Skye A. Woestehoff

Coastal Carolina University | CCU

The last two decades of research on interrogation were spurred, in large part, by the specter of false confessions and the resulting miscarriages of justice. More recently, interest in the topic has been fueled by the need for developing evidence-based methods that improve the collection of diagnostic confession evidence and accurate intelligence f...

Research on jurors’ perceptions of confession evidence suggests that jurors may not be sensitive to factors that can influence the reliability of a confession. Jurors’ decisions tend not to be influenced by situational pressures to confess, which suggests that jurors commit the correspondence bias when evaluating a confession. One method to potenti...

On July 8, 1997, a woman named Michelle Bosko was raped and murder. The evidence suggested a single perpetrator, and the police soon turned their attention her neighbor, Danial Williams. After an overnight interrogation, Danial confessed to the crime. Several months later, however, the DNA excluded him as the rapist. The police subsequently identif...

Confessions represent one of the most influential types of evidence, and research has shown that mock jurors often fail to dismiss unreliable confession evidence. However, recent studies suggest that jurors might believe in the false confession phenomenon more than they once did. One possible reason for this could be increased publicity regarding f...

Despite growing interest in intelligence interviewing, there is little empirical research directly addressing interrogations conducted with the goal of collecting human intelligence (HUMINT). The current study used an experimental intelligence-gathering paradigm to test the efficacy of two clusters of emotion-based interrogation approaches from the...

Objective: In guilty plea hearings, judges must determine whether defendants' plea decisions were made knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily. Little is known, however, about how plea hearings unfold, especially in juvenile court, where hearings are generally closed to the public. In this study, we had the unique opportunity to systematically o...

Since the majority of criminal cases end in a guilty pleas, there is growing research on issues related to the plea process, including ways in which the court determines the validity of guilty pleas. Ideally, plea validity evaluations would be consistent across courts and jurisdictions. However, prior research on felony plea hearings suggests that...

Alcohol-intoxicated suspects’ confessions are admissible in U.S. courts; however, it is unknown how jurors evaluate such confessions. Study 1 assessed potential jurors’ perceptions of intoxication in interrogative contexts. Many respondents were unaware that questioning intoxicated suspects and presenting subsequent confessions in court are legal,...

Criminal and juvenile court cases are often resolved through plea bargaining. Although the courts have decreed that plea decisions must be made knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily, little is known about legal professionals’ broader perceptions of defendants’ engagement in the plea process; in other words, professionals’ views of whether defen...

Confession evidence is exceptionally strong (e.g., Kassin & Neumann, 1997); thus, understanding whether juror characteristics influence their perceptions of confession evidence is crucial to legal players’ trial strategies. Several past studies have found no significant correlations between certain juror demographics/personal beliefs (e.g., race/et...

Triers of fact evaluated trial materials involving disputed confessions, false-evidence ploys during interrogation, and expert testimony. In two experiments, we assessed predeliberation and postdeliberation trial decisions as well as individual jurors’ perceptions, deliberating juries’ verdicts, and sitting judges’ perceptions and trial decisions....

From PsycCritiques (2017): Review of 2016 documentary "Suited", which profiles a tailor that caters to transgendered and gender non-conforming individuals.