With all the reporting going on about exonerations of innocent people, legislatures are finally starting to ask the question: why? The answers are many and varied: poor quality control in crime labs (see other stories on this site), inappropriate reliance on faulty eye-witness identification, and — let’s face it — overworked police who desire nothing more than to close a high-pressure case by getting a confession out of the suspect in their custody who is “obviously guilty”. Everyone is familiar with the famous Miranda warnings, but not everyone knows why it’s such a cornerstone in the foundation of criminal procedure. The fact is, once a professional interrogator gets going with a suspect, it’s entirely possible to get them to say virtually anything desired. And if not, the interrogator can “spin” actual statements made to bring them into conformity with their theory of the case. One of the standard warnings I give every one of my clients before they see a police report is to be prepared to be surprised at how the police describe any statements they’ve made. And it never fails: “Oh my God, no way, I never said anything like that.” He said, she said. I see it every day. Every case. So, who do you think the jury is going to believe?

A simple solution, of course, is to use (drum roll …) technology. Why not record every custodial interrogation in the first place? Recording statements made in custody will help not only by clarifying the actual content, but also by providing important evidence regarding the treatment of the witness, the demeanor of the interrogator, and the means used to extract the statements. Duh.

Well, states are finally starting to take action. New Jersey has become one of the first to have its Supreme Court mandate that all police interrogations must hereafter be recorded. Amen. And a number of other states have joined the effort by introducing legislation toward the same goal.

In Virginia, H.B. 1169 was recently introduced by Del. Albert Eisenberg (D-47 Dist.) to require custodial interrogations of juveniles to be electronically recorded. Confessions would be presumed inadmissible in juvenile or criminal proceedings unless the custodial interrogation is recorded in its entirety, including the Miranda warning. Certain good-faith exceptions would apply. Defense attorneys would be provided with the recording no later than 20 days prior to the proceeding.

Florida has four bills in the hopper (H.B. 433/ S. 1070 and H.B. 681/S. 770), and there may be some momentum for passage in the wake of a number of exonerations in that state. Two bills were introduced in Arizona. H.B. 2547 would require recording in homicide cases; H.B. 2636 would require recordings of juvenile interrogations. Other states with new bills requiring the electronic recording of interrogations include: Iowa (H.B. 2112); Indiana (S. 329); Maryland (H.B. 29); Michigan (H.B. 5101); Missouri (S. 768); New Jersey (A.B. 274; S. 488; S. 254); and Pennsylvania (H.B. 2281).

Justice marches on, sometimes slowly. But it appears that progress is being made at last on one of the most critical stages in the process, and that can only be good news for all of us.

My thanks to the NACDL for this news. Read their account of these activities here.

RP

This entry was posted on Friday, February 10th, 2006 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Cool Science, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.