Jamison Koehler wrote a post on watching a client’s videotaped statement, which was picked up by Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice. I loved Jamison’s post, it showed that he is his father’s son with a knack for beautifully manipulating the written word blah blah blah. We chatted about it and I told him that back in Albany, we’d never imagined we’d get such a thing as an actual, real live videotape of anything, ever. In Albany, we wouldn’t even get audio taped statements. So, we’d do a really bratty cross examination of the interrogating detective that went sort of like this:
Defense counsel: Mr. Detective, you work in a building?
Answer: Yes.
DC: And that building has lights?
A: Yes
DC: And it has electrical outlets?
A: Yes.
DC: And, you have things that plug into those outlets?
A: Yes.
DC: They work, right? The outlets?
A: Yes, most of them.
DC: So, if you wanted to, you could plug a tape recorder into one of those outlets?
A: I guess.
And then you ask the open ended question (which you are never supposed to ask) – Why don’t you?
There is no winning answer for the police on this one. Nothing they can say can help them. Not, “its just not our policy” which can be followed up with “why” or “It’s just not how its done” which can be followed up with “why”. Like I said, you don’t have to be bratty about it, but sometimes it just feels good.
So, why don’t cops videotape statements? Well, as we know from Jamison’s post, sometimes they do. I tried a homicide case where there was a six hour long statement that was shown to the jury. But, generally, its the cops word against our client’s and we know how that usually turns out.
The current state of the world shows us exactly why police officers don’t video tape their interactions with the public, as a general rule. A few weeks ago I posted three videos where private citizens had videotaped the police (there is a post coming soon about the absurdity of the Maryland State’s Attorneys Office prosecuting folks for taking these videos) and they aren’t pretty.
Most citizens don’t know that the police are allowed to lie to people when they are interrogating them. And, when they do find out it sounds like it might be okay – to the folks who walk between the raindrops, the ends justify the means. Bad guys need to be done in, and if you have to lie, go ahead. Perhaps, when these same citizens see how its done in real life, they’d think differently. Perhaps if they saw and heard the threats cops make against people, their family’s, their lives and livelihoods, they’d be a bit more understanding on how false confessions come into being and they’d stop thinking “I would NEVER confess to something I didn’t do. That’s just crazy”. If they saw how long these interrogations go on, the methods used to twist words, coerce, cajole, perhaps they’d be offended, disturbed, incensed.
But the real outcome of videotaping the police would be to drastically curtail abuses of power, since I don’t have a lot of faith in my fellow man (or woman) anymore and really don’t think that people will have sympathy with the person in the interrogation room, because most folks don’t think they could ever be the person in that room. Cops may legally be allowed to lie, but maybe they’d feel shittier watching it play out in front of a jury. Cops may feel that they’ve served the cause of the citizenry in getting a confession even if they had to threaten to arrest someone’s wife or sister, but may not do it if they know they’ll get caught.
Big brother has put a camera on red lights and street corners in troubled cities. We are being watched in dressing rooms to make sure we don’t put on an extra pair of pants on and walk out of a store, we’ve given up our rights to privacy on our telephones, in our bedrooms. And we’ve done it with a blank stare and a blank check and asked nothing in return.
But come on folks, they’ve got electricity. They’ve got outlets. In fact, most of them have iphones and can videotape anytime, anywhere. If I’ve shown them mine, isn’t it time they show us theirs?
