Analysis of the Documentary about Police Investigation - Essay Example

Police Investigation Before I started to watch this film I gathered a book and pen and resolved to try and lay aside my own views and keep an open mind to the material that is presented to me. As the film began, I was immediately impressed by its slick presentation, with an authoritative narrator and frequent shots moving from photographs to sound bites to sections of interview. It seemed to be a quality production and it laid out an intriguing set of circumstances that made for good television entertainment: a violent rape and murder, a set of suspects, police investigations, court scenes and a twisting track of investigation that raised a number of mysteries that needed to be resolved. Overall, therefore, my first impressions were positive and I looked forward to seeing how the film would develop. If it had been a fictional story, then I would have been mightily impressed by this film, because it had everything that keeps an audience transfixed from beginning to end. The cutting and pasting of information and evidence kept me guessing all the way through, and as each piece of information was revealed I changed my own personal hypothesis about what had happened on the day of the murder and more importantly, why each of the accused men had made a confession. As each accused man was presented, and new suspects were added to the mix, I grew uneasy about the very obvious contradictions between the confessions they had made. It was clear from the title of the film and the background narrative that the main objective of the documentary was to highlight the problem of false confessions, and the miscarriage of justice that occurred in this case when innocent men were jailed for a crime they confessed to, but did not actually commit. I tried to see things from the point of view of the accused, but also from the point of view of the interrogators, and the jury and the judge in each case. In the end I was confused by the constantly changing statements of the accused men and outraged what appeared to be basic errors and incredible bias on the part of the investigators and prosecution lawyers. No doubt this was the intention of the producer, Ofra Bikel, and it certainly provoked quite a strong emotional and intellectual response in me, even though I had resolved at the start to try and remain objective about the film. I was aware of a feeling of being manipulated by the film’s producer. I felt that the way the material had been presented was designed to create maximum dramatic effect. A lot of information from the case was missing, and I knew that in a real criminal investigation there is usually a mountain of evidence which may, or may not, be relevant to the case in hand. The volume and complexity of information is likely to be extreme. Many people are involved in the information gathering process, and often what is produced makes no initial sense. No single person can grasp all of the detail in such a process. The film maker had a huge advantage in being able to interview suspects who had come through the whole process and were looking back on what had happened. With the benefit of hindsight, they can construct a version of events that looks obvious, and convinces a viewer who has not been weighed down by the full spread of evidence available. While I had sympathy for these men, and could see that they had suffered greatly through their experience of the criminal justice system, I also had some sympathy for the investigators, who did not have the benefit of hindsight, and who were under pressure to make sense of a baffling and violent crime. The film implied very strongly that the police interrogation techniques used in this case were the main cause of the series of confessions that were elicited from the accused men. I agreed with the film’s criticism of the lack of recorded evidence of all stages in the interrogation process, but at the same time I had to keep reminding myself that a television documentary could only ever present a tiny fraction of all the evidence available, and it more than likely suppressed evidence that went against the accused men, as well as evidence that supported their innocence. The men described the high pressure interviewing techniques in a way that suggested they had been forced into a confession. Because these long interviews were not recorded, it is impossible to say either way whether they were as unfair as suggested, or whether they were legal and necessary measures that are used across the country all the time to test the veracity of witness and suspect statements. I believe that there are occasions when investigators have to use a range of different techniques, some gentle and some more robust, in order to break down a deliberately fabricated story. In short therefore, I believe that it is always better to record interviews using the approved protocols, because this protects both interviewers and interviewees from any accusations that arise later. I found that the most interesting question in this documentary was what caused the men to produce very incriminating confessions. It was suggested that besides the pressure put upon them by investigators, there was also a belief among some of the accused that a) admitting to the crime and b) incriminating others would eliminate the most serious possible outcome of the criminal investigation, namely the death penalty. This line of thinking arises from the American system of plea bargaining, and it certainly confuses the issue of motivation when it comes to confessions. I could not help thinking that the accused men genuinely believed that they faced the death penalty, whether or not they had actually committed the crime, and that they constructed confessions, with the help of investigators, that were designed to achieve this aim. This means that the men were complicit in the deception of the courts, and so I do believe that they bear some responsibility for what happened, even though they may have been put under pressure at times. I reflected deeply on this matter, and considered whether or not I would do the same, if I found myself in a similar situation. I came to the conclusion that I do not think I would make a false confession, and this led me to wonder whether something in this case influenced their decision in that direction. One factor which occurred to me as relevant was the role of the navy in all of this. The four navy men were trained in modes of behavior appropriate for the military. Perhaps they were conditioned by their experiences in that domain to give in to pressure from authority, and perhaps they had learned to expect a certain amount of brutality in human relationships. This may have led to a greater willingness to go along with the system, rather than step out of line and resist pressure to conform to a proposed course of action. They may have had less of a sense of individual responsibility, and resorted in the end to a mentality of trying to hide behind a group identity. Certainly key evidence from the navy was not sought, and this harmed the defence of the navy members when they could not prove their whereabouts. This reveals a gulf between government departments which is not just cultural but also amounts to a separation of their activities. These boundary disputes played a part in this case. Another angle that concerned me was the revelation that detective Glenn Ford was convicted of extortion after the event. This reveals that this man may have overstepped the mark in some of his behaviors. It does not, however, invalidate the whole process that led to the convictions of the men known as “The Norfolk Four”. There should have been sufficient checks and balances in the system to prevent any miscarriage of justice caused by a rogue detective. I was very shocked to learn of the way that even when forensic evidence clearly implicated only one suspect, there was a continued reliance on the clearly contradictory set of confessions. This raises a big question about the relative importance of different types of evidence, and the whole domain of false confession, which psychologists recognize as a constant possibility when interrogation is used. In conclusion, therefore, this brought my attention to two main problems: one was the way that a documentary simplifies and sensationalizes an extremely complex case. This is wrong because it potentially creates outrage and a loss of confidence in the whole criminal justice system. The second issue that concerned me was that there really does appear to have been significant procedural error in this case, and a concerted effort on the part of the investigators and prosecutors to produce a particular outcome, selecting some evidence and ignoring other evidence. Too many careers depended upon these cases holding up in court, and I suspect that what went wrong here was simply the fallibility of all human beings, investigators and accused individuals alike. Everyone sought outcomes that were perceived as a better option than the truth, and most crucially of all, when the cracks in the evidence began to show, it was the prosecution side that had the upper hand. This is the fundamental problem that the film reveals, and suggests that everyone needs to be vigilant about maintaining due process and proper procedures to minimize such mistakes. References “The Confessions”. PBS video. Available at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-confessions/ Read More