The Interrogation Decision-Making Model: A General Theoretical Framework for Confessions.

Yang, Yueran; Guyll, Max; Madon, Stephanie
Law and Human Behavior, Oct 20 , 2016.

This article presents a new model of confessions referred to as the interrogation decision-making model. This model provides a theoretical umbrella with which to understand and analyze suspects’ decisions to deny or confess guilt in the context of a custodial interrogation. The model draws upon expected utility theory to propose a mathematical account of the psychological mechanisms that not only underlie suspects’ decisions to deny or confess guilt at any specific point during an interrogation, but also how confession decisions can change over time. Findings from the extant literature pertaining to confessions are considered to demonstrate how the model offers a comprehensive and integrative framework for organizing a range of effects within a limited set of model parameters.

The article is here.

Advancing Medical Professionalism in US Military Detainee Treatment

Leonard S. Rubenstein, Scott A. Allen, Phyllis A. Guze
PLOS One
Published: January 5, 2016
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001930

Summary Points

• The United States Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) promulgated policies and requirements that required health professionals to participate in the mistreatment of counter-terrorism detainees through participation in such practices as abusive interrogation and force-feeding of detainees, in violation of ethical standards established by associations representing the health professions.

• A report of the Defense Health Board to the Secretary of Defense on military medical ethics released in 2015 found that the Department of Defense “does not have an enterprise-wide, formal, integrated infrastructure to systematically build, support, sustain, and promote an evolving ethical culture within the military health care environment.”

• The Board also found that ethical codes promulgated by the health professions, including the duty to avoid harm, provide a sound basis for military medical practice, even taking into account the unique challenges often faced by military health professionals in reconciling the military mission with patient needs.

• The health professional community should urge the Secretary of Defense to adopt and implement the recommendations of the Defense Health Board, rescind directives authorizing participation of health professionals in interrogation and force-feeding because they are inconsistent with professional ethics, and provide ongoing advice and support for the reform process.

The article is here.

Law and Ethics

Richard Marshall interviews Matthew Kramer
3:AM Magazine
Originally published on August 22, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

3:AM: If capital punishment is a central contemporary issue so is the use of torture. Why do you argue that torture is always wrong?

MK: There is no single answer to that question, because there are many different types of torture, and the explanation of the wrongness of torture is not uniform across those types. (When I refer to the sundry types of torture, I am not differentiating among them on the basis of the techniques employed; rather, I am differentiating among them with regard to the chief purposes for which torture is undertaken.) Let me say a bit here about the most frequently discussed type, interrogational torture. My 2014 book Torture and Moral Integrity maintains that such torture is always and everywhere morally wrong. The gravity of the wrong varies, but the wrongness itself does not. Hence, it should be apparent that that book is as robustly deontological as any of my previous volumes. (“Robustly deontological” is definitely not equivalent to “robustly Kantian.” My book on torture contains numerous objections to Kantianism as well as to consequentialism.)

Interrogational torture involves the deliberate infliction of severe pain for the purpose of extracting information from someone (either from the person on whom the pain is directly inflicted or from someone who is likely to care deeply about that person). The deliberate infliction of severe pain for that purpose is always morally wrong because of the overweeningness of the control exerted both through the infliction itself and through the aim which it is undertaken to achieve. The overweeningness of the control exerted by the infliction itself has been brought out especially incisively in recent years by David Sussman, and the overweeningness of the aim pursued has been brought out especially incisively in recent years by David Luban. Hence, I draw upon their writings as well as those of many other philosophers in my ruminations on torture.

The entire interview is here.

People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened

Association for Psychological Science
Press Release on January 15, 2015

Evidence from some wrongful-conviction cases suggests that suspects can be questioned in ways that lead them to falsely believe in and confess to committing crimes they didn't actually commit. New research provides lab-based evidence for this phenomenon, showing that innocent adult participants can be convinced, over the course of a few hours, that they had perpetrated crimes as serious as assault with a weapon in their teenage years.

The research, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, indicates that the participants came to internalize the stories they were told, providing rich and detailed descriptions of events that never actually took place.

"Our findings show that false memories of committing crime with police contact can be surprisingly easy to generate, and can have all the same kinds of complex details as real memories," says psychological scientist and lead researcher Julia Shaw of the University of Bedfordshire in the UK.

The entire article is here.

Can a Jury Believe What It Sees?

Videotaped Confessions Can Be Misleading

By Jennifer L. Mnookin
The New York Times
Originally published July 13, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

The short answer is that, according to recent research, interrogation recording may in fact be too vivid and persuasive. Even seemingly neutral recordings still require interpretation. As advertisers and Hollywood directors know well, camera angles, close-ups, lenses and dozens of other techniques shape our perception of what we see without our being aware of it.

In a series of experiments led by the psychologist G. Daniel Lassiter of Ohio University, mock juries were shown exactly the same interrogation, but some saw only the defendant, while others had a wider-angle view that included the interrogator. When the interrogator isn’t shown on camera, jurors are significantly less likely to find an interrogation coercive, and more likely to believe in the truth and accuracy of the confession that they hear — even when the interrogator explicitly threatens the defendant.

The entire article is here.

Guantanamo Ethics

Religion and Ethics Newsweekly
Originally published September 6, 2013

A growing movement is renewing calls for the facility at Guantanamo Bay to be closed, citing concerns about the treatment of prisoners. Especially troubling for human rights activists is the practice of force-feeding detainees against their will. “They’re prisoners, but that doesn’t mean that they’ve given up every right that they have as a human being,” says a US Naval Academy professor who visited Gitmo in 2009.

Watch the video here.

NY judge won't order Gitmo doc probe

By JENNIFER PELTZ, Associated Press

NEW YORK – A judge has declined to force an investigation into whether an Army psychologist developed abusive interrogation techniques for detainees at Guantanamo Bay and should be stripped of his license, halting what civil-rights advocates have called the first court case amid a push to shed light on psychologists' role in terror suspects' interrogations.

The person who brought the case — another psychologist — doesn't have legal standing to do so, Manhattan Civil Court Judge Saliann Scarpulla said in a ruling filed Thursday.

Rights activists and some psychologists have pressed regulators in several states — unsuccessfully so far — to explore whether psychologists violated professional rules by designing or observing abusive interrogations.

In New York, rights advocates focused on John F. Leso, saying he developed "psychologically and physically abusive" interrogation techniques for use on detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The state Office of Professional Discipline, which oversees psychologists, declined last year to look into Leso. The agency said that his Army work is outside its purview and that the agency isn't in a position to address larger questions about the appropriateness of detainee interrogation methods.

The decision spurred the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability, the New York Civil Liberties Union and psychologist Steven Reisner to sue the agency last fall and ask the judge to force a review of techniques developed by Leso, who holds a New York psychologists' license.

"The ruling is unfortunate, as Dr. Reisner's claims raise serious and fundamental questions that should have their day in court," Center for Justice and Accountability lawyer Kathy Roberts said in a statement.

She said the groups are considering an appeal but also keeping their eye on proposed state legislation that would require investigating any allegation that a health care professional has participated in torture or other improper treatment.

Representatives for the state professional discipline office and the state Attorney General's office didn't immediately return calls. No contact information was immediately available for Leso, who isn't named in the court case and never chose to weigh in with a filing of his own. An Army spokesman didn't immediately return a call about Leso.

The rest of the story can be read here.