Illinois becomes first state to ban police from lying to minors during interrogations amid ongoing c

[mucifer]

Source: Chicago Tribune

Illinois becomes first state to ban police from lying to minors during interrogations amid ongoing criminal justice overhaul under Pritzker

Police will be forbidden from using deceptive tactics while interrogating minors under a measure Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law Thursday that made Illinois the first state in the nation to ban the practice.

The bill was one of several Pritzker signed in a morning ceremony that, together with a sweeping piece of legislation he approved earlier this year that includes the eventual elimination of cash bail, represent a major overhaul of the criminal justice system in Illinois under his watch.

Advocates of the new law dealing with how police interrogate minors say lying or using other deceptive actions while questioning a young person can lead to false confessions and ultimately wrongful convictions.

Terrill Swift, who spent 15 years in prison after falsely confessing to a 1994 rape and murder, says that’s what happened to him. DNA evidence later tied the crime to a previously convicted murderer and sex offender.

Read more: https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-illinois-bans-deceptive-interrogations-minors-20210715-rttpzxchqbed5ewlbrhtbfbbau-story.html

[uriel1972]

1. ummm... why is deception by the police in interrogations allowed at all?

How can they be trusted at all ever? The innocent have much to fear from the police, much to fear.

[Worried2020]

19. Exactly.

.

I'm 70 now, and the Police nowadays act invincible and aggressive as opposed to helpful and informative 20 years ago.

I don't trust anyone with a badge now

(sigh)

W

[Deminpenn]

25. +1

Can't understand why LE is permitted to lie during interrogations either. Don't believe interrogations should be allowed to go on for hours and hours either. That appears to lead to false confessions, too.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Discrimination on the basis of age

Deception is just a bad look for government. It creates mistrust, cynicism, silence, and even resistance.

[Midnight Writer]

3. Does this conflict with a Supreme Court decision allowing police to lie to suspects?

[unblock]

7. The police is not a private organization, it's a government agency

It can only do what it's authorized it to do.

I see no conflict with the Supreme Court here.

In any event, the state can simply refuse to prosecute any minor to whom the police lied.

[Midnight Writer]

8. OK. That sounds right.

[multigraincracker]

11. They have one of those "loop holes".

There is always a loop hole for cops.

[BumRushDaShow]

13. Many of the minors caught up in the criminal justice system

are foster kids - including some who are in households that have a number of other foster children. So it's a matter of whether those foster parents ever get contacted and are even able to appear right away if called (doubtful in some circumstances). In other cases, the parent(s) are overwhelmed with other issues (some may even be incarcerated), so there really is no "parent or guardian" (as they put it) outside of a grandparent or other relative or neighbor who they are staying with.

It just feeds the private (juvenile) detention/prison system and ticks off the "tough on crime" boxes for overzealous D.A.s and corrupt judges, despite the fact that the crimes continue because the wrong person was prosecuted in order to brag that "something was done about it".

We had something like that happen here in PA with what was dubbed the "Kids for Cash" scandal where a couple judges got kickbacks for filling up a specific private juvenile detention facility in upstate PA - https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna44105072

https://jlc.org/luzerne-kids-cash-scandal

I expect this type of thing might happening quite a bit but hasn't been exposed.

[marble falls]

17. Privatization of corrections, corrupt officials, companies with cross purposes to releasing ...

... any prisoner for any reason - what could possibly go wrong.

[ShazzieB]

21. Didn't SVU do an episode based on the "Kids for Cash" scandal?

It sounds really familiar. And as I recall, it was pretty horrifying.

[BumRushDaShow]

22. I have never watched any of the CSIs

But there was actually a documentary film made of the incident -

[Deminpenn]

26. Cash-for-kids scheme was terrible

At least the corrupt officials were caught and prosecuted.

[BumRushDaShow]

27. Well one of the judges (Conahan) was released to home confinement last year

due to COVID outbreaks where he was incarcerated in Miami - https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/kids-cash-judge-released-prison-virus-concerns-71409814

Fortunately the most egregious judge (Ciavarella) has been denied similar requests.

[3Hotdogs]

5. Years ago, '70's, I invited a captain from the county prosecutor's office to present to my 11th

grade class. They had seen an educational film about the 5th Amend. Miranda was only a few years old at that time. In the film, cops had used deception to elicit information from suspects. They asked the captain if they should answer questions during interrogation.

He responded, "As soon as someone reads you your rights, keep your mouth shut, no matter how innocent you think you are."

[marble falls]

10. Last of the good cops.

[marble falls]

9. Cops should not be lying to any suspect.

[multigraincracker]

12. I have a tee shirt a cop gave me years ago.

It says "You have the right to remain silent, anything you say will be misquoted and used against you".

[marble falls]

16. And it's pretty funny, but more true than funny.

[Marrah_Goodman]

14. I've been watching a series called Dallas DNA

It's a documentary series about the first black DA who started an Integrity unit to go back and look at as many cases as possible with DNA evidence and test it. At the point I am at about half of the cases, mostly rape and/or murder, the person was found not guilty. Almost all were black men. Some had even been convinced to plead guilty.

[alphafemale]

15. A minor should not be interrogated by cops without a parent or advocate present.

They will bully and intimidate the child to false confession if given a chance.

Especially minority or economically disadvantaged child.

They know there is unlikely to be any retribution.

[Hestia]

23. I thought SCOTUS ruled that minors do not have a right to have a parent or lawyer with them

in interrogation, nor the right not to be lied to.

Wasn't this during the * admins?

[PatSeg]

18. Amid all the alarming headlines these days,

there are a handful of optimistic stories that suggest that on some level things might be getting better.

[quaint]

20. When they swear truth to their statement, police call it Testilying.

When police lie under oath, innocent people can be convicted and jailed; hundreds of convictions have been set aside as a result of such police misconduct.

Some sources say that it is both a police and a prosecutorial problem and that it is a systemic response to the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine, which was recognized in the US Supreme Court decision Mapp v. Ohio. Other authors have drawn a connection between perjury and an increased emphasis on the number of arrests and convictions made. Wikipedia

[ck4829]

24. K&R