There was never a thief, there was never a crime, and the supposedly stolen cellphone didn’t exist.

Nevertheless, participants in a psychological study at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology accused another person of stealing a cellphone after being subjected to aggressive and coercive interrogations about the sham crime.

After only a few minutes of forceful questioning, which included threats of academic misconduct for withholding information, five people confidently implicated another person in a theft they did not witness.

The study, accepted by the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, examined the effect of a popular and increasingly controversial style of police interviewing commonly known as the Reid technique. The tactic is most often employed on suspects to elicit incriminating information but can also be used on witnesses.

The research was inspired by the case of Eric Morgan, a Brampton man wrongly accused of murder after Peel Regional Police used Reid-style questioning on witnesses to build a case against him.

Brian Cutler, a UOIT psychology professor and expert in eyewitness testimony and wrongful conviction, developed the study alongside student Danielle Loney to fill an important knowledge gap: while researchers have examined the effect of Reid-style questioning on suspects — some finding it can prompt an innocent person to confess — little is known about how aggressive and threatening questioning affects witness testimony.

Compared with suspects, witnesses may actually be more susceptible to coercive interrogation techniques because there are fewer, if any, consequences for implicating another person.

They may also be driven by a desire to please the interrogator. As the researchers note in their study, “we are often susceptible to the influence of those who seek our compliance.”

“We know that if you trap somebody in there, and persuade them enough, they’ll tell you what they think you want to hear, whether it’s true or not,” Cutler said. “And that’s the real risk.”

Developed by American police officer John Reid in the 1950s, the Reid technique assumes the subject of the interview is guilty or there is a strong likelihood of guilt. The chief purpose of the interview is therefore to extract a confession or incriminating evidence.

The questioning is confrontational and accusatory, meant to convince the person being questioned that to deny responsibility is futile. Often, the investigator says he or she knows the suspect is guilty and hints there is strong evidence proving guilt, even if that is exaggerated or made up.

The Reid manual detailing the technique includes a section on witness interviews, suggesting it can be effective when they are unco-operative with police.

Cutler and Loney’s experiment involved a total of 60 university students, each placed in a room and given math and logic problems to distract them from the real experiment. One member of the research team posed as another participant, meaning two people were in the room completing the logic problems.

In every case, a member of the research team came into the room and distributed the math and logic tests. That person then returned a few minutes later, asking if anyone had seen a cellphone left in the room. No cellphone had been left behind.

Then the fake participant left and the real participant was subjected to questioning about the purported disappearance of the phone.

Thirty of the participants were asked basic questions about the phone after being told it had definitely been in the room and there was reason to believe it was stolen. The participant was directly asked if he or she had taken the phone or had seen the other participant take it. With this style of straightforward questioning, none of the participants implicated the other person in the room.

With the remaining 30 participants, researchers employed Reid-style interrogation tactics, including stating confidently they knew the phone was stolen and “we just need you to describe what happened.”

They sympathized with the participant — saying phrases such as: “I understand you don’t want to get the other participant in trouble” — and then later expressed disbelief if the participant claimed not to have seen anything, asking: “How could you miss it?”

“Part of the script was to actually threaten students that they would be given academic misconduct,” Loney told the Star. “Some participants became very flustered and visibly upset.”

Ultimately, five of the 30 people subjected to Reid-style questioning falsely claimed they witnessed the other person in the room take the cellphone. Two implicated the fake participant verbally, while three did so on a fake misconduct form printed on university letterhead.

“Those who did provide accusations were quite sure,” said Loney.

Though five out of the 30 people is a small number, she and Cutler point out this was a low-stakes scenario compared with a real police interrogation. There, the threats against a witness may include a criminal charge and could therefore prompt a higher percentage of people to cast blame. Additionally, the questioning did not last very long — each experiment was 30 minutes from start to finish — while police interrogations can last for hours.

“The numbers you might get in a real-life situation could be far greater. That’s what we hope to look into further,” Loney said.

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Morgan spent 3½ years in jail after being accused of the murder of Mervyn “Mikey” Spence, who was fatally shot outside a Brampton nightclub in 2006.

Peel police laid a second-degree murder charge against Morgan after using what a judge called “abusive” and “threatening” interview tactics against several eyewitnesses and people providing an alibi.

Superior Court Justice Fletcher Dawson ruled that investigators “manufactured” incriminating evidence against Morgan and made witnesses back away from statements supporting Morgan’s innocence.

In one instance, Morgan’s strongest alibi witness, who was once “100 per cent” sure Morgan was inside the club during the outside shooting, was subjected to an eight-hour “relentless onslaught” of police questioning and threats, Dawson wrote. He became “psychologically broken down” and ultimately said he was no longer certain of Morgan’s whereabouts.

Morgan was found innocent after defence lawyers James Fleming and David Shulman uncovered the extent of the problematic interrogations, which were recorded on videotape.

Loney says she hopes her research will encourage the practice of videotaping witness interviews, prompting police to use noncoercive methods to ensure the statements are accurate.

“We have to be very careful in how we treat witnesses,” she said.

What was asked during the coercive interviews

The 30 experiment participants subjected to the coercive techniques were first told by interviewers that they definitively knew the phone had been stolen from the room — “we just need you to describe what happened.”

The interviewer then encouraged the participant to “do the right thing” — and “helping us figure this out is the right thing to do.”

In an attempt to sympathize with the participant, the interviewer then said they understood if they didn’t want to get the other participant in trouble, but they needed to find out what happened.

If the participant then denied any knowledge of what occurred, the interviewer began expressing incredulity: “I don’t believe you didn’t see anything. How could you miss it?”

The interviewer then provided two guilt-presumptive alternatives, one more morally justifiable than the other: “Are you keeping quiet because you are trying to protect your partner or because you helped?”

Then came the threat: “If you refuse to tell us what happened, I will have no choice but to conclude that you’re hiding information and could be an accessory.”