Compulsory Videotaping of Interrogations
In today’s technology-reliant world, we are constantly aware of being videotaped as a means of documenting potential law-breaking as well as deterring future crime. Whether we’re shopping at a store or driving on a busy road, there are cameras watching at all times. Subsequently, many people might be surprised to learn that criminal interrogations are not typically recorded, and that the law does not require them to be. In a high pressure situation such as this, where there is certainly a chance of police officers using suggestible or coercive methods to obtain a suspect’s confession, it is of the utmost importance to require interrogations be videotaped. If confessions without a videotaped interrogation were inadmissible in court, there would be less likelihood of police-induced false confessions.
Baby Hope & Conrado Juarez
The problem with unrecorded interrogations is that videotaped confessions are often entered into court as evidence without allowing the judge or jury to observe the circumstances under which the confession was given. In a recent case, 52-year-old Conrado Juarez confessed to the 1991 rape and murder of his cousin, Anjelica Castillo, known in the media as Baby Hope (McKinley & Goldstein, 2013). The four-year-old girl’s body had been found in a cooler on the side of the Henry Hudson Parkway and gone unidentified until October 2013 when Juarez confessed to helping his now deceased sister move her body there. After 12 hours of interrogation, however, Juarez confessed much more. The confession was videotaped, but the 12-hour long interrogation was not. Juarez retracted his confession soon afterwards, claiming that he was exhausted from the prolonged questioning and...
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...ors. It would certainly be illuminating as to who is most likely to falsely confess. For example, it is probable that people who have high anxiety may falsely confess in a high pressure situation such as an interrogation, but identifying other factors and individual differences may aid police in their interrogation approaches so as to minimize the risk of obtaining a false confession.
With technology constantly improving and evolving, there is potential for research on other types of police monitoring such as dashboard cameras and body-mounted cameras. While dashboard cameras have made headlines with capturing police brutality, there is no empirical data on whether this method of surveillance is effective in deterring abusive police behavior. Similarly, cameras mounted on a police officer’s person have not been examined as to their overall efficacy.
Conclusion
``In criminal law, confession evidence is a prosecutor’s most potent weapon’’ (Kassin, 1997)—“the ‘queen of proofs’ in the law” (Brooks, 2000). Regardless of when in the legal process they occur, statements of confession often provide the most incriminating form of evidence and have been shown to significantly increase the rate of conviction. Legal scholars even argue that a defendant’s confession may be the sole piece of evidence considered during a trial and often guides jurors’ perception of the case (McCormick, 1972). The admission of a false confession can be the deciding point between a suspect’s freedom and their death sentence. To this end, research and analysis of the false confessions-filled Norfolk Four case reveals the drastic and controversial measures that the prosecuting team will take to provoke a confession, be it true or false.
Psychological research shows that eyewitness testimony is not always accurate, therefore it should not be used in the criminal justice system. Discuss.
Police officers with their body cameras: a history and back ground paper to answer the question if should all police officers wear body cameras, it is important to first look at the history and back ground of the topic. According to article of Journal of quantitative criminology, writers Ariel, Farrar, Sutherland, Body cameras have been given a new eye opener to people about the excessive use of force against their community members. Arial, Farrar, and Sutherland in the article state “The effect of police body warn cameras on use of force and citizens’ complaints against the police: A randomize controlled trial” describe their observation as:
(Kennedy & Haygood, 1992; Williams & Loftus, 1994), which is worrying considering the growing and substantial body of evidence from laboratory studies, field studies, and the criminal justice system supporting the conclusion that eyewitnesses frequently make mistakes (Cutler & Penrod, 1995; Huff, 1987; Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin, 1986; Innocence Project, 2009; Wells, Small, Penrod, Malpass, Fulero, & Brimacombe, 1998). According to a number of studies, eyewitness misidentifications are the most common cause of wrongful convictions (Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin, 1986; Wells et al., 1998; Yarmey, 2003) and, through the use of forensic DNA testing, have been found to account for more convictions of innocent individuals than all other factors combined (Innocence Project, 2009; Wells, Memon, & Penrod, 2006).
The act of interrogation has been around for thousands of years. From the Punic Wars to the war in Iraq, interrogating criminals, prisoners or military officers in order to receive advantageous information has been regularly used. These interrogation techniques can range from physical pain to emotional distress. Hitting an individual with a whip while they hang from a ceiling or excessively questioning them may seem like an ideal way to get them to reveal something, but in reality it is ineffective and . This is because even the most enduring individual can be made to admit anything under excruciating circumstances. In the Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights there is a provision (“no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself” ) which reflects a time-honored common principle that no person is bound to betray him or herself or can be forced to give incriminating evidence. This ideology of self-incrimination has been challenged heavily over the past s...
“… if not for bystander Feidin Santana’s video casting doubt on office Michael Slagers version of events, he may not have quickly been charged with murder…” Imagine if this man would have been set free only to think getting away with murder is easy. Seeming that a person is an employee of the law, jurors’ do not expect them to lie. All they need to say is that they felt in danger or claim they were put in a tough situation. “when the cop story first came out, he said he was in a tussle,” said Virgil Delestine…”but the video told what really happened.” With body cameras at the scene this will help increase honesty in policemen because they know they are being recorded. In addition, I feel it would be very effective in building community trust if the police force would broadcast the tapes. By keeping everyone up to date, this will encourage people that law enforcements are not being sneaky and are putting reinforcement in place cops who do wrong.
False confessions are receiving more public attention now that people are speaking out about having to serve jail time for a crime they did not commit. 2015 was a year to remember for false confessions, starting in January when a man was released after serving 21 years in prison. The protocols that interrogators are trained to follow are dangerous because they allow investigators to have complete influence on innocent people to make false confessions. Most people believe that all interrogators are trained to use mental and physical abusive tactics because it appears in the media and news so often, therefore making it believable to blame them for false confessions. “Interrogation is derived from the Latin roots inter (in the presence of) and rogre (to ask).There are no nefarious connotations, elements of torture, or illegal activities associated with the action of interrogation”(Boetig).
Depending on what study is read, the incidence of false confession is less than 35 per year, up to 600 per year. That is a significant variance in range, but no matter how it is evaluated or what numbers are calculated, the fact remains that false confessions are a reality. Why would an innocent person confess to a crime that she did not commit? Are personal factors, such as age, education, and mental state, the primary reason for a suspect to confess? Are law enforcement officers and their interrogation techniques to blame for eliciting false confessions? Regardless of the stimuli that lead to false confessions, society and the justice system need to find a solution to prevent the subsequent aftermath.
There have been lots of modern technologies introduced in the United States of America to assist law enforcement agencies with crime prevention. But the use of body-worn cameras by police personnel brings about many unanswered questions and debate. Rising questions about the use of body cam are from concern citizens and law enforcement personnel. In this present day America, the use body cameras by all law enforcement personnel and agencies are one of the controversial topics being discussed on a daily base. Body worn cameras were adopted due to the alleged police brutality cases: for instance, the case of Michael Brown, an African-American who was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 2014, Eric Garner died as a result of being put in a chokehold by a New York police officer, and John Crawford, shot and killed by a police officer at a Walmart in Beavercreek, Ohio.
Although the conduct of police officers and the validity of the video evidence will be scrutinized, body cameras are necessary because police brutality and falsified reports would be diminished. Malcom X stated “If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again.” In my opinion, I feel the police officers would be held in check due to the knowledge of their constant monitoring. The controversy surrounding police body cameras have been great because the desire of people wanting to protect themselves and their community. The conceptual intent of these cameras would not only be to protect the suspect being recorded, as well as, the officer that is involved in the situation in question.
For space-saving purposes I will refer to this paper as the “Rialto Experiment.” The Rialto Experiment began on February 13th, 2012 and ran for a year. In this experiment Farrar wanted to find out if “rational beings, including police officers, [were] unlikely to embrace socially undesirable behavior when videotaped”(3). Almost a thousand shifts were randomly divided nearly equally into two treatment groups. Officers wearing cameras were the treatment group, and officers without cameras were the control group. Over 43,000 police-to-public contacts were documented over the span of one year during the experiment, and Farrar reported that the “findings suggest[ed] more than a 50% reduction in the total number of incidents of use of force compared to control conditions, and nearly ten times more citizens ' complaints in the twelve months prior to the experiment” (8). While his evidence strongly suggests that police cameras would greatly reduce the use of force and citizen complaints, even Farrar acquiesces that the Rialto Experiment did not collect any evidence from the citizens being recorded as to whether they modified their behavior after receiving the information that they were being videotaped. Several studies sourced by Farrar suggest that human beings positively modify their behavior when they are being observed (1-2). Farrar also notes that there may be “ethical considerations”(9) posed,
Since their inception, police body cameras have been a controversial topic as many do not agree on their effectiveness and legality. To the trained eye, body cameras clearly have no negatives other than the sheer cost of their implementation. Some people, nonetheless, do believe that it is an encroachment of privacy for police to record private and/or public interactions even though it is purely legal. While that may be seen as a negative, it is wholly subjective and must be completely ignored when considering the factual analysis of police body camera use that is necessary to verify their validity. When only taking fact into account, there is no way to deny the nearly infinite benefits of body cameras.
Police officers should be required to wear body cameras because it will build a trust between law enforcement and the community, it will decrease the amount of complaints against police officers, and lastly it will decrease the amount of police abuse of authority. In addition, an officer is also more likely to behave in a more appropriate manner that follows standard operating procedures when encountering a civilian. “A 2013 report by the Department of Justice found that officers and civilians acted in a more positive manner when they were aware that a camera was present” (Griggs, Brandon). Critics claim that the use of body cameras is invasive of the officers and civilians privacy.
Thesis: By implementing Body cameras there will be more effective ways to monitor police activity the ability to protect civilians and law officials will greatly increase. Today I would like to share more with everyone the huge issue police brutality plays in our society and hopefully by the end of my speech you will want police officers to wear mandatory body cameras as well.
Due to recent cases of police brutality in America, activists are urging police departments across the country to start using body worn cameras, or BWCs. BWCs are devices that can be worn by police officers to collect video evidence while they are at work. There are numerous studies proving the effectiveness of these devices, but many critics claim that they risk the citizens’ privacy by opening the possibility of tapes being released without their consent. Although many activists claim that there are already strict standards set for the release of BWC tapes, some worry that the current standards are insufficient for securely protecting the privacy of citizens.