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Comment by jbavari | Hacker News Reader

Interesting that the entire article had nothing to mention about the Reid technique [1]. The Reid technique has been used by law enforcement to convince criminals of confessions. Many confessions were found to be false. In the book by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson [2], they cover false confessions in depth with a few court cases, as well as police techniques to invoke cognitive dissonance in the accused. Callout to the book though, for self-deception and cognitive dissonance is something that affects us all!

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_technique [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistakes_Were_Made_(but_Not_by...

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If you're being interrogated by the police, you've already lost. The only word you should say is "lawyer."

Here's what the ideal interrogation looks like: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6RoKvC1qcEY

Specifically "I want a lawyer", not "I want a lawyer dog"

Pretty illuminating that the origin story of the technique is it eliciting what was later revealed as a false confession that sentenced an innocent man to life in prison.

Wouldn't that be considered evidence of techniques usefulness?

> The Reid technique has been used by law enforcement to convince criminals of confessions. Many confessions were found to be false.

This is one reason among many why it is a serious question to ask whether a confession increases or actually rather decreases the likelihood that the culprit commited the crime.

That only matters if the truth is a major consideration. Some theories of justice don't care, as long as social order is maintained.

Which theories of justice? What countries are practicing this supposed theory?

Because this greater good thing sounds earily similar like the end justifies the means, which could argue for decimating a whole village to catch criminals as long as "overall social order of a larger group is contained".

I think most countries practice some form of "order is better than truth", including the US. There are famous examples of US courts rejecting arguments on the basis that "just because you have proof that you were wrongly convicted doesn't give you standing to appeal".

Cardassians. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribunal_(Star_Trek:_Deep_Sp...

> as long as social order is maintained

That would rely on the participants believing that truth is the major consideration, right?

If I knew that I would have to prove my innocence, that would lead to a lot of overhead for self surveillance and documentation.

Ie. If the custom of just accepting false confessions becomes a widely accepted practice it could potentially lead to reduction of social order.

Not really. Lots of societies have required accused criminals to be tortured until they confess. Presumably they would generally only torture people they believed were guilty, but there was no reason to be more confident the person was guilty after confession than before. The confession was purely of ritual significance.

> Presumably they would generally only torture people they believed were guilty,

so in their system of belief, they are truthfully guilty.

the question I am asking is whether you can divorce truth from confession.

if the society cannot believe that a confessing person is indeed guilty, then it will not uphold societal order.

Gladiatorial combat was used to help preserve the social order. Public executions were often just that but skipping the combat part, and people would often cheer them on like a football game.

You'd be surprised how little people care about innocence and justice. They care more about the entertainment value and reddit drama of discussing the convictions than actual justice or truth.

People want to hear that bad things are being done to "bad people", and won't interrogate that label too deeply.

I think the point is believe.

I agree that it takes just little to believe anything. But my point is that we can not divorce the belief

In the US, a claim of actual innocence based on new evidence is not sufficient to reopen a death penalty conviction, so long as the court case was performed fairly.

The argument for this, as ugly as it is, is that admitting arguments of innocence at that point would clog up the court system and impede justice.

Here's a good article about it. Scalia's claim was in the dissent, so this isn't established legal doctrine in the US, and the Supreme Court has in fact ruled in favor of the convicted on more than one occasion, but as the article shows it has actually happened as practiced legal doctrine in at least one case.

https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/justice-antonin-scalias-rebuke-of-...

Scalia joined the majority in Herrera v. Collins, where innocence could not be used to justify a Habeas claim.

Reading that it's specific to an 8th amendment claim.

It definitely is horrific. It looks like further Supreme Court cases allowed actual innocence claims under other standards, or for specific types of evidence. All of these were close decisions though, and I fear what a more 'conservative' court will allow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_v._Bell

Scalia's concurrence was focused on the 8th, but the case presented both 8th and 14th amendment arguments for allowing habeas.

Schlup was two years later, but searching just now I guess it isn't that strong of a protection:

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/schlup-v...

> Although this is a correct ruling, the Court's opinion is not likely to significantly protect innocent people from being executed. First, the Court failed to recognize key points of distinction between the evidence of innocence that Schlup presented and the evidence of innocence presented in Herrera v. Collins. Because Schlup's evidence was much stronger, the Court should not have ruled on the issue of whether the Constitution bars the execution of a factually innocent person. The implication of the Court's silence is that full habeas hearings are unavailable on straight-forward constitutional claims of actual innocence. Second, the Court's analysis of the fundamental miscarriage of justice exception does not appear to contradict the argument that the exception is a rule of permission. Thus, after Schlup, Federal courts will likely be free to dismiss the habeas petitions of State prisoners even where new evidence of innocence makes it "more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have convicted."

That's not the only argument the majority made in Herrera. Habeas corpus is a specifically protected right by the Constitution. The argument wasn't just "this is impractical." The argument was "a guilty conviction that sentences a person to death is not a violation of habeas corpus even if you are actually innocent and we all agree that they are innocent".

As I understand it, a claim of actual innocence based on new evidence that would have led no "reasonable jury" to convict is entertained, assuming that all procedural appeals were not exhausted.

In Herrera, a majority of the jurors in the original case said they would not have voted to convict if the new evidence had been available.

I took a cursory look through the Reid technique.

It's literally just modern gaslighting.

Well, it's a highly developed and systematized form of gaslighting. A significant technological advancement over the common amateur gaslighting.

Like the machinegun isn't just another musket.

Consider the progress of technology in the field of lying, bullshit and propaganda.

We've been developing that stuff for literally thousands of years. It has surely been refined to such a height as to be nigh-perfectly secret, invisible and powerful.

It's a good thing it isn't used against the population at scale, huh.

Are you sure?

That is exactly what they were implying.

Law Enforcement has an alignment problem?

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