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The British Journal of Psychiatry 174: 455-459 (1999)
© 1999 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

Unreliable admissions to homicide. A case of misdiagnosis of amnesia and misuse of abreaction technique

GH Gudjonsson, MD Kopelman and JA MacKeith
Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London.

BACKGROUND: The past decade has witnessed a recognition that unsafe criminal convictions may be occasioned by unreliable confessions. AIMS: To present a case which illustrates the dangers of using abreaction interview techniques in a legal context and demonstrate the relevance of the memory distrust syndrome to an unsafe confession to murder. METHOD: We under took a detailed assessment of a person appealing against his original murder conviction, 'the appellant', and a careful scrutiny of all the relevant papers in the case. RESULTS: The appellant served 25 years in prison before his conviction was quashed as 'unsafe' on the basis of fresh psychological and psychiatric evidence. CONCLUSIONS: Amnesia for an offence had been misdiagnosed, and the use of repeated abreaction interviews had further confused both the appellant and the original court. At the Appeal Court, the advice was that the man had experienced a form of source amnesia which resulted in an unreliable confession.


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Copyright © 1999 The Royal College of Psychiatrists.