Inbau - Essentials of the Reid Technique

World Headquarters
Jones & Bartlett Learning
5 Wall Street
Burlington, MA 01803
978-443-5000
www.jblearning.com

Jones & Bartlett Learning books and products are available through most bookstores and online booksellers. To contact Jones & Bartlett Learning directly, call 800-832-0034, fax 978-443-8000, or visit our website, www.jblearning.com.

Substantial discounts on bulk quantities of Jones & Bartlett Learning publications are available to corporations, professional associations, and other qualified organizations. For details and specific discount information, contact the special sales department at Jones & Bartlett Learning via the above contact information or send an email to .

Copyright 2015 by Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC, an Ascend Learning Company

All rights reserved. No part of the material protected by this copyright may be reproduced or utilized in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.

The content, statements, views, and opinions herein are the sole expression of the respective authors and not that of Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not constitute or imply its endorsement or recommendation by Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC and such reference shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes. All trademarks displayed are the trademarks of the parties noted herein. Essentials of the Reid Technique: Criminal Interrogation and Confessions, Second Edition is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by the owners of the trademarks or service marks referenced in this product.

There may be images in this book that feature models; these models do not necessarily endorse, represent, or participate in the activities represented in the images. Any screenshots in this product are for educational and instructive purposes only. Any individuals and scenarios featured in the case studies throughout this product may be real or fictitious, but are used for instructional purposes only.

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the Subject Matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the service of a competent professional person should be sought.

Production Credits

Executive Publisher: William Brottmiller

Publisher: Cathy L. Esperti

Senior Acquisitions Editor: Erin OConnor

Editorial Assistant: Audrey Schwinn

Production Assistant: Alyssa Lawrence

Marketing Manager: Lindsay White

Manufacturing and Inventory Control Supervisor: Amy Bacus

Composition: Cenveo Publisher Services

Cover and Title Page Design: Kristin E. Parker

Rights & Photo Research Assistant: Ashley Dos Santos

Cover and Title Page Image: Jones & Bartlett Learning

Printing and Binding: Edwards Brothers Malloy

Cover Printing: Edwards Brothers Malloy

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Inbau, Fred Edward.

Essentials of the Reid technique : criminal interrogation and confessions / Fred E. Inbau, John E. Reid, Joseph P. Buckley, and Brian C. Jayne.Second edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4496-9110-3 (pbk.)

ISBN-10: 1-4496-9110-2 (pbk.)

1. Police questioningUnited States. 2. Confession (Law)United States. 3. Reid technique. I. Title.

HV8073.3.I53 2014

363.254dc23

2013026307

6048

Printed in the United States of America

17 16 15 14 13 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

PREFACE

John E. Reid graduated from law school during the great depression and opened a private law practice. With clients being few and far between, he joined the Chicago Police Department walking a beat as a patrol officer. At this same time, Fred Inbau was a young professor of law at Northwestern Law School. The two of them became close friends and shared a common interest in developing scientific techniques to assist law enforcement agencies to learn the truth during criminal investigations.

On February 14th, 1929, two Chicago gangs engaged in a shootout in a Chicago alley, which left an abundance of forensic evidence, but no means to analyze the evidence to identify the perpetrators of the crime. In response to the St. Valentines Day Massacre, the Northwestern Crime Laboratory was established to assist police in fighting organized crime. In 1933, Fred Inbau became its first director.

While the focus of the crime lab was on ballistics, it also offered other forensic services, including lie detection. Initially, Leonarde Keeler was the crime labs polygraph examiner, but he left to open a private practice and taught Inbau the lie detection techniques he had developed. For a number of years Inbau was actively involved in conducting examinations and interrogations, but his responsibilities as director frequently called him away from the polygraph lab. He believed that his friend John Reid would make a good polygraph examiner and offered Reid the position.

In the 1930s the polygraph technique was very crude and, more or less, represented a prop to obtain confessions. However, John Reid recognized the potential value of rendering opinions of truth or deception based strictly on recording physiological changes within a suspect. After experimenting with various questioning techniques, he developed what has been called the greatest single advancement in the polygraph techniquethe control question. Reid also recognized the importance of obtaining respiration recordings from both the thoracic and abdominal regions and patented a device for detecting unobserved muscle movements by suspects who tried to beat the polygraph.

John Reid was a compassionate man and highly interested in studying human behavior. For example, he observed that truthful suspects appeared to display different attitudes and behaviors during their polygraph examinations than deceptive suspects. After many years of meticulous documentation, Reid developed categories of what he called behavior symptoms, which seemed to be indicative of truth or deception. Reid also experimented with specialized interview questions he called behavior provoking questions because innocent suspects tended to answer these questions in a manner different from guilty suspects. These questions serve as the foundation for the structured Behavior Analysis Interview.

While the polygraph technique was very beneficial to eliminate innocent suspects, polygraph results were not admissible as evidence to help convict a guilty suspect. To obtain this evidence required a confession from the guilty party. In the 1930s criminal interrogation consisted of breaking the suspects story down piece by piece after hours of intense and intimidating questioning with the hope of walking out of the room with a confession or partial admission. Inbau and Reid developed a completely different approach to interrogationone in which the interrogator expressed understanding and sympathy toward the suspects decision to commit the crime. Rather than try to frighten the suspect into confessing, the interrogator made statements designed to persuade the suspect that it is important for him to tell the truth. Reid was a master at using this approach and, during his career, obtained in excess of 300 murder confessions. Inbaus primary contribution, perhaps as a result of observing Reids interrogations from behind the one-way mirror, was that deceptive suspects often went through predictable steps or stages during the course of an interrogation, eventually leading to the Nine Steps of Interrogation.