Toulmin Style: Police Use of Deceit during Interrogations - Research Paper Example

 Toulmin Style: Police Use of Deceit during Interrogations Police use of deceit during interrogations is a very contradictory issue; as such methods of interrogations like speculation with evidences and blackmailing on the part of police make national law enforcement system less trustworthy and citizens start doubting their safety. Hence, in order to prevent such disastrous consequences, use of deceit during interrogations should be forbidden and punished unless the deceit is being justified by some strong evidences. Thus a confession retrieved by deceptive methods must be reviewed and shouldn’t be processed in court without any other evidences but the confession, as police use of deceit often leads to false confessions and therefore imprisonment of innocent people. Even though the Fifth Amendment provides a person with the right to refuse confessing in something that the person has never done, police detectives often use a lot of deceptive methods in order to retrieve confessions from their suspects. However, it often happens that police workers start abusing their authority and frighten suspects so much that they start being afraid for their lives and decide to confess in what they’ve never done against their real will in order to improve their situations at least for a little bit and shorten their terms by cooperating with police (Najdowski & Bonventre 2014). For instance, police detectives may tell a suspect that they have got something on him, like fingerprints or witnesses who saw him doing the crime, and there is no way out for him, so if he wants to shorten his sentence, he can make a deal with police and confess. Although in fact policemen don’t have any proofs of the crime, the suspect doesn’t know it and confesses which is difficult to take back later. Use of trickery and different deceptive psychological techniques during the interrogation process makes a suspect to admit doing the crime, which later leads to the entire case going to the wrong path of investigation. A research on the matter of false confessions conducted by Conti has come up with two kinds of false confessions. The “coerced-compliant” (Conti 1999) confessions happen when a suspect gets entangled in current state of affairs of the case and doesn’t really realize whether what detectives tell him could possibly be true or false. Thus he becomes frightened and stressed out because of police coercions and gives up just get it done, even though he knows he hasn’t done anything wrong. Thus a person might be aware of the fact that he hasn’t done anything wrong but thinking of the police having something on him makes one desperate, so he starts considering confession, as it may probably shorten his sentence. The second type of false confessions is called “coerced-internalized” and means that a suspect becomes so frightened and gets convinced by the detectives who are interrogating him that he starts actually believing that he indeed has done the crime, so he confesses in what he hasn’t done being affected by policemen’s coercion and deceit (Conti 1999). Certain researched on the matter of the coerced-internalized confessions have denoted that there is a possibility of creation of false memories when a person finds oneself in such a stressful situation of police coercion (Rutledge 2007). Hence, it turns out that a person might not even suspect police interrogations as deceptive and not even presuppose that one might be tricked by policemen (Gohara 2005). The person starts believing in police arguments and, as the one is totally shocked and at bay, his brain starts constructing memories about the events that have never happened in order to justify the situation one finds himself in. However, it would be reasonable to question the cases that were closed with application of deceptive interrogations, as it is difficult to argue that sometimes deceptive methods maintain policemen’s investigations and lead them to true confessions. Hence, multiple cases of successfully resolved crimes with application of trickery at the hands of police prove the opposite point of view that claims that deceit is actually might be a good way to retrieve confessions from suspects when detectives have not enough evidences against a suspect or the evidences that they have are indirect. The very first case when US Supreme Court upheld a confession retrieved by trickery happened in 1969. It was a case where a murderer confessed in doing the crime because of police deceptive speculations with evidences (Reid n.d.). Since then police departments started using deceptive methods in order to retrieve confessions and indeed sometimes they managed to get the confessions which led them to the evidenced that confirmed the confessions. Police departments justified their deceit by making the method one of crucial strategic approaches of law enforcement, even though this approach has been making the entire police less trustworthy in the eyes of people. Although sometimes it becomes difficult to discern false confessions from the true ones, this issue must be resolved immediately in the following way. Thus in order not to mix up false confession with the true one, a confession must be obligatory underpinned with real evidences that would justify and approve the story retold during the confession. This means that court should refuse the cases in which confessions retrieved by deceit appear to be the only proofs of a person’s guilt. If police is not able to provide court with any other evidences but the confession retrieved by deceit, the person can’t be found guilty, as it would be possible to argue that the confession was just a result of police deceit and coercion. However, if a confession is being retrieved by deceit and leads to finding out some new evidences, the trickery can be considered as justified, because in this case justice and retaliation for the crime are much more important than the methods that were used in order to restore the justice. Hence, it turns out that the only case when police use of deceit might be justified is when the retrieved confession gets confirmed by the straight evidences it leads the investigation to, or when the confession links the existed evidences outright to the crime. In the cases when confession retrieved by deceptive methods can’t be proved with evidences, not only the confession should be extinguished from the case but also the policemen who conducted the deceit should be punished for official misconduct. References Najdowski, C. J. and Bonventre, C. L. (2014). Deception in the interrogation room. Monitor of Psychology. 45, 26. Reid, John E. (n.d). The Use of Trickery and Deceit During Interrogation. Police Link. Retrieved 28 May 2015 from: http://policelink.monster.com/training/articles/1970-the-use-of-trickery-and-deceit-during-interrogation Conti, R. P. (1999). The Psychology of False Confessions. Credibility Assessment & Witness Psychology. 14, 22–23. Rutledge, Devallis. (January, 2007). The Lawful Use of Deception. Police, n.pag. Gohara, M.S. (2005). A Lie for a Lie: False Confessions and the Case for Reconsidering the Legality of Deceptive Interrogation Techniques. Fordham Urban Law Journal, 33, 101-150. Read More