Suspects, Lies and Videotape

January 27, 2001

CHICAGO TRIBUNE
How many perversions of justice have to be exposed before something is done about false or
coerced statements by suspects and witnesses? This month has provided yet another example.
In Texas, Christopher Ochoa walked out of prison into the embrace of his mother and the apologies
of a legal system that grievously erred him. Turns out his confession to a 1988 murder, made under
the threat of receiving the death penalty if he didn't say the right thing, was false.
DNA evidence finally proved it. So, apparently, did the repeated confessions of another man who
provided enough details to lead police to the gun and handcuffs used in killing Nancy DePriest in
an Austin restaurant. But it took 13 years of wrongful imprisonment before one police sergeant's
zealous pursuit of Ochoa was undone.
The solution is as obvious as it is simple. Videotape criminal suspects taken into custody.
Videotape not only confessions, but interrogations.
Ochoa's confession was audiotaped. But he and his attorneys claim the tape was turned on and off
by the police officer until Ochoa got his story just right. That would be harder to hide on a
videotape.
While we're at it, videotape key witnesses questioned at the station. Not just to protect defendants,
but to get to the truth. Perfect case in point: the trial of a suspect in the 1998 gang-related shooting
of Chicago Police Officer Michael Ceriale.
Seven witnesses have recanted their grand jury testimony that implicated defendant Jonathan
Tolliver. Prosecutors, pointing to the alleged gang affiliations of the defendant and several
witnesses, say the witnesses have been intimidated into changing their testimony.
Had those witnesses' interviews with police been videotaped and shown at trial, jurors would be far
better positioned to ferret out truth, and prosecutors likely would have powerful evidence to support
their case.
But calls for videotaping have met resistance, largely because police and prosecutors offer 1,000
excuses for why they just can't do it.
What if the suspect starts confessing in the police car? How can we find room to store all those
videotapes? What if the equipment fails? How can we pay for the equipment?
Answer: If it's logistically impossible, then audiotape the suspect. Make the minor investment now;
it will cost far less than defending legal challenges later over coerced confessions or police
brutality. It also will drastically cut down on trial-lengthening motions about statement admission,
and will likely force more guilty defendants to bargain for a plea agreement.
Authorities who use videotaping know it bolsters their cases as often as it protects the defendants.
Except, that is, when police have something to hide about just how they got that confession.

Liars 'too self aware to twitch'

The image of a twitchy nervous liar touching his nose and
stroking his hair may itself be a lie, a study says.
Italian and British researchers found when people lied they tended to stay still as they
were acutely aware their body language might give them away.
The team monitored 130 volunteers as they were asked to make a series of honest
and dishonest statements.
The study, in Journal of Nonverbal Behaviour, found liars touched their noses 20% less
than truth tellers.
People expect liars to be nervous and shifty and to fidget more, but our
research shows that is not the case .
Dr Samantha Mann
Psychologist Dr Samantha Mann, who co-authored the study, said there was a popular
perception that when people lie they scratch their nose and play with their hair more.
These movements are known as self-adaptor gestures which serve to comfort a person
feeling vulnerable or exposed.
Instead of giving into these urges, she claimed, liars tried very hard to stay still and
were just as likely as an honest person to look the questioner in the eye.
She added: "People expect liars to be nervous and shifty and to fidget more, but our
research shows that is not the case.
"People who are lying have to think harder, and when we think harder we tend to be a
lot stiller, with fewer movements, because we are concentrating harder."
She added: "As soon as we know that we are lying we suddenly become very aware of
our behaviour.
"Most people tend to refrain from making movements at all."
The team from the universities of Portsmouth and Bergamo in Italy, also looked for
changes in seven categories of hand gestures in their volunteers.
Self-adapting gestures
They found liars literally went to huge lengths to cover their tracks, especially when
they were challenged over whether they were telling the truth.
Those under strong suspicion used certain types of hand gestures more in order
reinforce the point.
The use of metaphoric gestures - such as touching the heart to show love and or the
holding of hands apart to indicate size - were used 25% more often when people lied.

Rhythmic gestures such as repeated pointing to emphasise statements were also used
more often by liars.
However, the use of what body language experts refer to as "self-adapting gestures"
such as striking the hair, nose or other parts of the body, were used those telling lies
15-20% less.
Dr Peter Bull, a psychologist who has looked into the link between deception and body
language, said there was a popular misconception that if someone is touching their
nose they are more likely to be lying.
He said: "There is no Pinocchio's nose of lying. It doesn't mean that if you touch your
nose in a certain way you are lying.
"And if it did people would stop doing it."
He said there needed to be a much closer analysis of what the subjects were saying
when they did certain types of gestures.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/4824426.stm
Published: 2006/03/20 13:24:59 GMT
BBC 2011

From The Sunday Times

March 19, 2006

Liars don't blink: they keep still and concentrate hard

Roger Dobson and Ed Habershon
FORGET the fidgety liar nervously blinking, scratching his nose and stroking the back
of his head. Researchers have found that liars stay motionless and control their
blinking as they try not to give anything away.
When liars do use their hands, they use extravagant movements to cover up their
dishonesty, stretching out their arms or rhythmically jabbing the air to emphasise a
point.
The findings are likely to be of interest to police, employers and suspicious spouses,
who may wrongly interpret nervousness as dishonesty but miss more reliable
indicators.
There is a popular perception that things like scratching the nose, playing with the
hair, increase with people lying, said Dr Samantha Mann, a psychologist at
Portsmouth University. People expect liars to be nervous and shifty and to fidget
more, but our research shows that is not the case.
People who are lying have to think harder, and when we think harder we tend to be a
lot stiller, with fewer movements, because we are concentrating harder.
In the research, to be reported shortly in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, the
academics from Portsmouth and universities in Italy looked for changes in seven
categories of hand movements in 130 volunteers told to make a series of honest and
dishonest statements.
Metaphoric gestures such as a heart to show love or holding the hands apart to
indicate size occurred 25% more often when lying.
Emblematic gestures that give out a direct message such as thumbs up for okay, or
palms outstretched for calm down are also used slightly more often by liars.
A typical emblematic gesture was used in April 2003 by Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf,
the Iraqi information minister nicknamed Comical Ali.
As Iraqi troops ran for cover from American shellfire, Sahaf stretched out his arms,
palms held forward, and told reporters: Baghdad is safe. The infidels are committing
suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad. Dont believe those liars. As our
leader Saddam Hussein said, God is grilling their stomachs in hell.
Another liars trick is the rhythmic gesture, as in 1998 when Bill Clinton jabbed the air
with each word: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.
Liars use self-adaptor gestures touching the nose, hair or other parts of the body
15%-20% less than truth-tellers. They also point at people about 20% less.
Mann has carried out separate research on the behaviour of suspects in police
interviews. She found that, when lying, participants paused more in their speech and
blinked less frequently 18.5 times a minute compared with 23.6 times when telling
the truth. About 81% of suspects paused longer or blinked less when telling a lie.

Debunking another myth, she said liars were just as likely as an honest person to look
a questioner in the eye.

Some police see through killer's lies

Science News, March 3, 2001 by B. Bower

Murderers brought in for questioning by the police have plenty of reasons to feign innocence.
What's worse, according to several studies over the past decade, is that people, including police,
are quite likely to be duped by such liars.
But some cops can't be fooled, according to a new study. Shown video-tapes of an interrogation of
a murder suspect speaking a language they didn't understand, some British police officers
consistently knew when the man was lying and when he was telling the truth. Other officers
detected lies and truths about as well as if they had guessed, and some detected lies less often
than if they had guessed, report Aldert Vrij and Samantha Mann, both psychologists at the
University of Portsmouth in England.
Their study, published in the March-April APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, assesses, for the
first time, people's ability to size up a highly motivated liar. Earlier deception studies had used
people who lied at the behest of experimenters. With little to lose by getting caught, laboratory liars
are better able to obscure their falsehoods, Vrij and Mann say.
"[Volunteers] holding popular stereotypical views about deceptive behavior, such as `liars look
away' and `liars fidget,' were the worst lie catchers," the researchers observe. The best lie catchers
noted that the suspect spoke much more slowly and with more pauses between words during lies.
For their study, Vrij and Mann obtained a videotape of two police officers interviewing a murder
suspect. Although the suspect denied knowing and killing the victim, evidence later showed that he
was lying. The suspect then confessed in a second videotaped police interview and was convicted
of murder.
The researchers selected six segments from the interviews. Three showed the suspect lying about
his activities on the day of the murder. The remaining segments featured truthful statements.
Of 65 police officers shown the segments, 18 made no more than one error in detecting lies and
truths. Another 36 judged three or four segments correctly, and the remaining 11 identified only one
or two segments correctly. Because the words were unrecognizable, they had to detect lies using
nonverbal cues and speech intonations.
Individuals use a variety of deceptive tactics in high-stakes situations, remarks psychologist Mark
G. Frank of Rutgers--The State University of New Jersey in New Brunswick. In lab studies, some
people betray lies through brief changes in facial expression while maintaining a constant speech
rate, he says. In contrast, psychopaths give away their lies only through inconsistencies in speech
content, in his view.
"This is the first good look at lie detection with a liar in a do-or-die situation," Frank says. "But
there's no way to know if [the murder suspect] was a good liar or not."

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