American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 55: 56--67,2012Copyright © American Society of Clinical HypnosisISSN: 0002-9157 print 12160-0562 onlineDOl: 10,1080/00029157,2012,684161

A Case of a False Confession Afteran Inadvertent Hypnotic Induction

Robert H. GoldsteinUniversity of Rochester, Rochester, New York, USA

This article presents the case of a highly hypnotizable 28-year-old man who gave a false confessionunder police interrogation following an unintended hypnotic induction, but who was exoneratedyears later on the basis of DNA evidence, The author proposes that assessment of possible highhypnotizability be conducted in instances of otherwise unsubstantiated confessions,

Keywords: false confession, hypnosis, police interrogations

The e-mail that arrived early in the evening on that April day in 2010 was as defini-tive as it was unexpected. It read, in part, " , .. In 1992 you testified at Sterling's trialthat his 'confession' was hypnotically induced and therefore unreliable. You were right.Tomorrow, Mr. Sterling's conviction will be vacated and he will be released. The personthat Sterling's lawyer claimed actually committed the crime has now confessed ... "

This surprising communication was signed by the attorney who had spearheaded theyears-long effort to reverse the guilty- verdict that had been pronounced in a murdercase-a verdict which had sent an innocent man to prison for over 18 years. Thus endeda long twisting tale in which determined police investigators, a persistent district attor-ney, and the power of a confession presented in court had together led to a miscarriageof justice, the consequences of which tragically extended further into the Rochester,New York community.

My involvement in the case which I report here stemmed from my having served forsome time as a hypnotic consultant to a number of western New York law enforcementagencies. This role generally entailed the use of hypnotic methods aimed at assistingwitnesses to crimes in the recall of details which might facilitate investigations of theseevents. It is because of this experience with hypnosis that I found myself participating inthe events to be described herein.

While the matter of false confessions has been the subject of extensive study for manyyears (Conti, 1999; Garrett, 2011; Kassin et al., 2010; Leo, 2009). it has only been withthe emergence, within the last several decades, of DNA testing as a reliable scientific

Address correspondence to Robert H. Goldstein, 2000 Winton Road South, Building #4, Suite 303, Rochester, NY14618, USA. E-mail: gstn@mail.rochester.edu

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forensic method that the magnitude of this problem has become more evident (Drizen &Leo, 2004; Kassin et al., 2010). In one report, 40 of 250 cases (16%) exonerated byDNA evidence had given confessions which turned out to be false (Drizin & Leo, 2004).Another compilation of DNA-exonerated cases puts the percentage of false confessionscases in that group at closer to 25% (Innocence Project, 2010). Similarly, the role ofhypnosis in the legal system has a long history and has been the subject of much con-troversy (Schefiin & Shapiro, 1989). A case of a false confession involving the hypnoticelicitation of what appeared to be a dissociated alter personality was described in 1998(Coons, 1998). Another report described a case of false confession involving a man whois described as having been induced into a dissociative state followed by suggestionduring a police interrogation (Ofshe, 1992). There do not, however, appear to be anycases reported in the recent literature in which hypnotic phenomena, among other fac-tors, resulted in a false confession, the falsity of which was subsequently substantiatedby DNA evidence.

In November 1988, the dead body of a 74-year-old woman was found alongside apath next to an abandoned railroad track in one of the suburban towns northwest ofRochester, New York. She had been beaten to death with a BB gun and shot with twoBBs from the gun. She had no apparent enemies and there were no obvious suspects, butone name soon came to the attention of the members of the Monroe County Sheriff'sOffice who were conducting the investigation. A 25-year-old man, Frank Sterling, whohad grown up near the abandoned railroad tracks, fell under suspicion, in great measurebecause his brother was then serving time in prison for an attempted rape some threeyears earlier of the very same woman who now had become a murder victim. Eventhough this constituted a plausible motive for the murder, when Frank was questioned,he produced a solid alibi that was backed up by his documented work record on the dayof the murder. There were no pieces of physical evidence that connected Frank to thekilling and so he was not arrested.

As time went on, other leads evaporated and the trail went cold. A local boy was laterreported to have been boasting to friends that he had killed an area woman, as did severalother town teen-agers, but his story was subsequently dismissed by the investigators afterhe recanted the story. Some years later, he was given two polygraph tests, one of whichhad yielded indeterminate results and another which he was reported to have passed.

Over the next few years, detectives interviewed Sterling several more times withoutfurther action being taken. In July 1991, yet another interrogation took place shortly afterSterling, now 28, returned from an extended two-day-long truck driving shift. As part ofa review of previously interviewed persons of interest in the murder case, Sterling wasinterrogated by a team of detectives in an overnight session that included a polygraphexam. During this exam, which was apparently being used as a ruse in an effort to extracta confession, one of the investigators reportedly confronted Sterling with a fabricatedstory that Sterling's imprisoned brother had told other inmates that one of his brothershad killed the elderly woman. Using a variety of interrogation techniques, the detectives

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pressed Sterling by suggesting various motives he might have had for the slaying, but hecontinued to maintain his innocence.

After over 5 hours of questioning, Sterling told of feeling very anxious and asked if hecould be hypnotized to prove his non-involvement and also to help reduce his increasinganxiety level. (As will be noted, Sterling was already quite familiar with what wereessentially self-hypnotic techniques for relaxing and for reducing stress.) One of theinvestigators suggested that he didn't know how to conduct hypnosis, but that he couldprovide him with a "relaxation technique." Precisely what happened during the nextperiod of time and what those events entailed became a matter of some legal controversy.

According to the police log, later testimony by the officers involved and Sterling'sown report, he was instructed to "lie down, put your feet up on a chair, take four deepbreaths and relax." Having done so, Sterling's hand was held by one of the detectivesand he was then asked to visualize the scene along the railroad tracks, describe what he"envisioned in his head-in his mind" and report how he felt. He later described thisexperience as one in which "they were putting images into my head" and added that''1 believe I did develop an image for them." At that point, Sterling reportedly describedthe image of encountering the victim, talking with her, feeling angry and then seeingher dead body dressed in specific clothing, and feeling happy. Almost immediately afterthat, Sterling sprung up and shouted "This is bulls hit-I didn't do nothing!"

Following a brief pause, the interrogation continued for several more hours, duringwhich the detectives alternately expressed sympathy and support for Sterling, insistedthat he had in fact committed the murder, showed him photos of the murder scene torefresh his memory, suggested that he had good reason to be unhappy with the victimand that it would help him to let his feelings go about the events that had been involved.Two hours later, with the detectives huddling close to him, rubbing his shoulders, urginghim to tell the truth in order to get it off his chest, Sterling, now trembling and exhaustedafter 12 hours of questioning and more than 30 hours without sleep, blurted out, ''1 didit ... I need help!"

About an hour later, Sterling agreed to give a video-recorded statement in which heresponded to questions by admitting to the commission of the crime. When asked "Youdid this, right?" he replied "From what my memory tells me, yes." and further describeddetails of the murder scene and the events that supposedly took place there. The resultingvideo tape, the only portion of the interrogation which was recorded, became, then, thebasis of the case against Sterling. Even though he subsequently denied the validity ofthat statement, he was arrested, indicted, and set for trial.

Because of the ambiguity surrounding the "relaxation procedure," I was contacted bythe public defender assigned to him, Thomas Kidera, and asked to review the informationavailable regarding that experience and to interview and evaluate Sterling. Accordingly,I met with him in October 1991 for an approximately three-hour-long video-recordedsession, during which time I asked him to describe in detail the circumstances of hisinterrogation, the "relaxation procedure" and his subsequent video-taped confession.

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I also administered the Hypnotic Induction Profile (HIP; Spiegel & Spiegel, 1978), theBarber Suggestibility Scale and the Creative Imagination Scale (Barber &Wilson, 1978).On the HIP, his responses placed him at the 90th percentile with respect to hypnoticresponsiveness, on the Barber Scale his score put him between the 91st and 98th per-centile and on the Creative Imagination Scale he placed at the 98th percentile. Based onthese results, it seemed clear that Sterling was someone who was highly likely to be aready hypnotic responder.

In addition, I requested Sterling to demonstrate the method he had been using forstress reduction in which he would "go on a trip" by himself. I had been made awareof this latter issue in a prior interview with a woman-friend of Sterling's who describedhow she had taught him to use this technique after she herself had been taught it byan acquaintance. Both this friend and Sterling reported that this was something theyhad done together repeatedly for over five years and which he himself had employedfrequently to relieve stress and when taking a rest period during his long-haul truckdriving assignments.

The procedure involved lying down, with feet elevated, relaxing one's muscles and"going on a mental trip," generally to a pleasant scene of some sort. When they practicedthis together, the friend would hold his hand, or caress his forehead while urging him todevelop mental images in his mind of being in a place in which he would like to imaginehimself as being. She reported that when she talked to him in this way, he would appearto "fall asleep" but she would nevertheless be able to speak to and communicate withhim during such a session, which would last from 10 to 45 minutes or longer. He couldthen be "aroused" by her calling his name sharply or giving him some other kind ofsignal, as a result of which he would then "awaken." She described and he independentlyconfirmed the fact that upon waking he would have experienced a loss of subjective timesense and could not tell how long he had been on his "trip."

The procedure he demonstrated for me in the jail was essentially as she had describedit. In response to my request that he show me what he did to "go on a trip," he leaned backin his chair, closed his eyes, slowly rubbed his forehead, appeared to relax and gave everyindication of someone who had slipped into an hypnotic state, in which he remainedfor some 12 minutes. During this time, I administered the Barber Suggestibility Test(Barber & Wilson, 1978) and he "passed" all the items on this scale. At the conclusionof this, when asked to open his eyes and become fully alert he quickly returned to hisusual state.

In describing his typical "going on a trip" relaxing experience, Sterling reported thathe would be able to put himself "into that place" by creating that image in his mind.When this happened, he said he would feel himself to be in a "dream-like state," andwould experience a sense of weightlessness in his body which felt like "floating in water"and as being "not weighed down." He further stated that during the long night of inter-rogation as the investigators pressed him with questions during his period of relaxation,"It was almost like they were putting me into a state like my relaxing technique."

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Upon review of all this information, I concluded that there was a high likelihood thatthe "relaxation procedure" used during the police interrogation had essentially replicatedthe self-hypnotic process with which Sterling had been quite familiar. In a court hearingon the admissibility of the video-taped confession, I testified that, in my opinion, theexperience that evening had been one of self-hypnosis produced by Sterling, a personof high hypnotizability and quite experienced with and comfortable with the procedureemployed by the questioners. Even though they may not have intended to utilize anyformal hypnotic methods, it was my further opinion they very likely had inadvertentlytriggered a hypnotic experience on the part of the defendant. This having occurred, thenserious questions could be raised as to the voluntariness and the admissibility of theconfession.

The opinion I expressed did not, however, go unchallenged. The prosecution hadengaged a well-known and highly regarded hypnotic clinician and author, HerbertSpiegel, M.D .• to review the data I had collected and to review the tape of my evaluationof Sterling. Spiegel also spent approximately 10 minutes with Sterling, administered theHIP and Spiegel's personality test that is designed to assess aspects of an individual'scognitive style (Spiegel & Spiegel, 1978). Based on this data, Spiegel testified at the sub-sequent hearing that Sterling demonstrated a "Dionysian" personality style in that he wasthe type of individual who tended to slip into and out of altered states of consciousnessspontaneously during any given period of time.

He further testified that Sterling's responses on his own administration of the HIP,which Spiegel interpreted as resulting in an even slightly higher score than when I hadgiven the test, indicated that Sterling was highly hypnotizable. The major point of differ-ence in our testimony was that Spiegel argued that since there was no actual statementmade to Sterling that hypnosis was going to be used (and that it was specifically statedthat it would not be, but that a "relaxation" technique was to be used instead) then hewould not conclude that it was possible for Sterling to have developed an hypnotic stateduring the interrogation. The definition of hypnosis as presented by Division 30 of theAmerican Psychological Association-the Society of Psychological Hypnosis-notesthat "while some think that it is not necessary to use the word 'hypnosis' as part of thehypnotic induction, others view it as essential" (APA, 2012).

The opinion rendered by the judge accepted Spiegel's argument and the issue ofwhether a hypnotic element played a role in Sterling's confession did not enter into theweight given to the confession when the case went to trial. A guilty verdict was reachedby the jury, substantially on the basis of this confession, and Sterling was sentenced to aterm of 25 years to life.

In the years that followed, multiple appeals were filed, generally on the basis ofrumors concerning the young man who had boasted of being a killer. Courts repeat-edly rejected those appeals and considered the evidence against the young man to beinsufficient grounds for overturning Sterling's conviction. The weight of the confessionmore than out -balanced any other evidence presented.

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Not quite 2 years after Sterling was sent to prison, the Rochester community wasshocked by the disappearance of a 4-year-old girl who was last seen playing outside theapartment in which she lived with her mother. Despite intense searches, no trace of herwas found. Several months after the girl vanished, I was asked by the Monroe CountySheriff's Office to assist them by conducting a hypnotic interview with her mother in thehope that she might be helped to recall some further details of the events of the day onwhich she had last seen her daughter. By an odd coincidence, she was accompanied tomy office by a member of the Sheriff's office who turned out to be one of the investi-gators who had interrogated Sterling on the night he had been brought in for intensivequestioning and who could be seen on Sterling's confession video, sitting close to him,rubbing his arm and comforting him as he told the confession story. The hypnotic mem-ory enhancement session with the mother went off without major incident and, while shewas able to recall a few more specific aspects of the day of her daughter's disappearance,these did not lead to any major investigative leads.

Again, the trail went cold and no new developments in the case occurred for overtwo years. Then, unexpectedly, a married young man shared with his wife a secret hehad held for some time-that he had been the killer of the little girl. She contacted theSheriff's Office with this information and they promptly arrested the husband. He wasa 25-year-old man named Mark Christie, who quickly confessed to the murder and ledinvestigators to the location where he had hidden the girl's body. This was not, however,the first time investigators had had contact with Christie. He was, in fact, the individualwho, at 16, had boasted to his friends of having killed the elderly woman for whosedeath Sterling was then in prison. Christie eventually agreed to a guilty plea in the littlegirl's murder and was sentenced to 25 years to life, but now denied his involvement inthe earlier murder.

Given this development, over the next several years Sterling's new attorney, DonaldThompson, filed multiple appeals on Sterling's behalf based on Christie's murder con-viction and on his earlier stories about having killed a woman, but courts consistentlydeclined to accept this turn of events as a basis for voiding Sterling's conviction. Hisconfession continued to represent an insurmountable obstacle which made the appealsunsuccessful.

In 2004, the Innocence Project (2010) became involved and, together with Thompson,pursued an extended legal course which led to the obtaining of DNA evidence fromthe clothing of the older woman and which, on the basis of some newer scientificmethodologies, resulted in a positive match with Christie's DNA. When confronted withthis information by interrogators, Christie admitted his guilt in the 1988 murder case.In April, 2010, nearly 19 years after his initial arrest, Sterling's conviction was set asideand he was released from prison. Finally, in September 2011, Christie entered a guiltyplea to second degree murder in the case of the murdered woman.

Newspapers now speculated that had attention not been focused so intently and sin-gularly on Sterling, and had his confession not been immediately taken as truthful, then

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Christie's story and his subsequently unverified alibi might have been more closelylooked into. Had this occurred at the time of the first murder, then the subsequent murderof the little girl might not have happened (Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, 2010).

The manner in which the Sterling interrogation took place was not at all unusual.Various researchers and writers have described the methodologies involved in policeefforts to obtain a confession from a suspect. The essential features of the so-calledReid technique (Inbau, Reid, Buckley, & Jayne, 2001), a method which has been widelyadopted by police investigators, has been summarized as:

First, investigators are advised to isolate the suspect in a small private room, which increases hisor her anxiety and incentive to escape. A nine-step process then ensues in which an interrogatoremploys both positive and negative incentives. On one hand, the interrogator confronts the suspectwith accusations of guilt, assertions that may be bolstered by evidence, real or manufactured, andrefuses to accept alibis or denials. On the other hand, the interrogator offers sympathy and moraljustification, introducing "themes" that minimize the crime and lead suspects to see confession as anexpedient means to escape. (Kassin et al., 2010)

These themes consist of theories proposed by the investigators as to how and why thecrime was committed. The methods used in Sterling's case seem to follow this patternquite closely.

Gudjonsson (2010) recently reviewed studies on personal characteristics which havebeen found to be relevant to an individual's decision to confess falsely. Such traits as sug-gestibility and compliance as well as various aspects of psychopathology and personalitydisorder have been linked to this propensity. Kassin has also suggested that innocenceitself may put those not guilty of a crime at greater risk insofar as they may believe thatthe truth will come out and that their innocence will be revealed in later proceedings. Heproposes that such persons may have "a naive faith in the power of innocence to set themfree" (Kassin, 2005).

In this case, it may be that some combination of these contextual, personal, and situa-tional factors may have entered into the elicitation of the confession that was ultimatelydemonstrated to be false. And here specifically, it would also appear that a highly hyp-notically responsive individual exposed to an informal hypnotic induction very likelyexperienced a hypnotic alteration of consciousness which played a significant role in hisconfession.

The basic elements of the "relaxation technique" as introduced and carried out by theinvestigators corresponded to Sterling's long-practiced "going on a trip" in any numberof fundamental ways, and both of these procedures contained numerous components ofhypnotic induction procedures. Common components included:

• The use of a physically relaxed or relaxing position;• The restriction of an individual's focus of attention by means of concentration on a

limited range of external and/or internal stimuli;• The use of a "deepening" procedure such as progressive relaxation of various

groups of body muscles;

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• The provision of a repetitive source of either external or internally-based "soothing"stimuli;

• The experience of a change in one's subjective state in the direction of an enhancedattention to internal, as opposed to external, cues;

• A resulting experience of a "dream-like state" without actual loss of consciousnessenhanced vividness of mental imagery;

• An increased ability to experience imaginal events as having an intensely realquality;

• An alteration of subjective time sense; and• An increase in suggestibility, such as the ability to accept external ideas and use

them uncritically as the basis for thoughts, actions, or images in the visual or othersensory modalities.

I would venture that if one were to seek to identify a pattern of features descriptiveof most hypnotic or self-hypnotic methods, the preceding list would likely be found tobe acceptable to most experienced hypnotic clinicians. Accordingly, the likelihood ofunintentionally evoking a hypnotic event could be greatly increased if police interroga-tors utilize the kind of methodology for "relaxing" a subject in the way that was done inthis case.

Thus, on the basis of this case, one can add a subject's experience with self-hypnotictechniques-and the likelihood that police interrogators could unwittingly re-evoke suchan experience-to the list of potentially predisposing factors that could, and in thisinstance did, lead to a false confession and, arguably, to the subsequent and possiblyavoidable death of a young child.

Discussion

While cases of exactly this sort, in which a hypnotically experienced suspect wasinadvertently led to develop a hypnotic experience during an interrogation, have notpreviously been reported in the literature, it is unlikely that this was a truly singularevent. The ability to experience hypnosis is widely distributed in the population and itis generally estimated that at least 10% of unselected individuals are likely to be "highhypnotizables." It is also widely recognized that many individuals develop spontaneoustrances under a variety of circumstances, and that such persons may be even more pre-disposed to do so under stressful conditions. An authoritative set of guidelines for the useof hypnosis in forensic and clinical settings advises that "If someone is highly hypnotiz-able, the absence of an induction ceremony does not mean that spontaneous trances havenot taken place (e.g., Frankel, 1975), for example, during interrogation, interviews, orthrough the use of imagery techniques that elicit hypnotic responses, even though a clin-ician did not use the word 'hypnosis.' In fact, under motivated or pressured conditions,

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highly hypnotizable persons may be more prone to enter a hypnotic state (Spiegel. 1974.1980)" (Hammond et al .• 1995).

Spiegel has also opined that "Trance states may occur with or without the benefitof a formal induction ceremony" and that "It takes relatively little external pressure toelicit a spontaneous trance" (Spiegel & Spiegel. 1978). And there is no doubt that beingsubjected to a police interrogation is one of life's more stressful situations. Thus, forpersons who are highly responsive to hypnosis, the emergence of a trance state underpolice interrogation remains a significant possibility.

And so, the presence of a situation in which there is a potentially hypnosis-inducingstate of high stress and extreme fatigue together with an markedly elevated trait of hyp-notizablility can combine to make the emergence of an hypnotic response particularlylikely. It is this exact combination of factors which appears to have been operating inthis case and which apparently resulted in an initial confabulation or false memory. Thejury's guilty verdict, it will be recalled, was based substantially on their viewing of thevideo tape of that confabulated memory report.

As described in the case reported here, interrogators, using a frequently employedtactic, gave false information to the subject under investigation. This maneuver carriesspecial dangers for the high hypnotic responder individual. A summary of research deal-ing with pseudo-memories that have been introduced in a hypnotic setting by conveyingfalse information to a subject indicates that individuals higher in hypnotizability are morelikely to accept such information as reflecting valid memories of their own (McConkey &Sheehan, 1995). On the basis of a number of other studies, the same authors concludesthat "the level of susceptibility is related more positively to the phenomenon of memorydistortion than other parameters" and that this may perhaps be attributed to differencesin information processing styles (McConkey & Sheehan, 1995, p. 205). And yet a thirdreview of research on hypnotizable subjects notes that such individuals "who can pic-ture with greater vividness and emotional intensity can experience their 'recollections'as real" and that they "can even come to believe strongly in information that is clearly inerror" (Frankel & Covino, 1997, p. 356).

Therefore, it can reasonably be argued that any assessment of the circumstances sur-rounding a confession elicited during interrogation should include an evaluation of thesubject's hypnotic capacity. Such information may be highly relevant to any subsequentlegal proceedings in which the voluntariness or validity of a confession might be underreview.

The question then arises as to how this capacity can best be evaluated. A number offormal techniques are available for this purpose and have been widely researched andvalidated. Some of these, such as the well standardized Stanford Hypnotic SusceptibilityScale Form C (Weitzenhoffer & Hilgard, 1962) are rather extensive and time-consumingand are probably best suited to rigorous research settings. A wide variety of more infor-mal procedures, many of which are well described in a recent hypnosis text (Barabasz &Watkins, 2005), are frequently utilized in clinical contexts, but are less quantifiable. The

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techniques utilized in this case were selected, therefore, on the basis of their relativeease of administration, their brevity, and their reasonably adequate empirical validation.The combination of the three procedures employed, the HIP (Spiegel & Spiegel, 1978)the Barber Suggestibility Scale, and the Creative Imagination Scale (Barber & Wilson,1978) can all be administered within a single session and provide a broad assessment ofbehaviors associated with hypnotic responsivity.

It needs to be stressed that the administration of these hypnotic assessment proce-dures requires a substantial degree of clinical experience in the use of hypnotic methods(Barabasz &Watkins, 2005). Their use by persons unskilled in such methods can dimin-ish their accuracy. Accordingly, it would be best for them to be applied by clinicallysophisticated psychologists, social workers, or other mental health professionals whohave had an opportunity to become familiar with these specific instruments as well aswith hypnotic phenomena in general.

Given the substantial number of confessions that police obtain from subjects of inter-rogations, it would be impractical even to consider assessing hypnotic capacity in sucha huge population. There may well, however, be a subset of individuals for whom thistype of assessment would be of special relevance. Extrapolating from this case, I wouldsuggest that hypnotic assessment be considered for cases in which the subject recantsa previously given confession, in which there is minimal independent corroboratingevidence to support the facts recounted in the recanted confession and in which thesubject reports or has been described as having had prior opportunities to become famil-iar with techniques for developing non-drug-related methods for evoking altered statesof consciousness. A final criterion for identifying potential situations for assessment ofhypnotic capacity would be those circumstances in which interrogators had made someeffort to "relax" the person being interrogated.

The identification of high hypnotic capacity in persons being interrogated is especiallyrelevant in view of the relationship that has been noted between high hypnotic responsiv-ity and a tendency toward the development of dissociative experiences (Bowers, 1976).Research has established that people who tend to have such experiences are more subjectto the influence of misinformation (Loftus, 2011). One of the commonly applied methodsin police interrogations that utilizes the previously noted Reid technique is the feedingof erroneous information to the subject being questioned. People who tend to dissociatemay also tend to be unsure as to whether they actually engaged in some activity or onlythought about doing so, and so they may also be less trusting of their own memories(Loftus, 2011). Consequently, they may be more susceptible to the development of falsememories based on information given them by others, even if that information is nottrue. One can see how this can easily lead to the type of false confession seen in the casereported herein.

The use of relaxation techniques as part of a police questioning session is also sub-ject to serious difficulties. High hypnotizables may readily drift into trance states duringsuch experiences and all of the issues associated with that possibility may then ensue.

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A case in Texas raised the question of whether the use of "progressive relaxation" con-stituted hypnosis and the courts there concluded that this experience did not (Murray v.State, 1991). Interrogators would, nevertheless, be well advised to avoid the use of suchseemingly benign procedures.

Finally, in the case described herein, video recording was conducted only during thevery last portion of a many-hour long interrogation. It has been widely recognized thatboth prosecution and defense stand much to gain by arranging for accurate video record-ing of the entire period during which a suspect is being questioned by investigators(Kassin et al., 2010). Recording of sessions can be useful in determining the extent towhich coercion was involved in the interrogation and thereby provide a more sound basisfor evaluating defense claims of undue pressure having been applied to a subject.

Specific aspects of recording methodology have been examined and these have beendemonstrated to have had a substantial effect on the way in which such recorded materialis perceived and interpreted. As a result, a comprehensive set of policies which wouldmaximize the utility of video recording in forensic settings has been proposed (Lassiter,2010). Obviously, careful application of such guidelines would also be of benefit inascertaining whether or not hypnotic phenomena played a role in any confession thatemerged during or subsequent to an interrogation session.

The methodology that has been recommended for use in the conduct of hypnotic inter-views in a forensic context provides for helpful safeguards against any undue influencebeing brought to bear on a hypnotic subject. By the stipulation that the entire event bevideo-recorded a detailed record of the full proceeding is made available. This recordcan subsequently be examined for any indication that the subject's reports might havebeen distorted, for example, by information provided by the interviewer and which couldhave created false memories in the subject or resulted in other types of inaccurate reports.A similar set of safeguards would certainly be appropriate to be used, therefore, in anysituation in which there is an effort at inducing "relaxation" experiences with someonewho is undergoing police interrogation.

The issues raised by this case appear to be of sufficient import that attention deservesto be paid to the possibility of miscarriages of justice that could result from unawarenessof the role that hypnotic phenomena can play in the interrogation of criminal suspects.Reducing the potential for false confessions would obviously be to the advantage ofprosecutors charged with the heavy responsibility for bringing perpetrators to justice aswell as of critical significance to defense attorneys for whom protection of their client'srights is a fundamental obligation.

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