Deceit in American Policing
Richard Leo, renowned expert on interrogation techniques, calls deception the most defining and salient feature of interrogations in this country. Many people may not realize it, but law enforcement regularly interrogate suspects and lie about the potential leniency that could be traded for cooperation. In some cases they even about the evidence they have. And it is absolutely legal. In fact, the courts are aware of and support the practice wholeheartedly. For that reason, deceptive techniques are generally a component of police training across the country. Interestingly, while lying is widely used to get confessions and information from people law enforcement have in custody in the U.S., it’s a custom that is either totally prohibited or profoundly restricted in most of our peer nations, including France, Japan, Germany, and England. It makes one wonder why other developed nations are so resistant to deception by law enforcement.
Concerns
Arguably, the aim of lying is not necessarily to get to the truth. Rather, it’s to get information or, better yet, a confession. By manipulating a suspect’s perception of their situation through deceptions, the suspect can be tricked into believing they have no option other than to confess to the crime and hope they’ll be treated with leniency.
Naturally, police often get a confession out of a suspect who’s been lied to. Unfortunately, those confessions are not legit in many cases. Even so, they weigh heavily on the scale of evidence, and can lead to wrongful convictions. When the Innocence Project successfully fought to overturn 375 wrongful convictions, they discovered that almost one-third involved false confessions that had been induced by law enforcement. In the case of murder convictions that were overturned, more than 60 percent involved false confessions. While a significant problem, this is not the only concern with the police practice of lying to suspects:
- Research indicates that when officers lie in this context they become more prone to lie in other, more troubling areas. Officers who engage in this behavior are more likely to be involved in perjury and/or the falsification of police reports. They sometimes manufacture consent to search or probable cause, or otherwise twist the truth to suit their purposes. These actions are illegal, although they are difficult to identify and punish.
- Notably, any suspect is innocent until proven guilty. The ethics of lying to a suspect is debatable at best. Training officers to use deceptive techniques with citizens seems liable to promote a permissive stance toward deception in officers, thus diminishing the public’s view of law enforcement.
- Since police so often get away with lying, & because it carries over into other areas of their duties, constitutional protections get abused, leaving civil liberties, justice, and public trust at a loss.
Did You Confess under Police Pressure?
If you are one of the thousands of individuals who have offered a false confession under questioning by police, you need experienced Miami criminal attorneys at The Law Office of Julia Kefalinos on your side more than ever. Contact our Miami office to discuss.
Source:
reid.com/resources/whats-new/2019-an-example-of-how-dr-richard-leo-testifies-about-the-interrogation-process
