What is at risk to the criminal justice system by allowing officers to fabricate evidence to induce confessions? Do you believe that the best way to catch a criminal is to act like them,
and lie as a means to an end – here obtaining a confession from a guilty suspect? How do police know whether or not a suspect is really guilty before trial? Research the law in your jurisdiction for the limits of police deception in conducting interrogations. Does allowing police to be deceptive undermine the public's confidence in the criminal justice system?
What will be an ideal response?
ANSWER: Answers may vary: As many concepts discussed in this text, students are confronted with their views of achieving the myriad of goals of the criminal justice system with the protection of the constitutional rights of the public generally and criminal suspects specifically. The legal justification for allowing trickery in obtaining confessions is that innocent people do not confess. Therefore any police tactic used to induce already guilty suspects to confess is legal. Recent exonerations from wrongful convictions indicate that false confessions are a real byproduct of police trickery during the interrogation process.
You might also like to view...
Today in the U.S., even in states that have abolished the common law, the common law is still used for:
a. definitions. b. civil wrongs. c. stare decisis. d. corpus delicti.
Which of the following is not a source of internal invalidity?
a. Selection bias b. External events c. Contamination d. Statistical control
Individuals released on their own recognizance do not have to pay bail
Indicate whether the statement is true or false
Discuss the differences between felonious and nonfelonious homicides.
What will be an ideal response?