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Although voluntariness is a mainstay of the U.S. legal system, voluntariness and its flip side, coercion, are ill-defined. Likely because of this ambiguity, admissibility decisions for contested confessions have been inconsistent. Some modern-day, often-used interrogation techniques (e.g., investigators feigning friendship) are coercive, even if they appear innocuous and non-adversarial.
We are writing as strong supporters of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s effort to investigate and establish the facts surrounding the CIA’s detention and interrogation program in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks. We urge the Committee to declassify and publicly release its 6,300 page report with as few redactions as possible. Any minority views and the response of the Central Intelligence Agency should also be made public.
Letters to the Maryland State Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee and House of Delegates Judiciary Committee regarding proposed legislation to protect the due process rights of youth and end the practice of automatically charging youth in adult criminal court.
Cases alleging child sex abuse often hinge on the forensic interview of the alleged victim, and thus the forensic interview should be the first place defense counsel looks. In this article, a forensic psychologist and a criminal defense lawyer discuss the forensic interview and how failure to follow best practices may encourage false allegations and elicit misinformation.
In the latest editions of its interrogation manual, Reid and Associates adopted several positions that align with the views of its critics. In a nutshell, Reid and Associates directly or indirectly endorsed many measures that could help prevent false confessions. Defense attorneys seeking to suppress confessions can strengthen their arguments by noting when law enforcement officers ignore any of the recommendations in the Reid manual.
Court holds the district erred in admitting evidence of a prior conviction.
Amicus curiae brief of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Argument: The Court should not create exceptions to the bright line rule of Arizona v. Edwards, 451 U.S. 477 (1981), let alone exceptions that would permit police from the same jurisdiction to reinterrogate a continuously imprisoned suspect about the very same offense as to which he had originally invoked his right to counsel.
Amicus curiae brief of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Louisiana, and the Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law in support of petitioner.
Amicus curiae brief of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in support of petitioner.
Argument: The age of the person questioned may, consistent with Miranda, be part of the custody analysis; considering age as part of the custody inquiry does not impose any burdens on law enforcement and is consistent with Miranda’s policy goal to provide clear guidelines to law enforcement.
Brief of the Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioner (on petition for writ of certiorari).
Argument: The tactics that the interrogating officer was trained to use on Petitioner undermined Miranda. Law enforcement officers nationwide are trained to issue ambiguous and barebones Miranda warnings. Law enforcement officers routinely use tactics to minimize Miranda warnings to induce waiver as was done here. These tactics prevent suspects from understanding their Miranda rights.
Age Does Matter in Juvenile Interrogations - Washington, DC (June 16, 2011) – More than two decades of exonerations have shown that pressure from police too often results in people confessing to crimes they have never committed. There is no reason to believe that children and adolescents would be immune to such pressures; common sense tells us the opposite is true.