy.
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