Physical brutality in interrogations is a controversial subject in the American criminal justice system. Views vary from beliefs that officers have too much power in interrogations to officers have not enough discretion in interrogations. The use of force in interrogations can have a profound effect on the outcomes of a case. This paper will talk about the past and present of physical brutality in interrogations, the use of force in federal interrogations, and recent cases involving physical brutality in interrogations.
Involuntary confessions and physical brutality in investigations often correlate with each other. Since 1897, the Supreme Court ruled involuntary confessions violated the constitutional guarantee against self-incrimination
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Richard Leo, Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco and author of Police Interrogation and American Justice, explains that police officials argued that without “third degree” techniques it would be impossible to solve crimes, but citizens began to question the morality of these tactics. Leo further states juries started to reject confessions they believed were obtained through torture. Between the 1930s and 1960s, police tactics during interrogations gradually changed, partly due to the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (Leo, 2009). The Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement’s report was published in 1931 and studied misconduct in law enforcement across the United States (Leo, 2009). Layton (2006) states that in 1937 the Brown v. Mississippi case ruled to throw out a “voluntary” confession because the forced confession obtained by police officers through physical brutality violated the due process clause of …show more content…
A notorious example is Jon Burge who is a former Chicago Police Department detective and commander. According to Burlatsky (2014) between 1972 and 1991, Burge tortured more than 110 criminal suspects in order to force confessions. In 2011, Burge was sentence to four-and-one-half years in federal prison on counts of perjury because he had lied under oath about police torture that he oversaw (Burlatsky, 2014). The statute of limitations for most of Burge’s alleged criminal acts ran out long before and Burge cost Chicago $5.5 million for his victims (Burlatsky, 2014). The police under Burge allegedly beat suspects, suffocated them with plastic bags, and electrically shocked suspects (Burlatsky, 2014). According to John Mitchell, staff writer of The Los Angeles Times, in 1994 an Adelanto police officer in California tried to beat a confession out of a man and forced another to lick his own blood off a booking room floor after the man was hit upside the head by an officer causing the man’s head to bleed. The officer was fired and was sentenced to two years in federal prison three years after the incidents took place. According to Diane Jennings, writer for The Dallas Morning News, in 1983 Sheriff James Parker of San Jacinto County in Texas went to prison due to subjecting jail inmates to water tortures in order to gain confessions and testimony. A more recent example of
The Supreme Court ruled that due to the coercive nature of the custodial interrogation by police, no confession could be admissible under the Fifth Amendment self-incrimination Clause and Sixth Amendment right to an attorney unless a suspect has been made aware to his rights and the suspect had then waived them
“Police throughout the United States have been caught fabricating, planting, and manipulating evidence to obtain convictions where cases would otherwise be very weak. Some authorities regard police perjury as so rampant that it can be considered a "subcultural norm rather than an individual aberration" of police officers. Large-scale investigations of police units in almost every major American city have documented massive evidence of tampering, abuse of the arresting power, and discriminatory enforcement of laws. There also appears to be widespread police perjury in the preparation of reports because police know these reports will be used in plea bargaining. Officers often justify false and embellished reports on the grounds that it metes out a rough justice to defendants who are guilty of wrongdoing but may be exonerated on technicalities.”
The act of interrogation has been around for thousands of years. From the Punic Wars to the war in Iraq, interrogating criminals, prisoners or military officers in order to receive advantageous information has been regularly used. These interrogation techniques can range from physical pain to emotional distress. Hitting an individual with a whip while they hang from a ceiling or excessively questioning them may seem like an ideal way to get them to reveal something, but in reality it is ineffective and . This is because even the most enduring individual can be made to admit anything under excruciating circumstances. In the Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights there is a provision (“no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself” ) which reflects a time-honored common principle that no person is bound to betray him or herself or can be forced to give incriminating evidence. This ideology of self-incrimination has been challenged heavily over the past s...
When hearing the phrase “police brutality,” many people imagine batons cracking skulls, tasers electrocuting bodies and bullets penetrating innocent teens. While police officers have been known to use violence, police brutality does not occur as often as many believe. In many situations, officers have to act on impulse and curiosity, despite the backlash the media may create.
Ross, Brian and Richard Esposito. “CIA's Harsh Interrogation Techniques Described.” 18 Nov. 2005. Web. 6 Nov. 2013.
From the moment an innocent individual enters the criminal justice system they are pressured by law enforcement whose main objective is to obtain a conviction. Some police interrogation tactics have been characterized as explicit violations of the suspect’s right to due process (Campbell and Denov 2004). However, this is just the beginning. Additional forms of suffering under police custody include assaults,
Police brutality is a very real problem that many Americans face today. The police carry an enormous burden each day. Police work is very stressful and involves many violent and dangerous situations. In many confrontations the police are put in a position in which they may have to use force to control the situation. There are different levels of force and the situation dictates the level use most of the time. The police have very strict rules about police use force and the manner in which they use it. In this paper I will try to explain the many different reason the police cross the line, and the many different people that this type of behavior effects. There are thousands of reports each year of assaults and ill treatment against officers who use excessive force and violate the human rights of their victims. In some cases the police have injured and even killed people through the use of excessive force and brutal treatment. The use of excessive force is a criminal act and I will try and explore the many different factors involved in these situations.
Miranda v Arizona went all the way to the Supreme Court. There the Supreme Court ruled that the police do have a responsibility to inform a subject of an interrogation of their constitutional rights. The constitutional rights have to do with self-incrimination, and the right to counsel before, during and after questioning.
Research Paper Rough Draft: Police Brutality Police misconduct is as rampant as ever in America, and it has become a fixture of the news cycle. Police brutality is the use of any force exceeding that reasonably necessary to accomplish a lawful police purpose. The media is inevitably drawn toward tales of conflict, hence why there are so many crime and police stories on the news. Despite the increasing frequency of misbehaving cops, many Americans still maintain a high respect for the man in uniform. Still, police misconduct is a systemic problem, not just an anecdotal one.
Officers abusing their power can range from taking bribes, choosing who they decide to let go and who to prosecute, and even abusing their power by molestation. In July of 2009 two Phoenix police officers lost their jobs after they stopped a bikini clad woman who had run from a rear end collision. The officers handcuffed her, drove her back to the accident scene to complete the paper work, and then drove her to elementary school where they knew that they would be alone. When they reached the school one of them fondled her breasts, abdomen, and buttocks while the other one watched and did nothing to help he...
Background and Audience Relevance: According to the Human Rights Watch 2012 report on Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States; police brutality has become one the most serious human rights violation. As citizens of the United States it is our duty to make sure that those with authority don 't take advantage of their power.
People face ethical dilemmas every day. But it is perhaps, most prevalent in the law enforcement profession. Law enforcement officers face ethical dilemmas constantly. Some of the ethical issues that police face each day are: racial profiling, officer discretion, police officer loyalty, police officer abuse, and interrogatory deception. This paper will discuss the purpose of interrogatory deception, ways in which it is used, some of the current debates over the practice, and a landmark ruling in the Miranda case of 1966 which attempted to cease the use of intimidation and coercion practices of the police.
Miranda argued that his rights were violated because he admitted to the crime without knowing his rights, which should have been said to him when he was arrested. He claimed that the police had obtained his confession unconstitutionally. (Gitlin) He also mentioned that the police admitted to not telling him his rights. He reminded the Supreme Court that the...
In today’s society, police officers are very cautious on how much force they can use on a suspect due to the police brutality going on right now. Police brutality is defined as the use of force exceeding what is necessary, many people argue that there should be new policies to determine how much force a police officer can use and also have laws that will convict officers who have killed people by using too much force, so that there is less incidents in the future.
Interrogators who torture for information are perceived as dirty and immoral. They set out bad examples of leadership. Those who undertake practices involving torture such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation,