Com V Clark 336 Summary

A court will likely find Robert Tracy's confession inadmissible, as the police used trickery tactics to gain admission. Generally, "the possibility of coercion inherent in custodial interrogations unacceptably raises the risk that a suspect's privilege against self-incrimination might be violated." Com. v. Clark, 461 Mass. 336. The. However, they must "unambiguously" announce their desire to be silent. Id. at.342. Trickery used by the officers to obtain a confession could be misleading and cause the confession to be involuntary. See Com. -. v. Baye, 462 Mass. 246. The. "we expressly disapprove of the tactics of making deliberate and intentionally false statements to suspects to obtain a statement," as "such tactics cast doubt" on both the validity of a suspect's waiver of rights and the willingness of any subsequent

Moreover, unlike Newson, the defendant was aware of the situation despite seeming intoxicated and re-counted their side of the events. The officers cautiously knew how to employ trickery to gain an admissible confession from the defendant. Thus, just as the courts in Clark and Baye found the defendant's admissions to be inadmissible due to the trickery tactics, a court will likely find Robert Tracy's confession inadmissible. The prosecution may argue that Robert Tracy's confession was warranted because the officers cautiously used trickery tactics to a point where it was not violating their rights, like in Edwards and Parham. In both instances, the false statements were not proven accurate, so the defendant's confession was knowingly and permissible to use. However, that argument could be weak since questioning and when the confession was not recorded- so there is no way of truly knowing how false those statements were to gain that confession. Tracy's case aligns with Digambattisa's since the trickery used towards both defendants was deemed to push them to confess to giving them