Protect and serve
If the cops want to put the screws to a suspect but don't have enough information to ensure a conviction, they often arrest the suspect's girlfriend and have Child Protective Services take their kids away (since both parents are now in jail). This occurs even when they know the girlfriend hasn't done anything wrong. The idea is to scare the suspect into confessing "in exchange" for having the girlfriend let go and the kids returned home.
The police can detain anybody they want for 72 hours as long as they can claim there might possibly be something going on. If it turns out after three days that no charges are filed against that person - because, of course, there's nothing to file charges about - the person is released. In the meantime, lives have been disrupted, jobs have been lost (minimum-wage employers are not known for being patient when an employee fails to show up on account of being in jail), and kids have been taken away by CPS. All the police have to do is say there might be drugs in the home, or that the person they're arresting looks like somebody who is suspected of a crime, or something along those lines.
The thing is, the 72 hours in jail don't include nights or weekends or holidays. So if they pick somebody up on a Thursday night, then Friday is a holiday, and then there's the weekend, the person could be sitting in jail, uncharged, from Thursday night until the following Wednesday. This is a person who police know has done nothing wrong, and the goal is to pressure some other person, who may or may not have done anything, to confess.
Even though confessions made under these circumstances are, obviously, less than totally reliable, they go a long way towards getting the confessor convicted. If you were on a jury and heard that the defendant had confessed to the crime, wouldn't you figure that he must be guilty, since innocent people don't confess? Defendants in that situation often won't even go to trial, since the confession is so damning, and instead they'll take a plea bargain.
The police can detain anybody they want for 72 hours as long as they can claim there might possibly be something going on. If it turns out after three days that no charges are filed against that person - because, of course, there's nothing to file charges about - the person is released. In the meantime, lives have been disrupted, jobs have been lost (minimum-wage employers are not known for being patient when an employee fails to show up on account of being in jail), and kids have been taken away by CPS. All the police have to do is say there might be drugs in the home, or that the person they're arresting looks like somebody who is suspected of a crime, or something along those lines.
The thing is, the 72 hours in jail don't include nights or weekends or holidays. So if they pick somebody up on a Thursday night, then Friday is a holiday, and then there's the weekend, the person could be sitting in jail, uncharged, from Thursday night until the following Wednesday. This is a person who police know has done nothing wrong, and the goal is to pressure some other person, who may or may not have done anything, to confess.
Even though confessions made under these circumstances are, obviously, less than totally reliable, they go a long way towards getting the confessor convicted. If you were on a jury and heard that the defendant had confessed to the crime, wouldn't you figure that he must be guilty, since innocent people don't confess? Defendants in that situation often won't even go to trial, since the confession is so damning, and instead they'll take a plea bargain.
posted by P.D. Clerk at 12:36 PM
1 Comments:
If the case goes to court are you allowed to tell the jury about the incarcerated girlfriend/wife and how that contributed to the confession?
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