Post by Anja on Jun 22, 2006 18:05:54 GMT -5
Panel Urges Videotaping of Suspects' Confessions
A blue-ribbon commission that is examining California's criminal justice
system was urged Wednesday to recommend that police videotape all
interrogations of crime suspects in custody.
Among those who spoke at the three-hour hearing in support of the
recommendation were two men who spent years in prison for crimes they did
not commit, as well as a former federal prosecutor and an American Civil
Liberties Union representative.
No one spoke against the idea, but 2 law enforcement officials told the
California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice that recording
interrogations could be impossible in some circumstances, such as when
someone was caught in a remote area.
The commission, whose chairman is former California Atty. Gen. John Van de
Kamp, is considering a proposal that police agencies in California
videotape custodial interrogations, or when video is impractical,
audiotape them. He said he expected the commission to make final
recommendations in about a month.
The Legislature also is considering a bill introduced by state Sen. Elaine
Alquist (D-Santa Clara) that would require electronic recording of all
custodial interrogations relating to violent crimes. The bill calls for
video recording of questioning related to homicides. The bill passed the
Senate but remains in an Assembly committee because of concerns about its
implementation cost.
In addition, the commission is considering proposals to change California
law mandating that juries be given cautionary instructions about accepting
the validity of confessions that have not been electronically recorded.
Christopher Ochoa and Harold Hall explained why.
Ochoa, who spent 12 years in prison for a murder he did not commit in
Texas, and Hall, who spent 19 years in prison for a double murder he did
not commit in Los Angeles, told the commission that they had been
browbeaten into confessing.
They said that if authorities had been required to videotape the
confessions, enabling a defense attorney or a judge to see the tape later,
the chances of abusive conduct by police investigators would have been
reduced.
University of San Francisco law professor Richard A. Leo, a coauthor of 2
studies on false confessions, said that in the last 40 years, at least 200
false confession cases have been documented, and that "this is almost
certainly the tip of a much larger iceberg."
"Interrogation-induced false confession is a leading cause of wrongful
conviction in America," Leo told the hearing, held at Loyola Law School in
Los Angeles. In addition, Leo said, studies "tell us - quite
counter-intuitively - that false confessions appear to occur primarily in
the more serious cases, especially homicide and other high-profile felony
cases."
More than 80% of the 125 false confessions documented in a study Leo
co-wrote in 2004 occurred in homicide cases. And in cases documented by
the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New
York, false confessions led to more than two-thirds of the convictions
overturned by DNA testing.
Leo said the primary reason innocent people falsely confess is "because of
the use of psychologically coercive interrogation techniques and how they
interact with a suspect's personality. Usually it is a combination of the
2, though the primary cause is the interrogation methods that elicited the
false confession."
False confessions have particularly devastating consequences because
"confessions are the most incriminating and persuasive evidence of guilt
that the state can bring against a defendant."
Research shows that "confessions exert a strong biasing effect on the
perceptions and decision-making of criminal justice officials and lay
jurors alike because most people assume that a confession - especially a
detailed confession - is, by its very nature, true," Leo said.
Leo said studies also indicated that false confessions frequently came
during particularly long interrogations when the suspect's resistance had
been broken. Hall said he was questioned by 4 detectives in a small room
for more than 17 hours before falsely confessing.
"My only goal was to survive and get out of that room. The only way was to
tell them what they wanted to hear," said Hall, who works at the Los
Angeles County Bar Assn. and has a federal civil rights suit pending
against the Los Angeles Police Department.
Thomas P. Sullivan, a former U.S. attorney in Chicago who is a strong
advocate of recording custodial interrogations, said that he had
interviewed police officials across the country who had adopted the
practice and that they had uniformly found it to be beneficial.
Among other things, Sullivan, now in private practice in Chicago, said
police have told him that recording interrogations can help them withstand
false allegations of misconduct. And the recordings can be used to improve
police interrogation techniques, he said.
Eric Green, an ACLU attorney, said the commission's recommendations did
not go far enough. Officers "should be trained that the purpose of an
interrogation is to advance the investigation of the facts, not to secure
a confessional statement from the suspect regardless of the truth."
Sgt. Frank Bell, of the homicide division of the San Bernardino County
Sheriff's Department, said that in some instances it would be very
difficult, perhaps impossible, to videotape a suspect. He emphasized that
San Bernardino is the largest county in square miles in the continental
United States and that some areas are remote.
Sandra Lefler, the LAPD's legislative liaison, said after the hearing that
the department has no written policy on recording custodial
interrogations. She said it is "recommended, but not required."
*********************
A blue-ribbon commission that is examining California's criminal justice
system was urged Wednesday to recommend that police videotape all
interrogations of crime suspects in custody.
Among those who spoke at the three-hour hearing in support of the
recommendation were two men who spent years in prison for crimes they did
not commit, as well as a former federal prosecutor and an American Civil
Liberties Union representative.
No one spoke against the idea, but 2 law enforcement officials told the
California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice that recording
interrogations could be impossible in some circumstances, such as when
someone was caught in a remote area.
The commission, whose chairman is former California Atty. Gen. John Van de
Kamp, is considering a proposal that police agencies in California
videotape custodial interrogations, or when video is impractical,
audiotape them. He said he expected the commission to make final
recommendations in about a month.
The Legislature also is considering a bill introduced by state Sen. Elaine
Alquist (D-Santa Clara) that would require electronic recording of all
custodial interrogations relating to violent crimes. The bill calls for
video recording of questioning related to homicides. The bill passed the
Senate but remains in an Assembly committee because of concerns about its
implementation cost.
In addition, the commission is considering proposals to change California
law mandating that juries be given cautionary instructions about accepting
the validity of confessions that have not been electronically recorded.
Christopher Ochoa and Harold Hall explained why.
Ochoa, who spent 12 years in prison for a murder he did not commit in
Texas, and Hall, who spent 19 years in prison for a double murder he did
not commit in Los Angeles, told the commission that they had been
browbeaten into confessing.
They said that if authorities had been required to videotape the
confessions, enabling a defense attorney or a judge to see the tape later,
the chances of abusive conduct by police investigators would have been
reduced.
University of San Francisco law professor Richard A. Leo, a coauthor of 2
studies on false confessions, said that in the last 40 years, at least 200
false confession cases have been documented, and that "this is almost
certainly the tip of a much larger iceberg."
"Interrogation-induced false confession is a leading cause of wrongful
conviction in America," Leo told the hearing, held at Loyola Law School in
Los Angeles. In addition, Leo said, studies "tell us - quite
counter-intuitively - that false confessions appear to occur primarily in
the more serious cases, especially homicide and other high-profile felony
cases."
More than 80% of the 125 false confessions documented in a study Leo
co-wrote in 2004 occurred in homicide cases. And in cases documented by
the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New
York, false confessions led to more than two-thirds of the convictions
overturned by DNA testing.
Leo said the primary reason innocent people falsely confess is "because of
the use of psychologically coercive interrogation techniques and how they
interact with a suspect's personality. Usually it is a combination of the
2, though the primary cause is the interrogation methods that elicited the
false confession."
False confessions have particularly devastating consequences because
"confessions are the most incriminating and persuasive evidence of guilt
that the state can bring against a defendant."
Research shows that "confessions exert a strong biasing effect on the
perceptions and decision-making of criminal justice officials and lay
jurors alike because most people assume that a confession - especially a
detailed confession - is, by its very nature, true," Leo said.
Leo said studies also indicated that false confessions frequently came
during particularly long interrogations when the suspect's resistance had
been broken. Hall said he was questioned by 4 detectives in a small room
for more than 17 hours before falsely confessing.
"My only goal was to survive and get out of that room. The only way was to
tell them what they wanted to hear," said Hall, who works at the Los
Angeles County Bar Assn. and has a federal civil rights suit pending
against the Los Angeles Police Department.
Thomas P. Sullivan, a former U.S. attorney in Chicago who is a strong
advocate of recording custodial interrogations, said that he had
interviewed police officials across the country who had adopted the
practice and that they had uniformly found it to be beneficial.
Among other things, Sullivan, now in private practice in Chicago, said
police have told him that recording interrogations can help them withstand
false allegations of misconduct. And the recordings can be used to improve
police interrogation techniques, he said.
Eric Green, an ACLU attorney, said the commission's recommendations did
not go far enough. Officers "should be trained that the purpose of an
interrogation is to advance the investigation of the facts, not to secure
a confessional statement from the suspect regardless of the truth."
Sgt. Frank Bell, of the homicide division of the San Bernardino County
Sheriff's Department, said that in some instances it would be very
difficult, perhaps impossible, to videotape a suspect. He emphasized that
San Bernardino is the largest county in square miles in the continental
United States and that some areas are remote.
Sandra Lefler, the LAPD's legislative liaison, said after the hearing that
the department has no written policy on recording custodial
interrogations. She said it is "recommended, but not required."
*********************