[IncandescentGas]

We already have purjury law, which are so routinely broken by the police there's a common term for it. Testilying.

Purjury is supposed to be serious. But it's not enforced against police officers. Other misconduct like prosecutors hiding exculpatory evidence is also rarely if ever punished even when blatently proven and widely publicided.

So why should I believe, if this law passes, anybody in the justice system will enforce it?

What happened to Ted Bradford is awful. The fact he actually eventually was exenorated was like winning the lottery. For most falsely convicted, a statistical impossibility.

[chacham15]

IMO the point of stopping police from lying shouldnt be to prosecute the police (as perjury is already illegal), but rather, to indemnify the person who was lied to for actions they took under false pretenses. So, if the police lie to you and say "we have you on camera at the 7/11" and as a result you say "I dont really recall..maybe I got a soda from there and dont remember?" that second statement shouldnt be used against you if they dont actually have you on camera whereas today that statement would be used to show that you couldve been there (because you said so yourself). This is easy to demonstrate in court and consequently toss out that secondary statement which would otherwise be evidence.

[echelon]

> as a result you say "I dont really recall..maybe I got a soda from there and dont remember?" [...]

> today that statement would be used to show that you couldve been there (because you said so yourself).

They can use "I don't remember" ?

Isn't the whole point of interrogation to get a suspect to make conflicting statements, then pressure them when the statements don't line up as a means to get a confession?

Why is this a bad thing? If this tool goes away, couldn't conviction rates plummet (for eg. violent crimes)?

I'm having trouble seeing an ethical problem here?

[throwaway19091p]

> They can use "I don't remember" ?

They absolutely can, and will use that in a court of law. Any comment that you make that seems completely fine from your perspective can quickly be turned around to lock you up.

I highly recommend checking out this lecture when you get a chance: https://youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

Police are not generally concerned with getting the right person, they're just concerned with getting a person.

[JieJie]

Blackstone's Ratio: "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_ratio

[pixl97]

Which has about zero to do with actual reality.

The reality in the US is if you want re-elected you better be tough on crime, which means people going to jail. No one seems to give a shit if the people that committed the crime are going to jail, as long as someone is found guilty.

[20after4]

No they care. They make sure that the people doing the crimes remain free to abuse the innocent. Hint: it's the police and politicians (and their buddies) committing a lot of the crimes.

[tsimionescu]

> Why is this a bad thing? If this tool goes away, couldn't conviction rates plummet (for eg. violent crimes)?

Even if they do, the real question is whether false convictions will plummet more than true convictions. There are an awful lot of people who "confessed" to crimes didn't commit.

[scarface_74]

“You might as well admit you did $x, we have your fingerprints at the scene. We might go lighter in you”.

This is when they don’t have fingerprints.

[AniseAbyss]

Do you want confessions or justice?

[rootusrootus]

Here's a hot take -- maybe we could just make self-incriminating statements inadmissible altogether unless it's given as testimony, verbal or written and signed while not under duress.

If the only evidence the police have is what you say, then that should be insufficient.

[VBprogrammer]

The case has obviously fallen out of the limelight but Brendan Dassey should be the poster boy for why this is true.

[chrsig]

The counter argument being donald trump, where every other sentence is some admission of guilt.

[morpheos137]

In the USA you have the fifth amendment right against self incrimination.

Also you have NO obligation to say anything to police in an interrogation and can always request an attorney to speak on your behalf. Subjects are reminded of this during the reading of Miranda Rights.

If you are ever in a police interrogation you should always decline to speak without an attorney.

It is bewildering why people don't exercise their rights.

[kjellsbells]

Let's try this thought experiment. You are shopping at a grocery store. It's a regular day in your life. Then, without warning, you are arrested by the cops and taken to the police station. They put you in the holding cell. They take your laptop, phone, etc. You ask for your one call. They lead you to the wall mounted phone and you stick your quarter in.

What percentage of the HN readership here would be able to dial the number of a competent criminal attorney?

Engagement with the criminal justice system is so out of the ordinary for most people that they simply do not know what to do. It's easy to say, "shut up and call your lawyer", but most regular joes have absolutely no idea how to find a lawyer, vet them, engage with them, etc.

In normal life, if you need a lawyer, you Google some reviews, or you look up something in yellow pages, or you ask your local state bar association for a referral for the area of legal practice. None of those things are happening at 2am in a holding cell without any of your regular devices. And asking for the public defender is not likely to give you much comfort given their caseload.

Now imagine that you are not the classic affluent educated HN reader with access to all kinds of resources, and consider what it must be like for working class people. It's not fun.

[rokkitmensch]

You don't call a lawyer, you call the most competent person whose phone number you can remember and tell them to get a lawyer.

Ideally, you have a relationship with one or more, but if you don't come from an upper middle class background with a refined appreciation for insurance policies, now is the time you call your most competent contact and beg them to get the ball rolling on a lawyer and bail.

[mlrtime]

Part of Miranda is that the state will obtain a lawyer for you. It might be a shit lawyer that just wants to plea, but it stops the self incrimination part.

[morpheos137]

Yeah and if the shit lawyer doesn't do his job then you have grounds for appeal. Always trust your lawyer to handle your legal business. Should be taught in schools with civic lessons. You literally have nothing to gain from talking to police without a lawyer if you are detained.

[theturtle32]

It's not bewildering. There are an awful lot of people out there who were raised to trust police as "the good guys" and it's extremely easy for those people to be manipulated into what they think will be a quick interview to help out in solving a case, only to have the spotlight turned on them before they realize what's happening.

[pixl97]

Because in most places cops are liars beyond what you'd ever believe.

Civil rights violations are simply status quo. I come from a family with members in law enforcement and the criminal justice system. They have had to kick detectives out of interrogation rooms because the detectives get abusive and simply ignore "I'd like to speak to my attorney". The cops just won't stop harassing, lying, and even abusing the suspect.

Most people are not going to do well in a stressful situation with a person in a position of authority abusing them. And our criminal justice system here in the US is ok with that.

[krapp]

Just don't ask for a "lawyer, dawg" because that will be interpreted as a literal request for a canine that practices law, which doesn't exist[0].

[0]https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/10/suspect-asks-for...

Fifth amendment rights in the US are a joke.

[kmoser]

People don't exercise their rights when a) they are not informed of them, and b) they're under duress.

What's more bewildering is why juries (who are not facing jail time themselves) don't find defendants innocent in every case involving the police since it's known that the police are allowed to lie, and it's also known they will face little to no repercussions from doing so even under oath.

[20after4]

The people that get picked for a jury (that make it through all the rounds of vetting) are the types of people who believe the 'justice system' is fundamentally just and that the police are public servants. The people who see through that are filtered out or filter themselves out of the process.

[morpheos137]

This strikes me as an absurd Reddit tier statement. How many criminal cases do not involve police? You are suggesting juries should throw out ALL cases involving police?

[kmoser]

I'm not saying what anybody should do. I'm saying I'm surprised juries don't throw out more cases, given the latitude police have for lying during interrogations and the lack of repercussions for doing so under oath.

[rolph]

--"because if you cooperate with us, everything will go easy, if you keep resisting, thats proof of guilt and youll get the max, plus charges for resisting"

[int_19h]

I suggest reading about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_technique. There's a reason why it's being used, and there's also a reason why many false confessions are attributed to it.

Or we can blame the victims.

[psychlops]

You mean the only evidence is what the police say you said.

[rootusrootus]

No, I mean that "suspect said X" testimony wouldn't be admissible, so it would never be your word against the cop.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

This made me do some research into "hearsay" because I'm not really familiar with how it all works.

> Per Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(2)(a), a statement made by a defendant is admissible as evidence only if it is inculpatory; exculpatory statements made to an investigator are hearsay and therefore may not be admitted as evidence in court, unless the defendant testifies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearsay#United_States

So it's not hearsay if it makes you look bad (but it is if it makes you look good), and police don't even have to be telling the truth, nor do they really have to be worried about perjury charges if a given encounter was not recorded.

I still can't imagine why a confession given in interview isn't logically nullified by:

"How does the defense plead?"

"Not guilty, Your Honor."

[int_19h]

On top of that, statistically, a guilty confession results in a massive bias from the jury, often to the point of completely overriding exculpatory evidence (like, say, witness testimonies of alibi, or forensics).

[psychlops]

Yes, we agree. I was just clarifying that "what you said" can be quite different from "what the police said you said".

If it were recorded then that's different....

[gnicholas]

> So why should I believe, if this law passes, anybody in the justice system will enforce it?

Easy: because interrogations are videotaped and disclosed to defense attorneys. Currently, police can walk in and say “we found your prints at the scene, so you better start talking”. If an officer did this under the new regime, it would be illegal — and would be disclosed to the defense attorney.

And under the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine, anything elicited by that lie would be excluded from trial.

Basically, the types of lies people make on the stand are hard to disprove. The types of lies that cops tell in interrogations are not hard to disprove. They are also on video, and handed over to defense attorneys.

[bombcar]

This the way to stop it. Make it fruit of the poisonous tree and the prosectors will get the cops to shut up, because all their good evidence will be destroyed by it.

It's amazing how much they have to work around things that would incriminate or sway a jury (such as cutting out anything that might reveal priors), and this would be something more.

[echelon]

Why is this a good thing? Shouldn't cops be able to lie and put pressure on suspects?

Isn't this necessary especially in larger cases where it's necessary to get one suspect to roll over on another?

As long as defense attorneys are involved, what is the harm in this?

[gs17]

>Isn't this necessary especially in larger cases where it's necessary to get one suspect to roll over on another?

There are multiple countries where it's not allowed, so it's definitely not necessary.

>As long as defense attorneys are involved, what is the harm in this?

Generally the cops will try as hard as they think they can get away with to keep your attorney away. This article is about someone who immediately asked if he should have an attorney, was told he didn't need one, and when one showed up anyways, he wasn't even allowed to know there was someone hired to represent him.

The harm is that juries and judges really love signed confessions and cops love to pressure for one. The Reid Technique's entire goal is to take someone from saying "no, I didn't do it" to "okay, I'll sign that I did it". Ted Bradford had an alibi and a recanted confession that confessed things that obviously didn't match the facts of the case, and the confession was enough even when he finally had an attorney. It was enough that:

>Despite the exonerating DNA evidence and the fact that Ted had already served his entire sentence for the crime, Yakima County prosecutors chose to charge Ted with the same sexual assault once again, offering his initial false statement in 1996 as the evidence against him.

[psychlops]

The harm is that innocent people incriminate themselves. People are not experts on the law and make mistakes all the time. Even if they are eventually exonerated, the process is the punishment and there is no recourse.

Not to mention that defense attorneys are usually overworked, working for free and you generally get what you pay for.

[pixl97]

This right here. Any state assigned attorney is going to say "Take the plea". Simply put, most of the suspects do not have the money to present the case as needed in front of the courtroom, and the lawyer states, taking the plea is less apt to bankrupt you.

[bombcar]

To be brutally honest, some huge percentage of people who get to the "plea" option are actually and truly guilty - this causes all sorts of issues.

(One of the strange side-effects of mandatory sentencing is removing plea deals because if they HAVE to charge you with X, and guilty or plead on X is Y years in jail, then there is no reason not to go to a jury trial, because the worst case is you get Y years anyway, which you get when you plea out.)

If criminals really were organized and forced everything to jury trials, the United States would collapse.

[gnicholas]

> As long as defense attorneys are involved, what is the harm in this?

Good point, suspects have a right to an attorney and the right to remain silent. But much of the successful lying probably happens when an attorney isn't present. For example "look, we can wait for your lawyer to get here, but this is looking really bad for you. We just arrested your buddy and once he sings we'll just throw the book at you. If you give your side of the story first, you get the better deal."

A suspect without a lawyer might waive the right to counsel/silence and incriminate himself. Of course, he would be guilty, so it's not entirely clear this is a bad thing (unless he is falsely admitting guilt, which does occasionally happen).

[justinclift]

> Shouldn't cops be able to lie ...

"Hell no" seems like the obvious answer, but you seem to disagree?

[echelon]

Since I feel that someone who murders or rapes someone should be spared little mercy, then by extension I feel this is an acceptable tool so long as it doesn't harm the innocent.

[justinclift]

Are you meaning there should be no presumption of innocence, or are you meaning the lying should only be allowed after they've been convicted?

[int_19h]

Of people who got exonerated through DNA testing during 1989-2020, 29% involved a false confession (https://innocenceproject.org/dna-exonerations-in-the-united-...).

[jjav]

> as it doesn't harm the innocent

The whole point here is that the person at this stage is presumed innocent.

[gs17]

>someone who murders or rapes someone should be spared no mercy

But we're supposed to presume "innocent until proven guilty". A suspect is only accused, not convicted.

[bobthepanda]

That assumes the person in the interrogation room is the correct person to begin with. We have a fair amount of false conviction rates.

[Terr_]

> Why is this a good thing? Shouldn't cops be able to lie and put pressure on suspects?

The problem is that--so far--we don't have a good way to allow the acceptable kinds while also prohibiting the terrible kinds.

Imagine the police give an overwhelming list of false/non-existent evidence and testimony, so that the average (innocent) person would assume they're being deliberately framed by some power they are unable to fight, and that the only way to protect themselves and their loved ones is to buckle under.

Another example would be where police lie/deliberately-mislead a suspect about the consequences of a confession.

[scarface_74]

If you have a choice between admitting you did something you didn’t do and get a lighter sentence or know you’re going to be railroaded by the justice system and still lose, which one are you going to do?

And the “defense attorneys” are going to be overworked underpaid public defenders while the prosecutors have what amounts to an unlimited budget

[bombcar]

I'd argue you almost have a moral obligation to take the railroading, otherwise society begins to collapse. At least with the railroad there's a chance that the defense is sufficient, that the jury concurs, and the issues get exposed. If nobody fights it, it will metastasize.

I understand how impossibly hard that could be in the moment, but never never go quietly into that dark night.

Unless, of course, you're guilty and you know it, then clap your hands on anything that reduces what you have to suffer for it, I guess.

[scarface_74]

Really? Sit in jail for maybe 3 or 4 extra years for the “good of society”?

[anamax]

> As long as defense attorneys are involved, what is the harm in this?

How about because defense attorneys are very expensive?

[nullindividual]

People have killed themselves due to cops lying.

There's the harm.

[echelon]

Okay, so there's a negative externality to this approach. Is there a measure of this?

If preventing cops from lying results in fewer trials going to court for violent crime, then I'd be curious to compare the two figures.

I'm anxious about having fewer tools to investigate and prosecute. We used to have a 70% homicide clearance rate, but that's dropped to just 50% [1]. This feels like we'd be further trying our hands.

[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/3878472-nearly-half-of-us-murde...

[nullindividual]

You're using the same argument that death penalty supporters use.

MOST of them are guilty, so killing ALL of them is OK! Wouldn't want to let off the guilty ones.

The smart cops cut out all of this by simply killing the unarmed suspect before pronouncing the 'p' in 'stop'.

[trogdor]

>interrogations are videotaped

Interrogations are not always videotaped. State laws vary widely.

Many states require audio recording only. Other states only require recordings for felony investigations. Many states only require recording of custodial interrogations for specific offenses, such as rape and murder.

At one point, California only required recordings of custodial interrogations involving juveniles suspected of having committed murder, but that might have changed — I haven’t looked into this in a while.

[20after4]

No, interrogations aren't videotaped, at least not always. And even if they are, the police can destroy the video and just use their handwritten notes, and their memory, to testify against you at a trial. Your word against theirs. Tape disappeared. So sorry about your luck.

[anamax]

> because interrogations are videotaped

The FBI doesn't do audio recordings, let alone video.

[bobthepanda]

It sounds like this also covers outside of the actual trial.

A man was lied to by police about a hit-and-run putting the victim in critical condition (it did not), and committed suicide before any trial happened. https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/seattle-police-officer-d...

[gs17]

>But it's not enforced against police officers.

That's true for a lot of laws.

[20after4]

Almost all of the laws, most of the time.

[KennyBlanken]

Believe it or not, at least some judges are severely annoyed by the open, obvious lying officers do. One federal judge declared Boston Police officers and detectives to be liars and unreliable witnesses, for example.

he proposed a "corruption court" and that went about as far as you'd expect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IebE8dDKEWM

[P_I_Staker]

You can throw out evidence gained based on a lie. Only one replier seemed to notice this.

Also, from what I understand perjury is more widespread than you might believe, and tends toward frequent fliers in court. As I understand it, some officers take the attitude "if they're going to lie, I'm not going to commit to always being honest, even if it means letting a POS out"

Don't agree, but just to address the point regarding cops being treated differently. People lie in court all the time, even getting caught red-handed and unprosecuted.

P.S. Regarding that police attitude toward lying, it's the same as any corruption: You might think prosecutors and cops pull out all the stops for the "real bad guys", and this may be partially true; however in reality, it just comes down to who pisses them off the most, which often doesn't have that much to do with whether someone is the worst of the worst.

[baryphonic]

> Purjury is supposed to be serious. But it's not enforced against police officers. [...]

> So why should I believe, if this law passes, anybody in the justice system will enforce it?

I haven't read the text of the bill, but according to this article, evidence obtained during an interview where the cops were lying can be excluded. This forces judges to consider the evidence during pre-trial motions in limine, and if a judge errs in allowing such evidence, that error can be appealed. That doesn't 100% solve this issue, but if enacted this will provide a real remedy. And trial judges hate to be overturned on appeal.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Isn't the problem with perjury that you don't need to prove what you say in court is true, but to prove someone committed perjury you have to prove what they said was a lie?

It's not easy to prove someone lied.

Yet we find it easy to believe what people say is true (even for juries in court).

[qingcharles]

LOL. Police officers are never prosecuted. And do you know who is prosecuted even less? Prosecutors. And even less than that? Judges.

I think in all of history only one prosecutor was ever prosecuted for what is known in the USA as a "Brady violation", where the prosecutor hides exculpatory evidence from the defense, even though it routinely happens.

I tried repeatedly for many years to bring a prosecution against some cops and prosecutors for hacking offenses, but since there isn't really the concept of private prosecutions in the USA you have to rely on the prosecutor's office wanting to prosecute it's own. I even sued the prosecutor's office to try and enforce it, but the judge told me "Of course police officers are allowed to commit crimes in the course of an investigation." If I get bored at some point I will have the audio recordings pulled from the court and put them online so other people can see the insanity.

[Buttons840]

Best idea I've heard is that the public defenders office (or whatever, I'm not expert here) should be responsible for investigating and prosecuting police. There's already a natural opposition there. The current system works if people have infallible integrity (hint, they don't), this change would make the system work if people have human nature.

[Arrath]

The Public Defenders system is already chronically underfunded, understaffed, and far overworked. Sadly I don't think they would be the best avenue for trying to hold the police to account.

[justinclift]

Sounds like there needs to be something like "civil forfeiture" for the Public Defenders system, allowing them to seize the assets of suspected dishonest police and police departments.

Which they can then either keep, or sell off to raise funds for themselves.

[qingcharles]

This. They can't even defend the rights of the public because they are so overworked :(

[debatem1]

Public defenders would need resources akin to or larger than the prosecutor's office in order to take on this role. I don't know that there has ever been a time in America where the public cared more about defending the wrongly accused than convicting the genuinely guilty, but if there was it surely isn't now.

[Buttons840]

Yeah, sadly, I know your right. But for the sake of argument, the prosecutors office and the defenders office should be equally funded. It should be in the law that they are equally funded.

This makes sense, average people understand that attorneys defending a murderer aren't bad people, those attorneys are just doing their job and they play an important part of the legal system. Fewer think about the imbalance of resources and how that skews the results. It makes sense that examining both sides properly requires equal resources allocated to both sides.

As you say, it's a long shot, but it's an idea worth trying for. If nothing else, maybe people can remember to include it in the next government we form after the collapse (half joking).

[throwway120385]

If that happened in Washington I would love to know which judge so I can vote someone else in when the time comes.

[qingcharles]

Illinois. I wish I had the transcripts, but in civil court in the USA it's unusual as far as I'm aware to have a reporter transcribing. It is usually just recorded digitally, and then if there is an issue (e.g. appeal) the recordings are pulled and transcribed.

I'm assuming, without knowing, that I can have the recordings pulled without paying hundreds of dollars for transcripts. You can't FOIA judicial items in Illinois, but across the country you have a federal constitutional right to judicial items under the 1st Amendment.

[notjulianjaynes]

In Massachusetts (and presumably elsewhere) you can visit a website and pay $10 to get the "For the Record" audio recording emailed to you. You only need the docket number iirc.

[qingcharles]

Thank you, I'll look into this today.

[bombcar]

> LOL. Police officers are never prosecuted. And do you know who is prosecuted even less? Prosecutors. And even less than that? Judges.

At some point you have to have someone who is unprosecutable, or you have people who can be influenced.

The king, at the top of this heap, is the jury itself; they cannot be prosecuted for their decision, even if it is obviously, manifestly, completely, pants-on-head-insane.

[tialaramex]

No you don't, the current English King is named King Charles III. Did you ever wonder about the number?

Charles I was executed in 1649. He kept starting wars, Parliament told him to stop, he wouldn't so they tried him for Treason, he asserted that he necessarily couldn't commit treason because he was the King, but Parliament convicted him and sentenced him to death.

Parliament's rationale, then and now, is that their allegiance is to the Crown, a symbol of the country, not to some bloke who happens to be wearing it. He is just a temporary living symbol, even more replaceable than the (relatively expensive) metal object.

You can prosecute individual members of parliament too, this too isn't a hypothetical, if they're convicted of anything serious enough they automatically lose their seat and a replacement is elected, while for more minor offences like anybody else they might keep their jobs if they can suffer the embarrassment of everybody knowing they're a crook

Unlike in the US no individual holds a "pardon power" which could enable them to nullify a conviction, the Crown Power to do this is in practice exercised via a committee which investigates miscarriages of justice. Of course in principle a British Prime Minister could just insist they have this power anyway, and if a Parliament comprising largely of their party members goes along with it, so be it, on the other hand it's hard to see why the millions of British people who didn't vote for them should accept this, and it's not as though Britain hasn't had civil wars already.

[jfengel]

Two things:

1. The UK parliament reversed course and brought back Charles I's son to be Charles II. In doing to it executed a ton of people responsible for revolt. That included Oliver Cromwell -- despite the fact that he was already dead. They dug him up, tried him, convicted him, executed him, and put his head on a spike for decades. So it's not clear how much power that precedent could hold.

2. Charles III is King of the United Kingdom. The title of "King of England" was retired by Charles I's father. Charles I was King of Great Britain.

[tialaramex]

I don't know that I'd go so far as to say reversed course. Things didn't go well for Cromwell and the people who executed Charles I but also stuff didn't revert. Charles II is not a modern monarch but when Parliament does stuff he doesn't like he feels obliged to try to dodge that rather than defy them as his father did.

[jimz]

Prosecutors are absolutely immune. Brady violations only invalidate the underlying case and in really egregious cases, ruin future careers in politics, but it doesn't create criminal liability going the other way. Police have qualified immunity, prosecutors have absolute immunity, as long as the charge is something that constitutes their quotidian work.

Private prosecutions do exist, but not on a federal level, and anything falling under the purview of the CFAA - which is the umbrella that hangs over all computer-access-related crimes, is federal by definition. Besides, with parallel construction, they can always legally reverse-engineer a legally sound rationale that doesn't violate the 4th Amendment or what-have-you. However, while prosecutors are absolutely immune, the police are not and therefore are subject, occasionally, to federal-level liability either criminal or civil, although the prevalence of police perjury - testilying, as commonly known - is both an academic niche that has produced plenty of papers and have achieved virtually nothing in the real world. The term came into the public consciousness in 1994 and as late as 2018 I've heard it bandied about by cops in a courthouse. Prosecutors need the cops to investigate (public defenders' have a much smaller team of investigators if you're lucky, but even then anything technical is hopefully something you know enough about to find the right expert and conduct a competent cross examination. The police, of course, have the first mover advantage and so they can set up the fall guy who is already pension-eligible and move their assets out of their name before getting tossed in the gentlest way possible under the minivan. I wasn't involved with the case but the classic WA case involving the police using all of their tools available to rearrange the narrative surrounding a murder caught on camera and a federal prosecution is the Otto Zehm case. I had the luck to see what happened at sentencing and it was frankly sickening. https://www.spokesman.com/topics/otto-zehm/

So, police do get prosecuted, but only below the federal level, and extremely leniently, and if weren't for the video it probably wouldn't have happened. Ten years for a murder caught on video is crazy considering that the feds were giving out pleas of 8 years for "trafficking" 4 pills of Oxycodone before fent got into the supply (also thanks to the feds, as it was entirely supply driven) and ten years after leaving WA I still have former clients incarcerated for much more ambiguous fact patterns and convicted after multiple mistrials. As for the feds, now that Bivens is basically dead, even their own IG reports read like lurid crime novels written in the most lawyerly way possible. And if they're really in trouble, creating a moral panic always works. It had worked so far.

[qingcharles]

Just to note that prosecutors are not absolutely immune in all cases. They can be qualified immune, like officers.

For instance, in my case the prosecutor's office acted as law enforcement, e.g. they conducted investigations and conducted an arrest and executed a search warrant. In those cases, when they are acting in a nonprosecutorial role, and in a law enforcement role, they are definitely only qualified immune.

In Illinois it was ruled that prosecutors creating their own quasi-police departments is no longer legal. The advantage for the prosecutors was that they could bypass 99% of the laws and regulations that apply to police because they don't fit the statutory or regulatory definition of a police force.

Edit: Also to note, the CFAA has exemptions carved for law enforcement to do things that are criminal if done by the public:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030

"(f)This section does not prohibit any lawfully authorized investigative, protective, or intelligence activity of a law enforcement agency of the United States, a State, or a political subdivision of a State, or of an intelligence agency of the United States."

[noqc]

Whether or not a particular crime is one that the investigator is allowed to commit in the course of an investigation is extremely fact dependent, so the fact that you haven't included any is a little suspicious.

[qingcharles]

No, the legality of whether a law enforcement officer can "commit" a crime is based completely on statute.

Many statutes include exemptions for law enforcement. If there is no exemption, then it is a crime for the cops, the same as the public.

e.g. https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/documents/072000050K21...

"(d) This Section does not prevent any lawfully authorized investigative, law enforcement, protective, or intelligence gathering employee or agent of the State or federal government from operating any audiovisual recording device in any facility where a motion picture is being exhibited as part of lawfully authorized investigative, protective, law enforcement, or intelligence gathering activities."

[jacquesm]

Perjury.

[prometheus76]

I think this is a separate issue, where officers routinely lie in interrogations to steer the person being questioned. This isn't perjury, because it doesn't happen in court.

[monkeynotes]

A judge will simply throw out any evidence that was facilitated by a lie. Any good defence lawyer would wield this just like they wield bad chain of custody etc.

[a_victorp]

However I would guess most wrongful convictions are done against people that can't afford "good defense lawyers"

[jimz]

Nope, the most competent defense lawyers are probably the federal defenders, who is backed by the resources of the feds, and have a much lighter case load, so they're able to actually spend the necessary time to mull over the minutia. They don't get to pick their clients and are frequently forced into being generalists, but on the federal level a lot of the "small time" crimes are kicked down to the state level. The feds prosecute terrorism, the local prosecutors prosecute murder. The thing is, the public have no idea what makes for a good attorney in any particular field (and it's not the jingle or Cellino and Barnes would probably be Supreme Court justices before the firm broke up), and public defenders are among the very few who have no choice in selecting their clients, the strength of the case, and with 80-120 open cases at a time you either really believe that your clients are all innocent or you absolutely need to hold the state to account as a matter of principle or you won't make it through the misdemeanor docket, never mind anything more serious or more sordid (mental health, juvenile).

Public defenders don't get into the line of work as a backup option. At least at my law school, they didn't recruit, because frankly they can't beat private firms or even the prosecutors on just about anything but the possibility of being on the right side of history. The pay barely covers interest on your loans, even during trials you have to run out to fill the meter every 4 hours where I was at - only the police got free parking. Everyone in my class with my skillset ended up at an IP firm or doing in house work somewhere, mostly in the Seattle area but also down to California. I don't regret a minute of the work, but in the grand scheme of things it's impossible to make a difference on any scale when you are an active participant in the system which is inherently skewed and allows prosecutors so much leeway and so much coercive power that the police can totally get away with not outright lying in interrogations and just play on the ignorance of the accused and implied threats and achieve the same result. The lying is just the most fun a cop can have without planting a gun on someone.

[bithead]

IF it passes, SCOTUS will scuttle it.