Summary Of The Reid Technique Of Interrogation

The Reid Technique of Interrogation leads investigators through eight levels of questioning, spanning from Positive Confrontation, Handling Denials, Overcoming Objections and more to an ultimate oral and written confession. In Lamar Monson’s interrogation, it seems like the police really pushed the hardest on Positive Confrontation, insisting relentlessly that Monson was the one that murdered the young girl, and Handling Denials, creating and committing early on to a made up narrative that fit the scene the authorities wanted. In pushing Monson, an innocent man, as much as they had, insisting he was guilty and creating a narrative with Monson’s guilt at the center, the police were able to break him down enough to confess to a crime he did not

Although the Supreme Court has left little to no clear definition for what “impermissibly coercive police tactics” entail, it is clear that police are not allowed to make promises, threaten, torture or otherwise harm the individual for purposes of confession. In Monson’s case, clear “coercive police tactics” were used, if not relied upon, to force a confession from a man who never committed the crime based on the application of the Reid Techniques for interrogation, a tactic that has produced a significant number of false confessions. Additionally, the Self-Incrimination Clause protects individuals from being “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” In other words, this means that you are not required by law to answer questions that may incriminate you, and refusal to respond may not be used against you in a court of law. Monson’s interrogation also included incriminating questions surrounding his presence at and relationship to the crime scene because he had been involved in drug dealing at the time, making it easy for police to build on a string of