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Advancing Justice With Recorded Interrogations
If you were Martin Tankleff, six hours of VHS tape could have saved you 17 years. Last week, the New York State Attorney General's office decided not seek a new trial against Tankleff, who was recently set free after serving 17 years of a prison sentence for his parents' murder, which he did not commit but falsely confessed to.
Just 17 years-old at the time, Tankleff was told by his interrogators that his father had awakened from a coma and identified him as the culprit, and that his dead mother had his hair in his hands. He wondered aloud whether he could've committed the murder in a blackout and produced a confession at the detectives' encouragement, a confession he quickly recanted. If there had been an audio or video recording of the confession, the jury that convicted Tankleff may well have reached a different conclusion.
Tankleff is hardly alone. Studies suggest that 15-25% of wrongful convictions stem from false confessions. Research shows that juveniles, like Tankleff, and people with mental disabilities are especially vulnerable to police pressure and thus more likely to falsely confess to crimes they did not commit. Because confessions are often viewed as the most powerful evidence at trial, they frequently trump other evidence that indicates a defendant's innocence.
It's much less expensive and far easier to videotape an interrogation now than it was in 1988, and over 450 police and sheriff's departments across the country have independently adopted electronic recording procedures, with uniformly positive experiences. But only seven states and the District of Columbia require electronic recording of custodial interrogations for homicide interrogations.
The other 43 states should follow their lead by requiring custodial interrogations to be recorded electronically from beginning to end. Recording creates an objective record that helps convict the guilty, protects officers from false claims of abuse or coercion, and reduces the number of motions to suppress, speeding up the judicial process. It cans also prevent innocent men like Martin Tankleff from spending half their lives incarcerated for crimes they did not commit.
The Justice Project, an organization which works to increase fairness and accuracy in the American criminal justice system, is proud to sponsor the Justice Newsladder, a new tool to find the top news and articles about criminal justice reform.
Comments (2)
As I understand it, Obama championed this in Illinois and got it passed with a unanimous Senate (House, too, maybe?) vote.
July 18, 2008 3:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're absolutely right brantlamb.
From a Charlie Peters op-ed in the WaPo
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010303303.html
I am a rarity among Washington journalists in that I have served in a state legislature. I know from my time in the West Virginia legislature that the challenges faced by reform-minded state representatives are no less, if indeed not more, formidable than those encountered in Congress. For me, at least, trying to deal with those challenges involved as much drama as any election. And the "heart and soul" bill, the one for which a legislator gives everything he or she has to get passed, has long told me more than anything else about a person's character and ability.
Consider a bill into which Obama clearly put his heart and soul. The problem he wanted to address was that too many confessions, rather than being voluntary, were coerced -- by beating the daylights out of the accused.
Obama proposed requiring that interrogations and confessions be videotaped.
This seemed likely to stop the beatings, but the bill itself aroused immediate opposition. There were Republicans who were automatically tough on crime and Democrats who feared being thought soft on crime. There were death penalty abolitionists, some of whom worried that Obama's bill, by preventing the execution of innocents, would deprive them of their best argument. Vigorous opposition came from the police, too many of whom had become accustomed to using muscle to "solve" crimes. And the incoming governor, Rod Blagojevich, announced that he was against it.
Obama had his work cut out for him.
He responded with an all-out campaign of cajolery. It had not been easy for a Harvard man to become a regular guy to his colleagues. Obama had managed to do so by playing basketball and poker with them and, most of all, by listening to their concerns. Even Republicans came to respect him. One Republican state senator, Kirk Dillard, has said that "Barack had a way both intellectually and in demeanor that defused skeptics."
The police proved to be Obama's toughest opponent. Legislators tend to quail when cops say things like, "This means we won't be able to protect your children." The police tried to limit the videotaping to confessions, but Obama, knowing that the beatings were most likely to occur during questioning, fought -- successfully -- to keep interrogations included in the required videotaping.
By showing officers that he shared many of their concerns, even going so far as to help pass other legislation they wanted, he was able to quiet the fears of many.
Obama proved persuasive enough that the bill passed both houses of the legislature, the Senate by an incredible 35 to 0. Then he talked Blagojevich into signing the bill, making Illinois the first state to require such videotaping.
Peters, the publisher of the Washington Monthly doesn't tell the whole story here. Mayor Daley didn't want this bill and neither did any of the states attorneys. When Obama started virtually everybody was arrayed against him.
This bill has not only kept cops from beating the hell out of people to get confessions it's saved Illinois and especially Chicago millions in wrongful incarceration suits.
July 19, 2008 1:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
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