AUSTIN — The Texas Department of Public Safety has ended the controversial practice of using hypnosis to investigate crimes.
A department spokesman said the hypnosis program ended in January 2021, more than forty years after its inception, because its officers are now relying on better investigative practices.
The decision comes less than a year after The Dallas Morning News published a two-part series, “The Memory Room,” which raised serious questions about the efficacy of using hypnosis on criminal cases. The News investigation found Texas built one of the most prolific programs for police hypnosis in the country, repeatedly doubling down on the practice despite scientific evidence that hypnosis can distort witness memories and lead to false convictions.
“DPS has developed more advanced interview and interrogation techniques that yield better results,” Assistant Chief of Media and Communications Travis Considine told The News.
Considine did not answer questions about whether The News’ investigation contributed to the department’s decision to stop using hypnosis.
“The Memory Room,” published in April of last year, revealed that Texas officers continue to turn to the debunked technique, sending dozens of men and women to prison and some to their deaths. The Texas Rangers are among the most prolific hypnotists in the state, The News found, performing at least 1,700 hypnosis sessions since the 1980s.
The Rangers used hypnosis to investigate an attempted kidnapping as recently as October 2020, just two months before the program was ended. Various officers at the Department of Public Safety performed a total of eight hypnosis sessions last year, including three that involved murder investigations, according to internal memos The News obtained through public records requests.
New information came out of seven of those sessions, the officers claimed. It’s unclear whether that evidence will still be used in investigations of these alleged crimes now that the program has ended.
Even without the program, local police departments may still be using hypnosis to investigate crimes. More than 800 law enforcement officers statewide have been approved to use hypnosis as an investigative tool since the 1980s, and Dallas and Houston once boasted the most hypnotists on staff.
Texas law also still allows evidence allegedly gleaned from hypnosis to be used in courts. In January, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up a Dallas death row case involving hypnosis, leaving the decision of whether to allow hypnosis up to each state. Nearly half of the states have banned or significantly restricted the practice among its law enforcement officers and prosecutors.
Texas remains the only state known to have an active certification program for law enforcement officers to learn hypnosis and is also the home to likely the nation’s only extant police organization for investigative hypnotists.
State lawmakers in Texas — including one state senator who has tried to crack down on the practice for years — have filed bills this session to ban the introduction of so-called hypnotically induced testimony.
On Wednesday, Rep. James White asked an official with the Texas Forensic Science Commission, which reviews junk science techniques, about the Rangers’ hypnosis program during a public legislative hearing. The commission official confirmed the department has ended the program.
“I am encouraged that TxDPS constantly reviews its investigatory processes to ensure that they are evidenced-based, peer-reviewed, and striving to earn and maintain the confidence of Texans,” White, who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security and Public Safety, told The News in a text message.
Marx Howell, one of the chief practitioners of police hypnosis in Texas, said he was not aware that the Department of Public Safety ended the program and expressed disappointment in the decision
“It is a viable investigative technique under certain circumstances in certain types of cases where you don’t have any other leads,” Howell told The News. “If DPS has stopped it, that will be a major effort to use hypnosis that has gone away.”
