American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 55: 56--67,2012 Copyright American Society of Clinical Hypnosis ISSN: 0002-9157 print 12160-0562

2 online DOl: 10,1080/00029157,2012,684161

A Case of a False Confession After an Inadvertent Hypnotic Induction

Robert H. Goldstein
University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, USA

This article presents the case of a highly hypnotizable 28-year-old man who gave a false confession under police interrogation following an unintended hypnotic induction, but who was exonerated years later on the basis of DNA evidence, The author proposes that assessment of possible high hypnotizability 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 definitive as it was unexpected. It read, in part, " , .. In 1992 you testified at Sterling's trial that 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 person that Sterling's lawyer claimed actually committed the crime has now confessed ... " This surprising communication was signed by the attorney who had spearheaded the years-long effort to reverse the guilty- verdict that had been pronounced in a murder case-a verdict which had sent an innocent man to prison for over 18 years. Thus ended a long twisting tale in which determined police investigators, a persistent district attorney, and the power of a confession presented in court had together led to a miscarriage of 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 for some time as a hypnotic consultant to a number of western New York law enforcement agencies. This role generally entailed the use of hypnotic methods aimed at assisting witnesses to crimes in the recall of details which might facilitate investigations of these events. It is because of this experience with hypnosis that I found myself participating in the events to be described herein. While the matter of false confessions has been the subject of extensive study for many years (Conti, 1999; Garrett, 2011; Kassin et al., 2010; Leo, 2009). it has only been with the 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, NY 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 by DNA evidence had given confessions which turned out to be false (Drizin & Leo, 2004). Another compilation of DNA-exonerated cases puts the percentage of false confessions cases in that group at closer to 25% (Innocence Project, 2010). Similarly, the role of hypnosis in the legal system has a long history and has been the subject of much controversy (Schefiin & Shapiro, 1989). A case of a false confession involving the hypnotic elicitation 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 who is described as having been induced into a dissociative state followed by suggestion during a police interrogation (Of she, 1992). There do not, however, appear to be any cases reported in the recent literature in which hypnotic phenomena, among other factors, resulted in a false confession, the falsity of which was subsequently substantiated by DNA evidence. In November 1988, the dead body of a 74-year-old woman was found alongside a path next to an abandoned railroad track in one of the suburban towns northwest of Rochester, New York. She had been beaten to death with a BB gun and shot with two BBs from the gun. She had no apparent enemies and there were no obvious suspects, but one name soon came to the attention of the members of the Monroe County Sheriff's Office who were conducting the investigation. A 25-year-old man, Frank Sterling, who had grown up near the abandoned railroad tracks, fell under suspicion, in great measure because his brother was then serving time in prison for an attempted rape some three years earlier of the very same woman who now had become a murder victim. Even though 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 day of the murder. There were no pieces of physical evidence that connected Frank to the killing and so he was not arrested. As time went on, other leads evaporated and the trail went cold. A local boy was later reported to have been boasting to friends that he had killed an area woman, as did several other town teen-agers, but his story was subsequently dismissed by the investigators after he recanted the story. Some years later, he was given two polygraph tests, one of which had yielded indeterminate results and another which he was reported to have passed. Over the next few years, detectives interviewed Sterling several more times without further action being taken. In July 1991, yet another interrogation took place shortly after Sterling, now 28, returned from an extended two-day-long truck driving shift. As part of a review of previously interviewed persons of interest in the murder case, Sterling was interrogated by a team of detectives in an overnight session that included a polygraph exam. During this exam, which was apparently being used as a ruse in an effort to extract a confession, one of the investigators reportedly confronted Sterling with a fabricated story that Sterling's imprisoned brother had told other inmates that one of his brothers had 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 he continued to maintain his innocence. After over 5 hours of questioning, Sterling told of feeling very anxious and asked if he could be hypnotized to prove his non-involvement and also to help reduce his increasing anxiety level. (As will be noted, Sterling was already quite familiar with what were essentially self-hypnotic techniques for relaxing and for reducing stress.) One of the investigators suggested that he didn't know how to conduct hypnosis, but that he could provide him with a "relaxation technique." Precisely what happened during the next period 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's own report, he was instructed to "lie down, put your feet up on a chair, take four deep breaths and relax." Having done so, Sterling's hand was held by one of the detectives and 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 this experience 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 described the image of encountering the victim, talking with her, feeling angry and then seeing her dead body dressed in specific clothing, and feeling happy. Almost immediately after that, 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, during which the detectives alternately expressed sympathy and support for Sterling, insisted that he had in fact committed the murder, showed him photos of the murder scene to refresh his memory, suggested that he had good reason to be unhappy with the victim and 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, urging him to tell the truth in order to get it off his chest, Sterling, now trembling and exhausted after 12 hours of questioning and more than 30 hours without sleep, blurted out, ''1 did it ... I need help!" About an hour later, Sterling agreed to give a video-recorded statement in which he responded to questions by admitting to the commission of the crime. When asked "You did this, right?" he replied "From what my memory tells me, yes." and further described details of the murder scene and the events that supposedly took place there. The resulting video tape, the only portion of the interrogation which was recorded, became, then, the basis of the case against Sterling. Even though he subsequently denied the validity of that statement, he was arrested, indicted, and set for trial. Because of the ambiguity surrounding the "relaxation procedure," I was contacted by the public defender assigned to him, Thomas Kidera, and asked to review the information available regarding that experience and to interview and evaluate Sterling. Accordingly, I met with him in October 1991 for an approximately three-hour-long video-recorded session, during which time I asked him to describe in detail the circumstances of his interrogation, the "relaxation procedure" and his subsequent video-taped confession.

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I also administered the Hypnotic Induction Profile (HIP; Spiegel & Spiegel, 1978), the Barber Suggestibility Scale and the Creative Imagination Scale (Barber & Wilson, 1978). On the HIP, his responses placed him at the 90th percentile with respect to hypnotic responsiveness, on the Barber Scale his score put him between the 91st and 98th percentile and on the Creative Imagination Scale he placed at the 98th percentile. Based on these results, it seemed clear that Sterling was someone who was highly likely to be a ready hypnotic responder. In addition, I requested Sterling to demonstrate the method he had been using for stress reduction in which he would "go on a trip" by himself. I had been made aware of this latter issue in a prior interview with a woman-friend of Sterling's who described how she had taught him to use this technique after she herself had been taught it by an acquaintance. Both this friend and Sterling reported that this was something they had done together repeatedly for over five years and which he himself had employed frequently to relieve stress and when taking a rest period during his long-haul truck driving 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 practiced this together, the friend would hold his hand, or caress his forehead while urging him to develop mental images in his mind of being in a place in which he would like to imagine himself as being. She reported that when she talked to him in this way, he would appear to "fall asleep" but she would nevertheless be able to speak to and communicate with him during such a session, which would last from 10 to 45 minutes or longer. He could then be "aroused" by her calling his name sharply or giving him some other kind of signal, as a result of which he would then "awaken." She described and he independently confirmed the fact that upon waking he would have experienced a loss of subjective time sense 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 described it. In response to my request that he show me what he did to "go on a trip," he leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, slowly rubbed his forehead, appeared to relax and gave every indication of someone who had slipped into an hypnotic state, in which he remained for 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 conclusion of this, when asked to open his eyes and become fully alert he quickly returned to his usual state. In describing his typical "going on a trip" relaxing experience, Sterling reported that he 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," and would 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 interrogation 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 that the "relaxation procedure" used during the police interrogation had essentially replicated the self-hypnotic process with which Sterling had been quite familiar. In a court hearing on the admissibility of the video-taped confession, I testified that, in my opinion, the experience that evening had been one of self-hypnosis produced by Sterling, a person of high hypnotizability and quite experienced with and comfortable with the procedure employed by the questioners. Even though they may not have intended to utilize any formal hypnotic methods, it was my further opinion they very likely had inadvertently triggered a hypnotic experience on the part of the defendant. This having occurred, then serious questions could be raised as to the voluntariness and the admissibility of the confession. The opinion I expressed did not, however, go unchallenged. The prosecution had engaged a well-known and highly regarded hypnotic clinician and author, Herbert Spiegel, M.D . to review the data I had collected and to review the tape of my evaluation of Sterling. Spiegel also spent approximately 10 minutes with Sterling, administered the HIP and Spiegel's personality test that is designed to assess aspects of an individual's cognitive style (Spiegel & Spiegel, 1978). Based on this data, Spiegel testified at the subsequent hearing that Sterling demonstrated a "Dionysian" personality style in that he was the type of individual who tended to slip into and out of altered states of consciousness spontaneously 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 had given the test, indicated that Sterling was highly hypnotizable. The major point of difference in our testimony was that Spiegel argued that since there was no actual statement made to Sterling that hypnosis was going to be used (and that it was specifically stated that it would not be, but that a "relaxation" technique was to be used instead) then he would not conclude that it was possible for Sterling to have developed an hypnotic state during the interrogation. The definition of hypnosis as presented by Division 30 of the American Psychological Association-the Society of Psychological Hypnosis-notes that "while some think that it is not necessary to use the word 'hypnosis' as part of the hypnotic induction, others view it as essential" (APA, 2012). The opinion rendered by the judge accepted Spiegel's argument and the issue of whether a hypnotic element played a role in Sterling's confession did not enter into the weight given to the confession when the case went to trial. A guilty verdict was reached by the jury, substantially on the basis of this confession, and Sterling was sentenced to a term of 25 years to life. In the years that followed, multiple appeals were filed, generally on the basis of rumors concerning the young man who had boasted of being a killer. Courts repeatedly rejected those appeals and considered the evidence against the young man to be insufficient grounds for overturning Sterling's conviction. The weight of the confession more than out -balanced any other evidence presented.

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Not quite 2 years after Sterling was sent to prison, the Rochester community was shocked by the disappearance of a 4-year-old girl who was last seen playing outside the apartment in which she lived with her mother. Despite intense searches, no trace of her was found. Several months after the girl vanished, I was asked by the Monroe County Sheriff's Office to assist them by conducting a hypnotic interview with her mother in the hope that she might be helped to recall some further details of the events of the day on which she had last seen her daughter. By an odd coincidence, she was accompanied to my office by a member of the Sheriff's office who turned out to be one of the investigators who had interrogated Sterling on the night he had been brought in for intensive questioning 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 memory enhancement session with the mother went off without major incident and, while she was 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 over two years. Then, unexpectedly, a married young man shared with his wife a secret he had held for some time-that he had been the killer of the little girl. She contacted the Sheriff's Office with this information and they promptly arrested the husband. He was a 25-year-old man named Mark Christie, who quickly confessed to the murder and led investigators 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 individual who, at 16, had boasted to his friends of having killed the elderly woman for whose death Sterling was then in prison. Christie eventually agreed to a guilty plea in the little girl's murder and was sentenced to 25 years to life, but now denied his involvement in the earlier murder. Given this development, over the next several years Sterling's new attorney, Donald Thompson, filed multiple appeals on Sterling's behalf based on Christie's murder conviction and on his earlier stories about having killed a woman, but courts consistently declined to accept this turn of events as a basis for voiding Sterling's conviction. His confession continued to represent an insurmountable obstacle which made the appeals unsuccessful. 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 from the clothing of the older woman and which, on the basis of some newer scientific methodologies, resulted in a positive match with Christie's DNA. When confronted with this 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 aside and he was released from prison. Finally, in September 2011, Christie entered a guilty plea to second degree murder in the case of the murdered woman. Newspapers now speculated that had attention not been focused so intently and singularly 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 closely looked into. Had this occurred at the time of the first murder, then the subsequent murder of 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 police efforts to obtain a confession from a suspect. The essential features of the so-called Reid technique (Inbau, Reid, Buckley, & Jayne, 2001), a method which has been widely adopted by police investigators, has been summarized as:
First, investigators are advised to isolate the suspect in a small private room, which increases his or her anxiety and incentive to escape. A nine-step process then ensues in which an interrogator employs both positive and negative incentives. On one hand, the interrogator confronts the suspect with accusations of guilt, assertions that may be bolstered by evidence, real or manufactured, and refuses to accept alibis or denials. On the other hand, the interrogator offers sympathy and moral justification, introducing "themes" that minimize the crime and lead suspects to see confession as an expedient means to escape. (Kassin et al., 2010)

These themes consist of theories proposed by the investigators as to how and why the crime was committed. The methods used in Sterling's case seem to follow this pattern quite closely. Gudjonsson (2010) recently reviewed studies on personal characteristics which have been found to be relevant to an individual's decision to confess falsely. Such traits as suggestibility and compliance as well as various aspects of psychopathology and personality disorder have been linked to this propensity. Kassin has also suggested that innocence itself may put those not guilty of a crime at greater risk insofar as they may believe that the truth will come out and that their innocence will be revealed in later proceedings. He proposes that such persons may have "a naive faith in the power of innocence to set them free" (Kassin, 2005). In this case, it may be that some combination of these contextual, personal, and situational factors may have entered into the elicitation of the confession that was ultimately demonstrated to be false. And here specifically, it would also appear that a highly hypnotically responsive individual exposed to an informal hypnotic induction very likely experienced a hypnotic alteration of consciousness which played a significant role in his confession. The basic elements of the "relaxation technique" as introduced and carried out by the investigators corresponded to Sterling's long-practiced "going on a trip" in any number of fundamental ways, and both of these procedures contained numerous components of hypnotic 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 enhanced attention to internal, as opposed to external, cues; A resulting experience of a "dream-like state" without actual loss of consciousness enhanced vividness of mental imagery; An increased ability to experience imaginal events as having an intensely real quality; 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 other sensory modalities. I would venture that if one were to seek to identify a pattern of features descriptive of most hypnotic or self-hypnotic methods, the preceding list would likely be found to be acceptable to most experienced hypnotic clinicians. Accordingly, the likelihood of unintentionally evoking a hypnotic event could be greatly increased if police interrogators utilize the kind of methodology for "relaxing" a subject in the way that was done in this case. Thus, on the basis of this case, one can add a subject's experience with self-hypnotic techniques-and the likelihood that police interrogators could unwittingly re-evoke such an experience-to the list of potentially predisposing factors that could, and in this instance did, lead to a false confession and, arguably, to the subsequent and possibly avoidable death of a young child.

Discussion While cases of exactly this sort, in which a hypnotically experienced suspect was inadvertently led to develop a hypnotic experience during an interrogation, have not previously been reported in the literature, it is unlikely that this was a truly singular event. The ability to experience hypnosis is widely distributed in the population and it is generally estimated that at least 10% of unselected individuals are likely to be "high hypnotizables." It is also widely recognized that many individuals develop spontaneous trances under a variety of circumstances, and that such persons may be even more predisposed to do so under stressful conditions. An authoritative set of guidelines for the use of hypnosis in forensic and clinical settings advises that "If someone is highly hypnotizable, the absence of an induction ceremony does not mean that spontaneous trances have not taken place (e.g., Frankel, 1975), for example, during interrogation, interviews, or through the use of imagery techniques that elicit hypnotic responses, even though a clinician 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 benefit of a formal induction ceremony" and that "It takes relatively little external pressure to elicit a spontaneous trance" (Spiegel & Spiegel. 1978). And there is no doubt that being subjected to a police interrogation is one of life's more stressful situations. Thus, for persons who are highly responsive to hypnosis, the emergence of a trance state under police interrogation remains a significant possibility. And so, the presence of a situation in which there is a potentially hypnosis-inducing state of high stress and extreme fatigue together with an markedly elevated trait of hypnotizablility can combine to make the emergence of an hypnotic response particularly likely. It is this exact combination of factors which appears to have been operating in this case and which apparently resulted in an initial confabulation or false memory. The jury's guilty verdict, it will be recalled, was based substantially on their viewing of the video tape of that confabulated memory report. As described in the case reported here, interrogators, using a frequently employed tactic, gave false information to the subject under investigation. This maneuver carries special dangers for the high hypnotic responder individual. A summary of research dealing with pseudo-memories that have been introduced in a hypnotic setting by conveying false information to a subject indicates that individuals higher in hypnotizability are more likely 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 concludes that "the level of susceptibility is related more positively to the phenomenon of memory distortion than other parameters" and that this may perhaps be attributed to differences in information processing styles (McConkey & Sheehan, 1995, p. 205). And yet a third review of research on hypnotizable subjects notes that such individuals "who can picture 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 in error" (Frankel & Covino, 1997, p. 356). Therefore, it can reasonably be argued that any assessment of the circumstances surrounding a confession elicited during interrogation should include an evaluation of the subject's hypnotic capacity. Such information may be highly relevant to any subsequent legal proceedings in which the voluntariness or validity of a confession might be under review. The question then arises as to how this capacity can best be evaluated. A number of formal techniques are available for this purpose and have been widely researched and validated. Some of these, such as the well standardized Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale Form C (Weitzenhoffer & Hilgard, 1962) are rather extensive and time-consuming and are probably best suited to rigorous research settings. A wide variety of more informal 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 relative ease 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 of behaviors associated with hypnotic responsivity. It needs to be stressed that the administration of these hypnotic assessment procedures 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 diminish their accuracy. Accordingly, it would be best for them to be applied by clinically sophisticated psychologists, social workers, or other mental health professionals who have had an opportunity to become familiar with these specific instruments as well as with hypnotic phenomena in general. Given the substantial number of confessions that police obtain from subjects of interrogations, it would be impractical even to consider assessing hypnotic capacity in such a huge population. There may well, however, be a subset of individuals for whom this type of assessment would be of special relevance. Extrapolating from this case, I would suggest that hypnotic assessment be considered for cases in which the subject recants a previously given confession, in which there is minimal independent corroborating evidence to support the facts recounted in the recanted confession and in which the subject reports or has been described as having had prior opportunities to become familiar with techniques for developing non-drug-related methods for evoking altered states of consciousness. A final criterion for identifying potential situations for assessment of hypnotic capacity would be those circumstances in which interrogators had made some effort to "relax" the person being interrogated. The identification of high hypnotic capacity in persons being interrogated is especially relevant in view of the relationship that has been noted between high hypnotic responsivity and a tendency toward the development of dissociative experiences (Bowers, 1976). Research has established that people who tend to have such experiences are more subject to the influence of misinformation (Loftus, 2011). One of the commonly applied methods in police interrogations that utilizes the previously noted Reid technique is the feeding of erroneous information to the subject being questioned. People who tend to dissociate may also tend to be unsure as to whether they actually engaged in some activity or only thought 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 false memories based on information given them by others, even if that information is not true. One can see how this can easily lead to the type of false confession seen in the case reported herein. The use of relaxation techniques as part of a police questioning session is also subject to serious difficulties. High hypnotizables may readily drift into trance states during such 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" constituted 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 such seemingly benign procedures. Finally, in the case described herein, video recording was conducted only during the very last portion of a many-hour long interrogation. It has been widely recognized that both prosecution and defense stand much to gain by arranging for accurate video recording 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 to which coercion was involved in the interrogation and thereby provide a more sound basis for evaluating defense claims of undue pressure having been applied to a subject. Specific aspects of recording methodology have been examined and these have been demonstrated to have had a substantial effect on the way in which such recorded material is perceived and interpreted. As a result, a comprehensive set of policies which would maximize the utility of video recording in forensic settings has been proposed (Lassiter, 2010). Obviously, careful application of such guidelines would also be of benefit in ascertaining whether or not hypnotic phenomena played a role in any confession that emerged during or subsequent to an interrogation session. The methodology that has been recommended for use in the conduct of hypnotic interviews in a forensic context provides for helpful safeguards against any undue influence being brought to bear on a hypnotic subject. By the stipulation that the entire event be video-recorded a detailed record of the full proceeding is made available. This record can subsequently be examined for any indication that the subject's reports might have been distorted, for example, by information provided by the interviewer and which could have 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 any situation in which there is an effort at inducing "relaxation" experiences with someone who is undergoing police interrogation. The issues raised by this case appear to be of sufficient import that attention deserves to be paid to the possibility of miscarriages of justice that could result from unawareness of 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 of prosecutors charged with the heavy responsibility for bringing perpetrators to justice as well as of critical significance to defense attorneys for whom protection of their client's rights is a fundamental obligation.

References
American Psychological Association (APA). (2012). Division 30. Retrieved from www.apa. org/Div30 Barabasz, A., & Watkins, 1. G. (2005). Hypnotherapeutic techniques 2nd ed., New York, NY: BrunnerRutledge.

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Barber, T. X, & Wilson, S. C. (1978). The Barber Suggestibility Scale and the Creative Imagination Scale: Experimental and Clinical Applications. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 21(2-3), 84-96. Bowers, K S. (1976). Hypnosis for the seriously curious, Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole. Conti, R. (1999). The psychology of false confessions. The Journal of Credibility Assessment and Witness Psychology, 9(2), 14-36. Coons, P. (1998). Misuse of forensic hypnosis: A hypnotically elicited false confession with the apparent creation of a multiple personality. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 36, 1-11. Drizen, S. A., & Leo, R. A. (2004). The problem offalse confessions in the post-DNA world North Carolina Law Review, 82, 891-1007. Frankel, F. H. (1975). Physical symptoms and marked hypnotizability. International Journal of Clinical & Experimental Hypnosis, 23(4), 227-233. Frankel, F. H., & Covino, N. A. (1997). Hypnosis and hypnotherapy. In P. S. Appelbaum, L. A. Uyehara, & M. R. Eiin, Eds. Trauma and memory. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Garrett, B. (2011). Convicting the innocent: Where criminal prosecutions go wrong. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gudjonsson, G. H. (2010). Psychological vulnerabilities during police interviews: Why are they important? Legal and Criminological Psychology, 15, 161-175. Hammond, D. c., Garver, R. B., Mutter, C. B., Crasilneck, H. B., Frischholz, E., Gravitz, M. A., ... Wester, W. (1995). Clinical hypnosis and memory: Guidelines for clinicians and for forensic hypnosis. Bloomingdale, IL: American Society of Clinical Hypnosis Press. Inbau, F. E., Reid, J. E., Buckley, J. P., & Jayne, B. C. (2001). Criminal interrogation and confessions, 4th ed. Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen. Innocence Project. (2010). Retrieved from www.innocenceproject.org Kassin, S. M. (2005). On the psychology of confessions: Does innocence put innocents at risk? American Psychologist, 60, 215-228. Kassin, S. M., Drizin, S. A., Grisso, T., Gudjonsson, G., Leo, R. A., & Redlich, A. D. (2010). Police-induced confessions: Risk factors and recommendations. Law and Human Behavior, 34(3), 49-52. Lassiter, G. D. (2010). Psychological science and sound public policy: Video recording of custodial interrogations. American Psychologist, 65, 779. Leo, R. A. (2009). False confessions: Causes, consequences and implications. Journal of American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 37(3), 332-343. Loftus, E. F. (2011). Intelligence Gathering Post-9 /11. American Psychologist, 66, 532-541. McConkey, K. M., & Sheehan, P. W. (1995). Hypnosis, memory and behavior in criminal investigation. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Murray v. State. (1991). 804 S.W. 2D 279 (Tex.App.). Of she, R. J. (1992). Inadvertent hypnosis during interrogation: False confession due to dissociative state: Mis-identified multiple personality and the satanic cult hypothesis. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 40,125-156. Rochester Democrat & Chronicle. (2010, April 12). Killer denies role in Hilton death. p. 1A. Scheflin, A. w., & Shapiro, J. L. (1989). Trance on trial, New York, NY: Guilford Press. Spiegel, H. (1974). The grade 5 syndrome: The highly hypnotizable person. International Journal of Clinical & Experimental Hypnosis, 22, 303-319. Spiegel, H. (1980). Hypnosis and evidence: Help or hindrance? Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 347,73-85. Spiegel, H., & Spiegel, D. (1978). Trance and treatment: Clinical uses of hypnosis. New York, NY: International Universities Press. Weitzenhoffer, A., & Hilgard, E. (1962). Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale: Form C . Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.