What Deception Can The Police Employ To Obtain A Confession?

We will continue to discuss the tactics that the police might use to obtain a confession. Yesterday, we addressed the issue of whether a police officer can use deception to obtain a confession. Remember, the police cannot use tactics that will render a confession involuntary.

As a general rule, misrepresentations made by the police to a suspect during an interrogation are relevant factors that courts will use to determine whether the suspect's confession was voluntary. However, if an otherwise voluntary confession is admissible, then misrepresentations are not rendered inadmissible.

A statement by the police officer that misrepresents the accused's connection to the crime has repeatedly been said to be "the least likely to render a confession involuntary." The rationale behind this logic is that "inflating evidence of [the accused's] guilt interfered little, if at all, with his 'free and deliberate choice' of whether to confess . . . for it did not lead him to consider anything beyond his own beliefs regarding actual guilt or innocence, his moral sense of right and wrong, and his judgment regarding the likelihood that the police had garnered enough valid evidence linking him to the crime."

If you or a loved one have been charged with a sex crime, contact a Plano criminal defense lawyer.