| Question: Can a police
officer promise a defendant he can see
his girlfriend after he is finished with
interview? If they finish the interview
and Defendant confesses and never gets
to see girlfriend, what happens? Client
was in custody and the officer initiated
the interview.
Answer:
The answer lies in the following: Was
the offer or promise such that it might
influence the suspect to be untruthful?
Probably not, however, if the cop told
the client he would not file charges
against the girlfriend if he would just
“tell them the truth” and admit he did
it, then that might do it. If the
conversation was recorded, the totality
of the “promises” made by the cop might
be enough to get the statement
suppressed.
Law enforcement is allowed to lie and
distort evidence, but not threaten or
make false promises. Although the facts
you put forth show a false promise, the
promise must be of such a nature that it
would cause a person of ordinary
sensibilities to do something against
his or her self-interest. I don’t think
this one is going to rise to that level.
But the test is totality of
circumstances and we don’t know that
from the information provided. Given the
rise in false confessions as shown
through DNA exonerations, there has been
much more focus the past 10-15 years on
how to cross examine an officer who does
lie and distort. It’s quite clear that
given the right set of circumstances,
jurors can have an allergic reaction to
some of the evidentiary lies told
suspects in order to coax from them a
statement or confession that they later
attempt to use. Read The Problem of
False Confessions in the Post-DNA Era at
82 N.C.L. Rev. 891 (2004) by Steve Drizin
and Richard Leo.
|
