Over the years we have received a number of emails that have stated essentially the following:

I am an investigator with the (agency name). A few years ago a coworker and myself obtained a confession from an individual which was key in their conviction. He has recently filed a motion for post-conviction relief of his sentence due to ineffective counsel by claiming that they did not object to the Reid Technique being utilized. According to an expert hired by the defendant, the expert is claiming that using Reid to solicit confessions is a violation of his rights and a confession using this method should not be admitted as evidence because it is unduly coercive. They further argue that as of current, the only real use of the Reid method is to teach how to obtain false confessions. I would very much appreciate any assistance with defending your interview method to keep the defendant in custody as well as to protect your company’s reputation.

In response to these types of inquiries, and in the event that in your case you face a similar situation in which the defendant is using a "false confession expert" to challenge your interrogation process and the validity of the defendant's incriminating statement, we recommend that you (and your prosecutor) review the following entries on our website: (click on the article title to read the information)

Added June 27, 2024 -

Richard Leo's Boilerplate Statement Regarding Police Interrogation Practices

• The Disingenuous Testimony from Social Psychologists About the Reid Technique
• A General Outline of Richard Leo's Testimony on False Confession Issues and Reid's Responses
• What Do False Confession Experts Say in Their Reports?
• What False Confession Experts Say About the Reid Technique and Our Responses
• Clarifying Misrepresentations About Interrogation Techniques (updated May 2023)
• The Truth About the Research Social Psychologists Use as the Basis for Testimony Regarding False and/or Coerced Confessions
• Principles of Practice: How to Conduct Proper Investigative Interviews and Interrogations
• False Confessions: The Issues to be Considered
• What Questions Should be Asked to Determine the Voluntariness and Validity of a Subject’s Confession?

and finally, since these “false confession experts” oftentimes misrepresent what the Reid Technique is……

• A Description of The Reid Technique
• Don't Be Fooled - They use the core elements of the Reid Technique