Police deception has and always will be a topic of discussion amongst the law enforcement community and the public we serve, protect, and prosecute. Police deception has been used as a tool to determine involvement as well a tool for apprehension. The use of undercover operations and entrapment situations to aid in the apprehension of criminals has become commonplace. So is deception by law enforcement reasonable in police interrogation and when is deception appropriate in this constraint?
From a utilitarian view one can consider the positive outcomes that using deceptive tactics can roduce, in some situations these positive outcomes are far greater than the negative. Taking a look at the use of deception tactics from a deontological view point one must ask the question “Does the use if manipulative techniques in law enforcement constitute treating suspected criminals as mere means to our ends… ” (Brasswell, McCarthy and McCarthy, 2015 p. 20).
Both of these views consider the overall good as a result of the actions one takes; however, if the outcome of one’s actions is negative is the mean negative as well as the end? There are two contradictory outcomes that have occurred as a esult of police deception tactics. The suspect is interrogated, presented with false information, and admits guilt to actions he or she committed; or the suspect is interrogated, presented with false information, and admits guilt to actions he or she never committed.
How and why does this occur, are the tactics that police use justified, and on a whole do they produce competent results? The confession to a crime is viewed by law enforcement and the judicial system as the proverbial nail in the coffin; admission is highly sought and revered. Brasswell et al. , (2015) etailed eight deceptive interrogation techniques that law enforcement use to secure an admission, many of which can be viewed simply as police officers doing their job within the constraints the judicial system have given them.
Alternately fabricated evidence, exaggerating the nature and severity of the offense, misrepresenting identity, and the use of promises stand out as the four that have an overt ethical dilemma. These tactics have elicited false confessions; coerced-compliant false confessions, and coerced-internalized false confessions (Kassin, 2008), both of which occur with pressure from the police and in his day and age, most of the police induced pressure being psychological in nature.
A recent article in the Bringham Young Law review by Sacharoff (2015) addresses police deception in regards to gaining access into individual’s homes, while the article’s focus was on police actions and the Fourth Amendment, also addressed was the implication of the Fourth Amendment toward journalists, animal rights activists, media scholars, and professional organizations. Sacharoff (2015) addressed the recent discussions by the Supreme Court to evoke another test into the Fourth Amendment besides the “reasonable xpectation of privacy” test, which has been the basis for the Fourth Amendment.
This test asks the question would an average person in a similar situation reasonable expect privacy under the circumstances. This also addresses the fact that an individual gives up his or her right to privacy once he or she has allows a stranger into the home, regardless of whether this stranger was a police officer posing as a delivery driver or not. Sacharoff ascertained, “.. the old Fourth Amendment test, reasonable expectation of privacy, endorsed police deception… ” (p. 403).
Individuals were claiming a violation of heir Fourth Amendment rights that was not being upheld in the courts, currently individuals are now addressing the violation of their Fourth Amendment rights to that of a trespassing violation instead, and the judicial system has now raised another test that must be answered; the trespass test. The trespass test is an enhancement to the expectation of privacy test. This affects police officers and how they attempt to deceive in their investigation, “the key questions residents ask when deciding whether to admit a person into their home is the person’s identity and purpose.
When a police officer lies about both, and lies specifically in order to gain entry, that officer has trespassed” (Sacharoff, 2015, p. 404). This article ascertains that when law enforcement deceives based on identity and their purpose for the deception is when consent has been debased. How then does law enforcement effectively do their job? Most individuals are not honest especially within the commission of criminal activity. The judicial system seems to ascertain that police should conduct their business in the most ethically sound way all while dealing with a society that does not adhere to hose same standards.
The examination of instances where individuals rights where infringed upon, deceptive measures were taken by law enforcement, and a confession occurred by an innocent person must be evaluated as well within this discussion. Many individuals would establish that no one would admit to the commission of a crime if they were innocent, but cases exist where DNA evidence exonerates an individual who was interrogated by law enforcement and subsequently admitted to a crime they never committed.
Is this the doing of the police engaging in coercive and deceptive tactics or is the ombination of the police, judges, and juries who all play a role in the assessment of guilt? Kassin (2008) examines this exact set of circumstances that could lead to a guilty verdict of the non- guilty, When a suspect retracts his or her confession, pleads not guilty, and goes to trial, a sequence of two courtroom decisions is set into motion. First, a judge determines whether the confession was voluntary and admissible as evidence.
Then a jury, hearing the admissible confession, determines whether the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But can people istinguish between true and false confessions, or do most people believe, simply, that no one would confess to a crime he or she did not commit? (p. 252) This ideal that no one admits to a crime they didn’t commit is unfortunately not real. So is it the police and their interrogation tactics that are to blame or is it the judicial system and the jury of one’s peers that has failed to look at evidence, confessions, and the beyond a reasonable doubt theory when evaluating suspects?
Police officers are required to investigate and submit evidence of individuals guilt ased on learning and circumstances that typically they have little knowledge of, the tactics in which police officers gather as much information as they can to pursue the suspect they believe committed the crime should be irrelevant as long as these tactics don’t violate individuals rights. The duty then lies within the courts to evaluate the information presented and determine whether or not the information is valid.
Kassin (2008) describes solutions of a reformed system as improving the way jurors and judges evaluate confessions simply by being able to see how that confession was gathered in the first place. Requiring police agencies to record all interrogations and provide this recording to jurors and judges would not only force the police to operate within the rights of the individual; but it allows jurors and judges to see the process by which the confession occurred and determine the validity.
These types of deception have played a huge role in law enforcement and has shaped our judicial landscape, although some forms of deception are admissible, still others forms are still being evaluated. One must come back to the mean and the ends, does the good of the mean outweigh the end result?
