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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

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.

gs17 3y ago
>But it's not enforced against police officers. That's true for a lot of laws.
- 20after4 3y ago
  Almost all of the laws, most of the time.
jacquesm 3y ago
Perjury.
- prometheus76 3y ago
  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.
onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
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 3y ago
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.
- noqc 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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/072000050K21-10.htm 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."
- throwway120385 3y ago
  If that happened in Washington I would love to know which judge so I can vote someone else in when the time comes.
chacham15 3y ago
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.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    The case has obviously fallen out of the limelight but Brendan Dassey should be the poster boy for why this is true.
    - chrsig 3y ago
      The counter argument being donald trump, where every other sentence is some admission of guilt.
  - psychlops 3y ago
    You mean the only evidence is what the police say you said.
    - rootusrootus 3y ago
      No, I mean that "suspect said X" testimony wouldn't be admissible, so it would never be your word against the cop.
baryphonic 3y ago
> 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.
KennyBlanken 3y ago
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IebE8dDKEWM
monkeynotes 3y ago
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 3y ago
  However I would guess most wrongful convictions are done against people that can't afford "good defense lawyers"
  - jimz 3y ago
    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.
P_I_Staker 3y ago
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.
gnicholas 3y ago
> 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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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?
    - nullindividual 3y ago
      People have killed themselves due to cops lying. There's the harm.
      - echelon 3y ago
        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-murders-going-unsolved-data-show/ https://thehill.com/homenews/3878472-nearly-half-of-us-murde...
bobthepanda 3y ago
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-disciplined-after-lie-about-hit-and-run-leads-suspects-suicide/3KJ7TPKG5RAUFKA7NN2YVWJM4U/ https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/seattle-police-officer-d...
bithead 3y ago
IF it passes, SCOTUS will scuttle it.

gs17 3y ago

>But it's not enforced against police officers. That's true for a lot of laws.

20after4 3y ago
Almost all of the laws, most of the time.

jacquesm 3y ago

Perjury.

prometheus76 3y ago
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.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago

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 3y ago

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.

noqc 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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/072000050K21-10.htm 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."
throwway120385 3y ago
If that happened in Washington I would love to know which judge so I can vote someone else in when the time comes.

chacham15 3y ago

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.

rootusrootus 3y ago
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 3y ago
  The case has obviously fallen out of the limelight but Brendan Dassey should be the poster boy for why this is true.
  - chrsig 3y ago
    The counter argument being donald trump, where every other sentence is some admission of guilt.
- psychlops 3y ago
  You mean the only evidence is what the police say you said.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    No, I mean that "suspect said X" testimony wouldn't be admissible, so it would never be your word against the cop.

baryphonic 3y ago

> 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.

KennyBlanken 3y ago

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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IebE8dDKEWM

monkeynotes 3y ago

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 3y ago
However I would guess most wrongful convictions are done against people that can't afford "good defense lawyers"
- jimz 3y ago
  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.

P_I_Staker 3y ago

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.

gnicholas 3y ago

> 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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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?
  - nullindividual 3y ago
    People have killed themselves due to cops lying. There's the harm.
    - echelon 3y ago
      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-murders-going-unsolved-data-show/ https://thehill.com/homenews/3878472-nearly-half-of-us-murde...

bobthepanda 3y ago

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-disciplined-after-lie-about-hit-and-run-leads-suspects-suicide/3KJ7TPKG5RAUFKA7NN2YVWJM4U/ https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/seattle-police-officer-d...

bithead 3y ago

IF it passes, SCOTUS will scuttle it.