Free Philip Vance!

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/03/07/the-seismic-change-in-police-interrogations

"You may have never heard of the Reid technique, but chances are you know how it works. For more than half a century, it has been the go-to police interrogation method for squeezing confessions out of suspects. Its tropes are familiar from any cop show: the claustrophobic room, the repeated accusations of guilt, the presentation of evidence — real or invented — and the slow build-up of pressure that makes admitting a crime seem like the easiest way out."

The Reid interrogation method was widely used by law enforcement agencies in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and throughout the United States from the 1970’s through the early 2010s. It was the dominant, standard training for police in that era. The Reid Method is a structured, nine-step police interrogation technique designed to elicit confessions by breaking down suspect resistance through psychological manipulation, theme development, and maximizing/minimizing tactics. It involves direct accusation, offering justifications, and using alternative questions that assume guilt to secure admissions. Police are moving away from the Reid technique due to its high risk of eliciting false confessions through coercive confrontational tactics, which studies have linked to numerous wrongful convictions. 

“But the advent of DNA evidence and advocacy by the Innocence Project in the 1990s showed that about one-third of exonerations involve confessions, once believed to be an absolute sign of guilt. Academics have theories why someone would falsely confess to a crime, including having a mental disability, being interviewed without a lawyer or parent in the room, or suffering through hours or days in jail before questioning.

But the most common factor is the Reid method and its imitators, experts say, since it can create confirmation bias in the minds of investigators while overwhelming a suspect to such an extent that the truth no longer seems like the best option.”