The purpose of police interrogations is to questions suspects in such a way as to obtain a confession, but as we learned in class this can lead into people giving false confessions and putting innocent people in jail. In the article, Public Defenders Push Strict Laws for Interrogation Footage a man named Adrian Thomas gave a false confession after being interrogated for ten hours and was told that if he gave a confession it would save his son’s life even though the police knew that the son was already dead. Thomas’s confession was coerced since the interrogation lasted for ten hours and they withheld information that Thomas’s son was already dead. Thomas was lucky that in his case the confession was recorded and evidence of coercion was present, …show more content…
After this incident with Thomas, “a group of New York public defenders and criminal defense organizations on Monday pushed for an Assembly bill that would require police interviews regarding violent felonies be recorded on video, saying full documentation protects both the police from accusations of wrongdoing and the wrongfully accused from coercion” (Gronewold, 2017). The Assembly proposal that they are trying to get approved will require that all interviews regarding serious and violent offenses would need to be fully recorded from beginning to end. The Assembly will also limit any exceptions for the police departments that currently do not record interrogations. From what we learned in class we know that by recoding interrogations especially from the moment the interrogation begins to when it ends, it creates a permanent record of what was going on in the interrogation room and it is supposed to help improve the interrogation methods. On the down side of recording the interrogations, the polices can easily manipulate the video recordings and if left to the officers they can possibly only record part of the interrogation by only recording the admission instead of the entire length of the interrogation process. Also, when taken to trial only segments of the recorded interrogation are shown. This concern seems to be shown when Al O’Connor from the New York State Defenders Association said that although the Cuomo’s legislation would be a good step for police accountability, there are still loopholes that allow police to decide if a suspect is considered “in custody” or not. O’Connor also stated, “If we leave it to the police to decide when the cameras are going to be turned on, we are not going to learn everything that's necessary,” (Gronewold,
“… if not for bystander Feidin Santana’s video casting doubt on office Michael Slagers version of events, he may not have quickly been charged with murder…” Imagine if this man would have been set free only to think getting away with murder is easy. Seeming that a person is an employee of the law, jurors’ do not expect them to lie. All they need to say is that they felt in danger or claim they were put in a tough situation. “when the cop story first came out, he said he was in a tussle,” said Virgil Delestine…”but the video told what really happened.” With body cameras at the scene this will help increase honesty in policemen because they know they are being recorded. In addition, I feel it would be very effective in building community trust if the police force would broadcast the tapes. By keeping everyone up to date, this will encourage people that law enforcements are not being sneaky and are putting reinforcement in place cops who do wrong.
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
``In criminal law, confession evidence is a prosecutor’s most potent weapon’’ (Kassin, 1997)—“the ‘queen of proofs’ in the law” (Brooks, 2000). Regardless of when in the legal process they occur, statements of confession often provide the most incriminating form of evidence and have been shown to significantly increase the rate of conviction. Legal scholars even argue that a defendant’s confession may be the sole piece of evidence considered during a trial and often guides jurors’ perception of the case (McCormick, 1972). The admission of a false confession can be the deciding point between a suspect’s freedom and their death sentence. To this end, research and analysis of the false confessions-filled Norfolk Four case reveals the drastic and controversial measures that the prosecuting team will take to provoke a confession, be it true or false.
"Cop-cams strike a blow for truth, but they strike a blow against relationships. Society will be more open and transparent, but less humane and trusting." This is absolutely true. One of his concerns is that society will be less humane due to the transparent of reality with cops’ cams. However, would you rather have that and know that you are safe or cops violated his authority to mistreat a citizen or worst, commit a crime themselves? So as the ground-level policies of cameras are being implement, state and federal legislation should be enacted in tandem as a result, for the very reasons Brooks offers in this column. Law makers must be urged to pass use and leak laws, making it a felony to publicly leak and post "cop cam" footage that has been obtained by law enforcement during the regular course of active duty. This should be a punishable offense, the consequences should be time spent in jail. In a day and age where we click away our privacy in the most nonchalant manner and justice rarely meted out when it's violated in the most obscene way, it is a moral imperative that we take legislative measures to enforce and protect what privacy we have
The United States Supreme Court, in Howes v. Fields, rejected a per se rule that questioning a prison inmate in a room isolated from the general prison population about events occurring outside the prison is custodial interrogation. The Fifth Amendment of the Constitution requires that a person in “custodial interrogation” be read Miranda rights, those rights which come from the case of Miranda v. Arizona. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, holding that a prisoner is in custody within the meaning of Miranda if the prisoner is taken away from the general prison area and questioned about events that occurred outside the prison. The Sixth Circuit held that the interview of Fields in the room was a “custodial interrogation” because isolation from the rest of the prison combined with questioning about allegation outside the prison makes such an interrogation custodial per se. The term “custody” refers to circumstances where the danger of coercion is present. A court will look to the objective circumstances of the interrogation to find whether a person is in custody. In order for statements made ...
According to “Sleep Deprivation and False Confessions” and “False Confessions to Police and their Relationship with Conduct Disorder, ADHD, and life adversity,” it tackles on the causes of false confessions and who is more prone to such factors. Based on “The Role of Deception” and “How the Police Generate False Confessions: An Inside Look at the Interrogation Room” by Trainum, James L, it focuses on the methods police interrogators use to coerce a false confession. Lastly, ways to prevent false confessions from recurring will be recommended through “Miranda Rights Comprehension in Young Adults with Specific Language Impairment,” “Miranda Rights and Wrongs: Matter of Justice,” and “Police-Induced Confessions: Risk Factors and Recommendations.” Due to these reasons, the modern justice system needs to be updated and enforced to avoid similar cases of coerced false
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,
Born and raised on the Big Island of Hawaii, Captain Sameul Jelsma of Pahoa Police Station has served as a police officer for more than two decades. He is the commander of the station and he oversees the lower Puna district. Before he joined the Hawaii Police Department, he served in the US military. When he was in the army, he decided to come back and serve his own community. He was initially enlisted as a patrol officer but his commitment and hard work rewarded him with promotions as the result of which he became a captain.
...igations today has a huge impact on false confessions. The Reid Technique is being criticized in the media because of its guilt-presumptive, aggressive, and psychologically manipulative nature. It is based on a series of assumptions that lack scientific support, and by using it they are creating hostile and coercive environment for the interrogation. The fact that they try to pass these confessions off as voluntary should also be an issue against using them since we know they are usually coerced. There are two alternatives to the Reid technique being used to interview suspects. These do not use coercion and manipulation to get confessions. The first is the PEACE Model, which is an interview technique that is more ethical, and the other technique is Cognitive interviewing which is used by police as a memory technique used to enhance the retrieval of their memory.
The New York Police Department has a mission to "preserve peace, reduce fear, maintain order," and protect its civilians in their communities (NYPD, 2016). On the contrary, civilians do not see the police officers as individuals who are there to protect them because they do not trust the police officers or the justice system. In the past few decades, police officers have not been held accountable for their actions in a few incidents where a few unarmed young black males were killed by the police. Communities responded to this issue with the Black Lives Matter movement with protests nationwide to show support for the unarmed young black men who were killed by police. In response to the aggressive policing, methods of using body cameras and detailed incident reporting ...
Defenders of the Miranda decision say that fewer crimes solved are for a good reason. They believe that law enforcement officers were forced to stop coercive questioning techniques that are unconstitutional. Over the years, the Supreme Court has watered down its stance in saying that the Miranda rules are not constitutional obligations, but rather “prophylactic” safeguards intended to insure that officers do not force a confession from a suspect. The need for both effective law enforcement as well as protection of society dictates the need for potential alternatives to the limitations of Miranda that would simultaneously protect the interest of society in effective law enforcement while at the same time providing protection to suspects against unconstitutional force (www.ncpa.org).
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 also protects suspects from overzealous police officers. Although most law-enforcement agents in the United States are decent men and women, some abuse their power. They may try to coerce suspects into giving false confessions. Time and time again, we read of cases where suspects were forced to make confessions because an overzealous or prejudiced police officers want to close a case. The story of Rubin Hurricane Carter, made popular by the motion picture of the same name, demonstrated how lives could be destroyed when vindictive and manipulating detectives abuse their power. The Miranda Warning helps keep abuses in check. If the law is used correctly, the guilty would receive their due punishment. When police officers inform suspects of their rights before interrogation, it is very unlikely that the judge presiding over any case would throw out statements made during questioning.
Leo, R and Ofshe R. The Social Psychology of Police Interrogation: The Theory and Classification of True and False Confessions. 16 Studies in Law, Politics and Society 189,
One thing that sets me apart from other candidates is my experience growing up around discrimination and police harassment in my old neighborhood. There were so many events that happened that a child should never have to experienced. Our whole neighborhood hated us merely for the fact that we were the only Hispanics in an all white neighborhood. The police that worked in that area were constantly invading our house without a warrant and trying their best to plant something on my uncle to get arrested. The worst time was one Christmas Eve where we were going to drive out to Los Angeles to visit family. One of my uncle's brought his dog and she ran onto my neighbor's lawn. My uncle went to get his dog, but my neighbor came out with a gun claiming