00:00Detective Chief tells Grand Jury of Third Degree, the Atlanta Constitution, Sunday, June 15, 1913.
00:06Questions put to Lanford indicate that investigation of police methods is being conducted.
00:11Torture era is passed. Chief informs jury. Science and skill now employed by detectives in securing
00:17confessions from criminals, he says. The police Third Degree, which has created such widespread
00:22discussion during the Mary Fagan murder investigation, has been thoroughly explained
00:27to the Grand Jury by Detective Chief Newport A. Lanford, who appeared before that body at its
00:32request. Detective John Black, of headquarters, who has been an active figure in the Fagan case,
00:38is also said to have been quizzed about methods employed by the police and detectives.
00:42He will not talk of the subject. Members of the jury are reluctant to give any information.
00:47Chief Lanford, however, willingly told a Constitution reporter of his testimony before the jury
00:52and of the nature of queries which were put to him. He says he gave a complete and
00:56apparently satisfactory account of the Third Degree and the manner in which it is practiced
01:01at police headquarters. Is jury probing police methods? The belief is prevalent in both police
01:07and court circles that a secret probe is being promoted by the Grand Jury into methods employed
01:12by both the police and detective departments, and that it was in pursuit of this investigation
01:17that the detective head and Black were examined. Chief Lanford is inclined to scout this theory,
01:22although he is unable to account for the testimony that was required of him and of Black in the
01:27Third Degree Probe. The use of the Third Degree during the Fagan mystery has caused much comment.
01:33Its most effective employment, it will be recalled, was in extracting three sensational confessions
01:38from the Negro sweeper, James Conley. Newt Lee, the Negro watchman, the first suspect in the murder
01:45case, was subjected to a degree equally as strenuous. The public letter of Mrs. Leo Frank,
01:51in which she took the detectives and Solicitor General Dorsey to task for subjecting her servant
01:56girl Manola McKnight to a system of cross-examination which, she asserted, left the girl in a state of
02:01exhaustion, probably served to actuate the jury's inquiry into police methods. Mrs. Frank's letter
02:07was a stinging arraignment and continued on page four. Chief of detectives before Grand Jury
02:12continued from page one. Many other such letters have attacked the detectives and police severely,
02:17not a torture method. Chief Lanford, in his talk, averred that the public has the wrong conception
02:22of the Third Degree, and naturally pictured it as a torture method. This is wholly wrong,
02:28he declared, and utterly at variance with the explanation which he gave to the Grand Jury.
02:33The Third Degree, he told the jury, is one of the most valuable assets of the detective department,
02:39and without it many of a city's most glaring crimes would go forever unsolved.
02:43He admitted that in one era of police history the method has been barbarous, but declared that in
02:49the present day science and skill had replaced the torture of the past. In Conley's case, Chief
02:55Lanford told the jury the Negro's confession had been secured through clever detective work in
02:59confronting him with damaging discrepancies in his stories of innocence. The method employed with him
03:05is a popular one, and is a plan that has served successfully with Negro criminals.
03:09It is worked in this manner, the chief said. Only two men operate the scheme. They study their
03:15subject thoroughly by preliminary conversations, learn his traits of character and his weak points.
03:21They warm up to the real work, clamp down the screws, so to speak. How confession is secured.
03:26The first detective begins to taunt and deride the prisoner. He confronts him with all incriminating
03:31evidence gathered against him, pictures the form of punishment to which he is liable,
03:35and vividly illustrates the fate of others in predicaments similar to the prisoner's.
03:39The detective attitude is threatening and belligerent. When the subject is worked up into
03:45a state of fear, the belligerent examiner leaves the room in an assumed fit of anger.
03:49The second detective, who has quietly watched his fellow sleuth's operations, during which he has
03:54looked on, disinterestedly, takes up the degree where the other left off. He affects an entirely
03:59different attitude. He soothes the prisoner, encourages him, and offers sympathy. His partner,
04:04he tells the prisoner, is quick of temper and is easily prejudiced. The prisoner is warned that
04:09the detective who threatened will strive to convict and is prevailed upon to confess in order to save
04:14himself from the vengeance of the sleuth who has just left the room. With assumed sympathy,
04:19encouragement, and advice, the second detective almost invariably cajoles a confession from the
04:24third degree subject. Different treatment needed. With white prisoners, the method is different.
04:30They are credulous and prejudiced against detectives and are keen to divine the false attitude of
04:35sympathy which wins so easily over the negro. The whites are subjected to an incessant volley of
04:41questions for many hours. These methods are calculated to frazzle the nerves and drive the
04:46subject into admission. The duration of the degree is general the most effective phase of the entire
04:52examination. Under the severe mental pressure created by the constant necessity of having to meet the
04:57bombardment of questions with plausible answers and the accompanying physical strain, the guilty
05:02prisoner frequently reaches a point of exhaustion which forces confession. The innocent subject is
05:08seldom forced to endure such methods. His innocence is easily divined by his frankness,
05:13his collaborative answers, and his story. Guilt is quickly detected in even the shrewdest and most
05:19experienced of crooks. Even the best of rehearsed stories are often broken down under the strain of
05:24constant examination. Series of examinations. As explained by Chief Lanford, the third degree is
05:31merely the last of a series of examinations. In the first degree the prisoner is allowed to tell his
05:37story without cross-examination. He signs a written statement, following which the detectives run it down,
05:43finding whatever discrepancies they may, and obtaining corroboration. The second degree is for the
05:49purpose of confronting the subject with the fruits in his tale, and the evidence unearthed against him.
05:54If he fails to confess in this stage of the examination, he is forced to remain in solitude
05:59and confinement for hours, to meditate over the situation, sum up the probability of conviction,
06:06and to consider the strain to which he will be subjected in the following degree, of which he has
06:11been made vividly aware during the previous examination. The queries put to him by the grand jury,
06:16says the chief, were of a nature meant to ascertain whether or not the police methods were tortuous,
06:22and whether or not they often resulted in prisoners making false confessions in order to escape
06:27suffering. The chief declares he informed the jury that the methods were not barbarous, and that it was
06:32only the guilty who suffered, and that they experienced suffering only through the mental strain,
06:37which attended the necessity of having to answer volleys of questions with faked answers.
06:42So far as is known, the jury has taken no action regarding their investigation of police methods.
06:48Lanford expresses belief that they were pleased with his explanation of the third degree,
06:53and that they have learned definitely that it is only a method of science and not torture.
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