Why should police be allowed to lie?

[grude]

I’ve never understood why it seems to be universally accepted that police being allowed to blatantly lie to suspects is a good thing.

“Listen just confess to this crime whether you did it or not, and we will let you go home with no charges, honest! You’ve been here being grilled for 46 hours, wouldn’t you like some sleep? Just confess come on, we promise you’ll go free!”

“Confess or we’ll charge your whole family with being accessories, we’ll bankrupt you you fucker.”

And so on. Personally I think this is a miscarriage of justice, and only leads to people like poor or developmentally disabled individuals going away for false confessions and real criminals staying free.

I don’t have a real problem with police confronting a suspect with witness statements or evidence collected and telling them to confess because the game is up anyway. But blatant lies and false threats are totally unproductive.

[Acsenray]

I’m not saying I like it, but on what basis do you think it should be banned? You really think only mentally deficient people would fall for such tricks?

[grude]

@Acsenray

I’m not saying I like it, but on what basis do you think it should be banned? You really think only mentally deficient people would fall for such tricks?

I’m szying anyone falling for such a trick is bad, unless the goal is just closing cases with patsies basically.

[Captain_Amazing]

Well, “Confess or we’ll charge your whole family with being accessories, we’ll bankrupt you you fucker.”, wouldn’t necessarily be allowable. That sounds coercive to me. But the idea is that police can lie to suspects because an innocent person wouldn’t believe the lies or confess based on them. If the police say to you, “We found your fingerprints on the murder weapon”, and you never touched the murder weapons, you know that the police aren’t telling the truth. But if you’re the murderer, and they say that, you wonder “Did they actually find them?”, and your guilty conscience does the rest.

That’s the theory anyway.

[foolsguinea]

@Acsenray

I’m not saying I like it, but on what basis do you think it should be banned? You really think only mentally deficient people would fall for such tricks?

Why is OK if some persons of average intelligence fall for it? So you really think only a “protected class” argument has a shot of stopping it?

[UDS]

Depends on the jurisdiction, obviously, but in most countries confessions obtained by offering inducements or making threats are not admissible.

Or, in other words, what makes you think the police are allowed to lie? In the country where you live, have you some reason to think that the police routinely extract confessions by means like this?

[Little_Nemo]

@grude

I’ve never understood why it seems to be universally accepted that police being allowed to blatantly lie to suspects is a good thing.

“Listen just confess to this crime whether you did it or not, and we will let you go home with no charges, honest! You’ve been here being grilled for 46 hours, wouldn’t you like some sleep? Just confess come on, we promise you’ll go free!”

“Confess or we’ll charge your whole family with being accessories, we’ll bankrupt you you fucker.”

And so on. Personally I think this is a miscarriage of justice, and only leads to people like poor or developmentally disabled individuals going away for false confessions and real criminals staying free.

I don’t have a real problem with police confronting a suspect with witness statements or evidence collected and telling them to confess because the game is up anyway. But blatant lies and false threats are totally unproductive.

I agree that blatant lies and false threats are usually unproductive. It’s a combination of subtle lies and real threats that really works.

Okay, seriously, IANAL but I believe the rule is that the police can give a suspect false information about the crime and the investigation. They can say stuff like “We found your fingerprints on the weapon” or “Your partner’s already confessed.” But they can’t make threats or promises like “We’ll shoot your dog if you don’t confess” or “Confess and we’ll let you go free.”

[Wesley_Clark]

The police can’t lie about anything they want. They can’t offer leniency (only a prosecutor can do that). At least they aren’t supposed to.

Police lying destroys their credibility and in an ideal society would be used sparingly. But thats not reality. It was my understanding that the vast majority of police lying was pretending to have evidence they do not have in order to make the suspect feel like the jig is up and offer a confession.

[grude]

@UDS

Depends on the jurisdiction, obviously, but in most countries confessions obtained by offering inducements or making threats are not admissible.

Or, in other words, what makes you think the police are allowed to lie? In the country where you live, have you some reason to think that the police routinely extract confessions by means like this?

I’m from the USA, I believe blatant lying is allowed.

I am almost 100% sure I’ve seen recorded video of interrogations in the USA where leniency(false) was being dangled as enticement to confession, but I’ll have to find a cite.

[Senegoid]

There’s been a thread kicking around for a while on the subject of whether it’s right or proper, or even allowed, for juries to nullify.

This is sort of tangential to that, but maybe related: If you were on a jury, would you believe any confession maybe by a defendant during an interrogation?

Question: How are such confessions presented to the jury? Does the jury see or hear an audio or video recording of the entire interrogation? Does the jury only hear what the interrogator says the suspect said?

I’ve never been involved in a court case, neither as litigant, nor as witness, nor as juror. My impression is that, when a suspect confesses, he is presented with a ghost-written confession to sign, built on what the interrogators have gotten him to say. I presume this is presented to the jury. Is this generally correct?

If you were on a jury, would you give any credence to such a confession? What would make you convict based on such a confession? What would make you choose to ignore the confession?

My general feeling is, I want to hear the defendant take the stand and confess with his own mouth, in court, in front of the jury. If his confession is true and he meant to confess, then he’s going to be willing to take the stand and repeat his confession in court, right? Right? Or, alternatively, he takes the stand and renounces his confession, saying it was coerced. Then what would you, as juror, believe?

Or, most often, the defendant never takes the stand, thereby preserving his 5th amendment right against self-incrimination, but at the same time, forfeiting any opportunity to take the stand and renounce the confession. So the prosecutor presents a confession and it stands unchallenged. Then what would you, as juror, believe?

My general attitude would be to ignore confessions. If the prosecutor has a case, he needs to make his case with other evidence and testimony.

What do you all think?

[Kobal2]

I never understood how “We found your prints on the murder weapon/your partner spilled the beans/we have a rock solid case against you … so you might as well confess” works.

Either they really do have a solid case, don’t need a confession and why would they want to give me a quick and dirty way to reduce my sentence with any kind of deal; or more likely they don’t actually have that and why should I confess to anything ? I realize most criminals aren’t the brightest spoons in the shed, but from a game theory standpoint the gambit makes no sense to me.

[Ravenman]

@Kobal2

I never understood how “We found your prints on the murder weapon/your partner spilled the beans/we have a rock solid case against you … so you might as well confess” works.

Either they really do have a solid case, don’t need a confession and why would they want to give me a quick and dirty way to reduce my sentence with any kind of deal; or more likely they don’t actually have that and why should I confess to anything ? I realize most criminals aren’t the brightest spoons in the shed, but from a game theory standpoint the gambit makes no sense to me.

The statement is probably more like, “We found your prints on the gun, but we don’t think you meant to shoot him. What we can’t figure out is whether the gun went off in your hand or you meant to shoot him. If you tell us your side of the story, we will take that into account.”

The game theory works out fine on that statement: if you’re guilty and don’t talk, you get a long sentence. If you’re guilty and do talk, you’ll get a lighter sentence. If you’re innocent, you’ll know they are going to keep lying to you and you better stop answering questions.

[Odesio]

@Senegoid

This is sort of tangential to that, but maybe related: If you were on a jury, would you believe any confession maybe by a defendant during an interrogation?

Would I believe any confession? Well, no, I imagine someone could confess to something so outrageously impossible that I would have a hard time believing it. But if I was on a jury I would weigh the confession as I would any piece of evidence and if I had no reason to believe coercion or fabrication that confession would carry a lot of weight.

How are such confessions presented to the jury? Does the jury see or hear an audio or video recording of the entire interrogation? Does the jury only hear what the interrogator says the suspect said?

It depends. In most states I believe there is no obligation for you to be recorded or filmed when you make a statement to the police.

I’ve never been involved in a court case, neither as litigant, nor as witness, nor as juror. My impression is that, when a suspect confesses, he is presented with a ghost-written confession to sign, built on what the interrogators have gotten him to say. I presume this is presented to the jury. Is this generally correct?

No. The suspect generally writes out a confession using his own words in his own writing even. This makes the confession even more valuable in court.

[Melbourne]

@Senegoid

Question: How are such confessions presented to the jury? Does the jury see or hear an audio or video recording of the entire interrogation? Does the jury only hear what the interrogator says the suspect said?

In VIC.AUS, “verballing” is no longer generally admissible. As in, it was legal when I was a boy. And normally of course, no jury gets to see or hear a confession: if there is a confession, you normally plead guilty.

In normal ordinary police work here, they aren’t trying to extort a confession out of you (now): they just take your statement and let the court work it out. Historically, major criminals have been handled differently: I wouldn’t have an opinon about how the police here treat major criminals today.

On a related subject, it seem incredible to me that the American system of extorting a guilty plea by threatening some huge sentence is not unconstitutional: I was taught in elementry school that the Americans broke with the European system by declaring that no person could be tortured to extract a guilty plea.

[UDS]

@Melbourne

On a related subject, it seem incredible to me that the American system of extorting a guilty plea by threatening some huge sentence is not unconstitutional: I was taught in elementry school that the Americans broke with the European system by declaring that no person could be tortured to extract a guilty plea.

Not quite.

Under the rules that prevailed in most European countries, based on Roman law, nobody could be convicted on the evidence of one witness. This often left the authorities in a position where they knew with certainty that somebody was guilty - they had a reliable and credible witness - but they couldn’t get a conviction because they needed a second witness. The accused, of course, could be that second witness, if only he could be induced to confess. And whatever qualms you might have about, um, pressuring him into a confession were assuaged by the moral certainty that he was, in fact, guilty. Hence you have a police system which, if it doesn’t formally condone the physical abuse of suspects, fairly easily accommodates a certain degree of it.

The common law system that prevailed in the UK never had this two-witness rule. Hence, by the time you knew that somebody was guilty, you pretty much had the makings of a case against him without his evidence, and so much less incentive to torture him. And of course the US inherited that.

Why do prosecutors like confessions? Because they tend to make for very smooth trials. Once the defendant has made a confession, its extremely difficult to secure an acquittal, unless you can show that the confession was improperly obtained.

[orcenio]

Not being allowed to lie would make undercover missions very short.

Shifty Prep: “What, you some cop?”
Overcover RCMP: “You know it! High five!”

[Kobal2]

@Ravenman

The statement is probably more like, “We found your prints on the gun, but we don’t think you meant to shoot him. What we can’t figure out is whether the gun went off in your hand or you meant to shoot him. If you tell us your side of the story, we will take that into account.”

The game theory works out fine on that statement: if you’re guilty and don’t talk, you get a long sentence. If you’re guilty and do talk, you’ll get a lighter sentence. If you’re innocent, you’ll know they are going to keep lying to you and you better stop answering questions.

All right, that does sound more manipulative and likely to work.

[AHunter3]

@Kobal2

I never understood how “We found your prints on the murder weapon/your partner spilled the beans/we have a rock solid case against you … so you might as well confess” works.

One possible translation is “You’re going down for this. We’re going to say we found your prints on the murder weapon. We’ve got someone lined up to testify that you were their partner. You can go along and tell us what we want to hear or you can go down as unrepentant, but you’re taking the rap for this either way”.

If you believe that the system just looks for a scapegoat and that as often as not they don’t care who actually did it, this might be your interpretation.

[Bone]

@Captain_Amazing

Well, “Confess or we’ll charge your whole family with being accessories, we’ll bankrupt you you fucker.”, wouldn’t necessarily be allowable. That sounds coercive to me. But the idea is that police can lie to suspects because an innocent person wouldn’t believe the lies or confess based on them. If the police say to you, “We found your fingerprints on the murder weapon”, and you never touched the murder weapons, you know that the police aren’t telling the truth. But if you’re the murderer, and they say that, you wonder “Did they actually find them?”, and your guilty conscience does the rest.

That’s the theory anyway.

If you know you are innocent and never touched the murder weapon, but police say they have your prints on the weapon, why wouldn’t you conclude the police are willing to frame you for just about anything? What’s your play there if the police are willing and able to fabricate evidence?

[Acsenray]

I seem to recall a case study from law school in which the cops silently brought in a huge pile of evidence and left within eyesight of the suspect … Of course it was evidence that had nothing to do with his case … It was just stuff that looked much like it … The guy confessed without their having explicitly referred to it. It was a type if lie, of course, but ruled to be a legitimate interrogation tactic.