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A suspect says, "Show me what you have on me"

The suspect is searching for information to determine what the interrogator knows. In addition he is testing the confidence of the interrogator in his guilt. Since the general strategy is to not reveal what is known about the case to the suspect, the interrogator has only limited choices to choose from.

1) I am not going to show you any thing that we have at this point. If the interrogator responds in this way the suspect is then likely to believe that there is no evidence that can establish his guilt or that the case against him is weak. In most cases, the suspect's resistance will increase because he believes there is minimal evidence of his guilt.

2) All right let me show you what we have. This reply brings us back to the first question discussed in this chapter about presenting the evidence at the onset of the interrogation.

3) The reason that we don't show our evidence is not to try and trick anyone, but rather because we have a very difficult question to answer. That question is not, who did it?, that has been established by the investigation, but rather "Is he shooting straight with us?" When we say, "yes," then the real difficult question becomes, "How do you know?" The answer is, "He told us things that we knew confirming our investigation and that he was being truthful. So we can also believe him when he says that the money went for bills or it wasn't his idea."

The final reply to the suspect is the best because it gives the suspect no additional information, while offering a reason for not revealing the evidence that benefits the suspect. The investigator can establish the suspect's truthfulness and put him in a positive light by showing his cooperation and by inference that other things the suspect might say are true as well.




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