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Interrogation police introduction to
Interrogation police introduction to
Interrogation police introduction to
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position. It is agreed that the professionals in the criminal justice system cannot behave in a manner likely to suggest that they take advantage of the vulnerable and the ignorant in the name of pursuing the evidence. As such, the legal enforcement officers need to ensure that a suspect is educated and well informed on the implication of their confessions. Further, in numerous cases, victims or suspects are represented or guided by attorneys because at times, the law enforcement officers have a tendency of enticing a victim who over implicating information in the face of deception.
The evidence offered during the trials should fully reflect the circumstances in which they were confessed. The aim of any interrogation is to ensure that a fair environment for the acquisition of the evidence is provided so that the defendants are aware of the possible consequences of the confessions they make before the investigating personnel. The case has offered insights into the legal practices and the criminal justice system with the stakeholders agreeing that there should be no deliberate creation of the environments that allow blatant errors which lead convictions (Kamisar, 2012). A system that withholds information on warnings to the defendants is defective and hence should be entertained in the modern legal
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Arizona provides vital information regarding the suspects who have been subjected to interrogation by the detectives with the privilege of the access to legal counsel. It is essential to consider the rights accorded by the fifth amendment of the American constitution. It has been a subject of discussion on whether the confessions obtained without the access to a counsel should be admissible as evidence in the court of law. The emergence of the activist groups and the relevant bodies have been categorical that all the suspects should be warned of the possible consequences of the statements made about the potential court cases in which they are
The Supreme Court ruled that due to the coercive nature of the custodial interrogation by police, no confession could be admissible under the Fifth Amendment self-incrimination Clause and Sixth Amendment right to an attorney unless a suspect has been made aware to his rights and the suspect had then waived them
Victims’ rights include being informed of the investigation, being able to make a witness statement, being informed of the charges laid against the accused and being treated with sympathy and compassion. (Charter of Victim’s Rights NT 2016). The rights of the accused are outlined Article 14 of ‘The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights’, which states that the accused must; be informed of the charges laid against them, have adequate time to prepare and choose a counsel of their choosing, be tried without undue delay, be tried in the presence of the court, not be compelled to testify against themselves or confess guilt and be compensated by the court if wrongfully convicted (ICCPR 1966). These rights must be upheld to ensure equality before the law, however, when neglected justice is denied as illustrated in the Mallard and Raggett
Elsen, Sheldon, and Arthur Rosett. “Protections for the Suspect under Miranda v. Arizona.” Columbia Law Review 67.4 (1967): 645-670. Web. 10 January 2014.
This paper will consider eye witness testimony and its place in convicting accused criminals. Psychology online (2013) defines “eye witness testimony” as a statement from a person who has witnessed a crime, and is capable of communicating what they have seen, to a court of law under oath. Eye witness testimonies are used to convict accused criminals due to the first hand nature of the eye witnesses’ observations. There are however many faults within this system of identification. Characteristics of the crime is the first issue that will be discussed in this paper, and the flaws that have been identified. The second issue to be discussed will be the stress impact and the inability to correctly identify the accused in a violent or weapon focused crime. The third issue to be discussed is inter racial identification and the problems faced when this becomes a prominent issue. The fourth issue will be time lapse, meaning, the time between the crime and the eye witness making a statement and how the memory can be misconstrued in this time frame. To follow this will be the issue of how much trust jurors-who have no legal training-put on to the eye witness testimony, which may be faltered. This paper references the works of primarily Wells and Olsen (2003) and Rodin (1987) and Schmechel et al. (2006) it will be argued that eye witness testimony is not always accurate, due to many features; inter racial identification, characteristics of the crime, response latency, and line up procedures therefore this paper will confirm that eyewitness testimonies should not be utilised in the criminal ju...
You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during police questioning, if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you by the state. These words have preceded every arrest since Miranda v. Arizona 1966, informing every detained person of his rights before any type of formal police questioning begins. This issue has been a hot topic for decades causing arguments over whether or not the Miranda Warnings should or should not continue to be part of police practices, and judicial procedures. In this paper, the author intends to explore many aspects of the Miranda Warnings including; definition, history, importance to society, constitutional issues, and pro’s and con’s of having the Miranda Warnings incorporated into standard police procedures.
Even those who should have a clear sense of the an interrogation, fail to see the coercion brought upon the suspect that might lead to a false confession, and once a confession has been made, false or true, detectives or police terminates their investigation that could have found potential evidence to exonerate them. Once a confession is obtained, police tend to ‘‘close’’ cases as solved and refuse to investigate other sources of evidence (Leo and Liu) which is why such a high number of innocent people still remain behind bars. Across samples, police-induced false confessions were evident in between 15 and 25% in cases, making it one of the likely leading causes of wrongful conviction (Leo and Liu), but still juries disregard this evidence! Unfortunately, more cases like Rivers are out there. According to the Washington Post, the National Registry ha logged 1,733 exonerating cases of false confession. In one case, a man by the name of Ricky Jackson spent four decades for a crime he did not commit, only to be exonerated by DNA evidence after 40 years. To emphasize, few states, if any at all, courts provides information to the jury regarding how to assess voluntariness, nor do
The Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth-Amendment to many American citizens and law makers is considered abstract. The complexity of this concept can easily be traced back to its beginning in which it lacked an easily identifiable principle. Since its commencement in 1789 the United States Judicial system has had a hard time interpreting and translating this vague amendment. In many cases the courts have gone out of their way to protect the freedoms of the accused. The use of three major Supreme Court disputes will show the lengths these Justices have gone through, in order to preserve the rights and civil liberties of three criminals, who were accused of heinous crimes and in some cases were supposed to face up to a lifetime in federal prison.
In the adversarial justice system, when the offender admits to the criminal act, there is no further controversy and the case promptly proceeds to sentencing. Physical evidence and victim or witness statements may often be overlooked and not considered. The confession is considered unequivocal evidence of guilt and a conviction is ensured. Indeed, the interrogation process’ sole purpose is to obtain a confession. Zimbardo (1967) estimated that “of those criminal cases that are solved, more than 80% are solved by a confession.” (Conti, 1999) Without the confession, convictions may be reduced significantly. So why does a person falsely confess to a crime if the likelihood of a conviction is eminent? A false confession to any crime is self-destructive and counterintuitive.
Miranda v. Arizona is a very important activist decision that required police to inform criminal suspects of their rights before they could be interrogated. These rights include: the right to remain silent, that anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law, you have a right to an attorney, if you cannot afford an attorney one will be appointed to you be the court. In this case the Fifth Amendment's right that a person may not be forced to incriminate one's self was interpreted in an activist way as meaning that one must be aware of this right before on is interrogated by the police. Prior to this ruling it was common practice to force and coerce confessions from criminal suspects who did not know they had the right not to incriminate themselves.
In order to decrease the amount of innocent people being incarcerated due to false confessions, methods of interrogation need to be taken into consideration and modified based on how that interrogation technique obtains a confession. New interrogation techniques need to show suspects that they do not need to provide a false confession to be able to go home (Gudjonsoon, 2003). There are various types of false confessions that need to be taken into consideration when modifying interrogation techniques, as they all have their own unique properties that allow them to differ from one another (Kassin, Appleby & Perillo, 2010). It is clear that false confessions seem unlikely to most people, but society needs to accept that they occur frequently in case law and therefore need to be taken seriously.
Leo, R and Ofshe R. The Social Psychology of Police Interrogation: The Theory and Classification of True and False Confessions. 16 Studies in Law, Politics and Society 189,
This paper looks at the implications of the plea bargaining in the prosecution process. In the prosecution process, litigants are not advised to go into plea negotiations. Moreover, they are not required to acknowledge a negotiation understanding offer. In some cases, a few litigants follow the plea negotiation process in the event that they trust that the risk of conviction is exceeded by the likelihood of exoneration. Different respondents may slight the risks and settle on a principled decision to continue to trial . Some of these respondents try to utilize trial procedures as a gathering for communicating dispute, and others simply wish to practice their established right to a trial or to freely pronounce their variant of occasions.
This book consists of many different arguments as to what flaws exist in the “Mr. Big” undercover operation, and how one’s confession to a crime when targeted through this operation could not be reliable. I have chosen to discuss two specific arguments which I feel are the most significant ones. Firstly the operation only takes place after a trial has occurred and due to lack of substantial evidence the accused is let go, and only then is it that an undercover officer begins to lure him into this so called criminal organization, they build his/her trust by giving him/her abundant of money, and once trust is gained they introduce him/her to the “Mr. Big” who will solve all his/her problems and all he has to is confess the crime to him. Given the level of inducement there is no reason for him to reject committing the crime, may it be false or not. The justice in the Mentuck case worded it perfectly as he said “ the police must be aware that as the level of inducement increases, the risk of receiving a confession to an offence which one did not commit increases, and the reliability of the confession diminishes correspondingly… (page 15, Mr. Big).
Yet it is all the more important that they do so now. Prosecutorial power has increased as our criminal justice system has moved away from an adversarial system to one of negotiated pleas. Sentencing is more often than not dictated by mandatory minimums or guidelines calculations, which vests more power in the prosecutor through charging decisions. The traditional tools for checking prosecutorial abuse—judges and the juries—have a much smaller role in the process than they once did. Finally, remedial measures, like suits for damages, are all but nonexistent. As a delegate to the Constitutional Convention remarked: "The life of a citizen ought not to depend on the fiat of a single person. Prejudice, resentment, and partiality are among the weaknesses of human nature, and are apt to pervert the judgment of the greatest and best of men. But because the life or liberty of the accused now depends increasingly on the decisions of one person, the prosecutor's commitment to seeking justice is all the more important. Here, we try to identify what one facet of seeking justice means and then examine the somewhat more beguiling question of how it could be better sought (Don J. DeGabrielle & Eliot F. Turner, Spring 2013). With the existence of ethics in criminal justice, prosecutors should be aware that their ethical obligations can exceed their constitutional ones. The
There is an assumption that an interrogation and effectively a confession is over once a suspect states “I did it.” More signals pre-admission is over, but a simple “I did it” does not suffice for a conviction. Here lies where the presumption that one who admitted to the crime actually committed the crime. If a simple “I did it” is not sufficient, and they stated facts, specifically facts unknown to the general public, how else would they have come to know that information if not for committing the crime. Here lies the problem that must be resolved. Because although inquiries into voluntariness and coercion at trial provide a quality control over pre-admission conduct on the police, they do little to manage post-admission conduct. That is the construction of the