The Issue of Misclassification

Critics of the Reid Technique suggest that investigators who utilize the Reid interview process, the Behavior Analysis Interview (BAI), oftentimes interrogate innocent subjects because they erroneously evaluate the subject’s verbal and nonverbal behaviors that they exhibited during the interview as indications of deception. They refer to this erroneous assessment of the subject’s guilt as misclassification.

It should be noted that we teach investigators to use the verbal and nonverbal behavior of a subject in the interview as a guide during the interview and not as the sole determining factor to assess truth and deception. For example, if in a child abuse investigation, the interviewer asks about a specific action at a specific time, e.g., “How did you discipline Marty yesterday when he broke the lamp?” and the subject responds by saying, “Usually when Marty misbehaves, we send him to his room for a time out," the subject inserted a ‘qualifier’ – the word ‘usually’ at the beginning of their response, thereby not answering the question the investigator asked. As a result of this behavior, the investigator will ask a follow-up question. “I understand that is what you usually do, is that what you did yesterday?” Subject response, “Now that I think about it, I’m not sure what I did.” Deceptive subjects may insert a qualifier into a response to avoid direct deception, thereby causing less anxiety. The observation of the investigator will trigger the follow-up question, which may reveal additional information.

The primary consideration in evaluating a subject’s possible involvement in the commission of a crime using the Reid Technique is not the verbal or nonverbal behaviors they exhibited during the investigative interview, but whether the case facts and evidence support the subject’s statement or contradict their statement. Consider the following three case examples.

Case Example One

A bank teller (we will call her Susan) incurred a $1,500 shortage in her cash drawer. In describing the sequence of events, Susan stated that on the day in question, she was working as the drive-up window teller. She said that “the way things were going, I was obtaining more large bills than I was passing out (referring to her transactions). So not to keep an overabundance of large bills in my drawer I took $1,500 – 11 $100 bills and 8 $50 bills – and went over to sell them back to the vault but Mary was on the phone, so while I was waiting for her to finish the call I saw that a customer had driven up to the window and I did not want to keep them waiting so I went back to the window and put the $1,500 in a side drawer in my work area. We got very busy at that point so it was a few hours before I went to get the $1,500 out of the drawer and when I opened the drawer it was empty, so I assumed that Mary had come over to get it, so I went over to her to get a credit slip for the $1,500 and Mary said that she never got a chance to come over to get the money.”

One of our basic principles in conducting the investigative interview is "do not tell the subject what information we know", but rather, to ask them what happened to see if the information that they provide is consistent with the information that we already have or know. In the above case, the investigator had in his possession the teller tape, which he brought to Susan’s attention later in the interview after she had described to him the above sequence of events:

Investigator: “And at 7:29 you entered the $1,500 transaction to sell.”

Susan: “To sell out, yes.”

I: “Why was it that at the time you bought the $2,000, you just didn’t give her the $1,500 at that time?”

S: “I was wrapping it.”

I: “Ok. Now your first transaction of the day doesn’t occur until 11:35, there’s a 6-minute gap there.”

S: “No that’s 7:35.”

I: “Right, I stand corrected.”

The teller tape reflects and is confirmed by Susan in the above dialogue that she decided to sell the $1,500 back to the vault before she had any customer transactions….contrary to what her original story was. The fact that she lied about the sequence of events was very significant. She subsequently acknowledged that he did steal the missing $1,500.

Case Example Two

In a second example, on a Saturday night, John was found dead in his basement, shot in the head. John worked in real estate and had a home office, which several of his co-workers also utilized on a regular basis. As part of the investigation, we interviewed several of John’s colleagues, including a co-worker we will call Dennis. One of the questions that we asked Dennis was when the last time he had been over to John’s house, either on a social occasion or to work out of the real estate office. Dennis replied that it had been quite a while, at least 4 or 5 weeks.

Unbeknownst to Dennis, the police had canvassed the neighborhood and found a lady who lived caddy corner from John, who was filming her kids playing soccer in the yard that Saturday morning, and in the background, you could see somebody going up to John’s front door and then entering the home at about 10:00 am that morning. When the film was enhanced, it was Dennis going into John’s house the day of the murder. The fact that Dennis lied about the last time he had been to John’s house was incredibly important and certainly outweighed any verbal or nonverbal behaviors that he exhibited during the interview.

Case Example Three

In a third example, a woman was given a prescription by her dentist for Percodan. When she gave the pharmacist the prescription, he noticed it was written for 40 tablets. Questioning the number of tablets, he called the dentist’s office to confirm the accuracy of the prescription. The office advised him that the prescription was written for 10 tablets, not 40, suggesting that the patient had changed the number on the prescription, which the patient denied.

Several days later, we interviewed the patient, whom we will call Margaret. During the interview, Margaret was adamant that she did not change the prescription and said that the dentist’s office obviously made a mistake when they wrote the prescription. As Margaret related the sequence of events, she said that when she went to the pharmacy she handed the prescription to the pharmacist, and that “he noticed that it had been changed.” This statement was not consistent with Margaret's story that the dentist’s office made a mistake when they wrote the prescription – if her statement was accurate, then there was no change made to the prescription at anytime, so her reference to the fact that the pharmacist “noticed the change” was a disclosure of what she had done. Margaret subsequently went on to acknowledge that she did change the prescription from 10 tablets to 40 tablets and acknowledged that this was not the first time that she had altered a prescription.

As these three cases illustrate, the essential element to evaluate during an investigative interview is whether or not the case facts and evidence support the subject’s story, and if they do not, the investigator should continue the investigation of the subject.

When critics use the term misclassification, referring to the circumstances in which the investigator misclassifies an innocent subject as guilty based on their verbal and nonverbal behaviors as exhibited during the BAI, they are using as the foundation for this assessment the fact that numerous academic behavioral studies suggest that individuals, including trained investigators, are essentially no better than chance (50/50) at accurately identifying a subject’s truthfulness based on their verbal and nonverbal behaviors during the investigative interview. This is, in fact, what most behavioral studies have found. However, there are numerous problems with the vast majority of these studies.

The Majority of Academic Research Studies Did Not Follow the Established Protocol and Guidelines for the Evaluation of the Subject's Behaviors

The first consideration is that the overwhelming majority of academic research studies are significantly flawed in their design.

For example, many of the academic studies used students as "subjects" who are assigned different roles - some are "guilty" of the crime, such as stealing money from a teacher's desk drawer, and others are "innocent." A number of the students are instructed to lie about their status when they are subsequently interviewed by one of the research staff about their possible involvement in the theft. In reaching their conclusions as to who was a truthful subject and who was a deceptive subject, the evaluators were generally no better than chance at determining the subject's status.

In these type of academic research studies the subjects have low levels of motivation to be believed or to avoid detection… there were no significant consequences if their deception was identified.

Furthermore, in several of the academic research studies, there was no opportunity to ask the subjects follow-up questions after they told the investigator their story. For example, in one study, inmates are on camera describing two different crimes that they committed - one which they actually did commit, and one which they were lying about, that they did not commit. The viewer/investigator is supposed to determine from the inmate’s monologue statement about each crime which was the actual crime that they committed. The evaluators were generally no better than chance in their decisions. In an actual case investigation, after the subject tells their story or offers their explanation for what happened, the investigator would ask a series of follow-up questions to develop additional information and details, during which the deceptive subject's lack of candor may become apparent. In this study, there was no opportunity to ask follow-up questions.

Here are some additional problems with many of the academic studies

• The interviews of the subjects were not conducted by investigators trained in investigative interviewing techniques...there were very few, if any, follow-up questions to probe for additional details
• The studies did not employ the type of structured interview process that is commonly utilized by investigators in the field.
• In the academic studies, there was generally no attempt to establish a behavioral baseline for each subject so as identify changes from their normal behavioral pattern as they answered investigative questions. This is the essential element in any effort to evaluate a subject’s credibility – if we do not know what their normal verbal and nonverbal behavioral patterns are, we are essentially flying blind in any attempt to evaluate credibility.
• Many of the academic research studies were based on the faulty premise that there are specific behavior symptoms that are unique to truth or deception…in fact, there are no behaviors unique to truthfulness or deception.
• In almost all of the academic research studies, there was no consideration given to the various factors that can affect a person’s behavioral responses, such as:

• age
• maturity
• cultural influences
• mental capacity
• emotional and psychological stability
• the subject's physical condition at the time of the interview (drugs, alcohol, medical issues, etc.).

Furthermore, in most academic research studies, the interview is evaluated in a vacuum, whereas in the real world, the investigative interview of a subject takes place in the context of an investigation. For example, by the time the investigator interviews a suspect, they may already have developed information about the subject’s relationship with the victim, their whereabouts at the time of the crime, their financial situation, and/or other relevant background information.

In the Reid Technique, we teach that there are several rules that all investigators should follow in the evaluation of a subject's verbal and nonverbal behavior symptoms:

1. Establish the subject's normal behavioral pattern/baseline and then look for changes from that norm or baseline.
2. Read all behavioral responses across all three channels of communication: verbal, paralinguistic, and nonverbal
3. Read behavioral clusters - the overall behavioral pattern - not a single, isolated observation
4. Consider timing and consistency for all nonverbal responses
5. Always evaluate behavior symptoms in conjunction with the case evidence and facts
6. Always evaluate the potential impact of possible factors, such as the subject’s mental capacity, psychological stability, maturity, culture, and physical well-being at the time of the interview, on their behavior symptoms

If these rules are followed, a subject’s verbal and nonverbal behaviors can be helpful in the assessment of a subject's credibility.

Almost without exception, these assessment rules were not followed in the vast majority of the research studies conducted by social psychologists/researchers to evaluate the value of verbal and nonverbal behavior symptoms.

As we stated at the outset of this Tip, the most important element in evaluating a suspect’s potential culpability in committing a crime or an act of wrongdoing is not their behavioral responses, but the content of their statement as compared to the case facts and evidence.

The essential element to evaluate during an investigative interview is whether or not the case facts and evidence support the subject’s story or contradict what the subject has stated.

If,for example, the subject states that he was not at the victim’s home on the day of the murder, but video from the apartment building across the street shows him entering the victim’s home on the day of the murder.....the fact that he lied about that outweighs any verbal, paralinguistic or nonverbal behavioral responses that he might make during the interview.

In conclusion, if the rules outlined above are followed by the investigator during the interview process, then the evaluation of a subject's verbal and nonverbal behaviors, in conjunction with the case facts and evidence, can be a very helpful source of information regarding the subject's credibility.