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> Surely lying under any circumstances should be prohibited You must admit that it's a tricky issue, differentiating between a cop purposely lying vs making an

> Surely lying under any circumstances should be prohibited You must admit that it's a tricky issue, differentiating between a cop purposely lying vs making an incorrect assertion. Should a defendant walk if it they can prove at trial that the cop said something that wasn't true? That said, it's sad how often people incriminate themselves with drug possession because of the "gentle" lie that things will be a lot worse for them if the cop is the one to find the drugs.

LordDragonfang 2y ago
This isn't about white lies. This is about purposeful, blatantly false things to manipulate witnesses/suspects into giving confessions. Often false confessions - the article lists as one of the law's justifications that in the cases they looked at, 34% of minors reported giving a false confession (50% for under 14), but the adult rate is 8%, which is still appallingly high - if any other profession had a "vital tool" that ruins incorrectly someone's life 1 in 12 times, there would be major outcry and regulation.
vineyardmike 2y ago
> Should a defendant walk if it they can prove at trial that the cop said something that wasn't true? Should a defendant be found guilty if they were lied to by the cops? Explicit lied that are used to extract and manipulate confessions. Remember, people are innocent until proven guilty. We don’t presume someone on trial is guilty. If they weren’t properly prosecuted, we shouldn’t assume the guilt is proper either.
hnlmorg 2y ago
I don't think it is a tricky issue. Lots of other countries have "no lies during interrogations" laws and manage just fine. If a police officer makes an honest mistake then that's fine. But if a police officer is repeatedly stating things during interrogations that they've misunderstood then they're grossly incompetent for whole different reasons than lack of honest character. Just like if a developer kept pushing broken code without any unit tests, you'd have a quiet word with them that they need to put more due diligence into their work.
LordKeren 2y ago
The problem is that it leads to a classic game theory situation - where if you, an informed citizen, know that cops are allowed to lie to you, that the logical conclusion is to never believe a cop under any circumstance. It is deeply hostile and likely counter productive to the stated goals of police departments. There is no way for normal people to distinguish a lawful order given by a police officer from a lie.
rurp 2y ago
We could start with a standard of not willfully lying about facts and see how it goes. I agree that the gray areas could get tricky, but just starting with most obvious cases might provide a lot of the benefit. I think the current status quo, where cops can lie to citizens about anything and everything with no consequence, is pretty bad. Sure it might help with some specific convictions, but the immense lack of trust and goodwill that generates in the entire public must cause a huge amount of harm and lose a number of other solvable cases. Even though I'm not engaged in any criminal enterprises I am still wary about saying anything to police. Even though most police are decent people, mistakes happen and they are often under pressure to hit certain metrics. Indictments of innocent people are hardly rare and you never know what a cop's angle is, given their freedom to lie at will.
- notahacker 2y ago
  Yeah. It's really not very difficult to have a situation where (i) the bar for "the police officer made an inaccurate statement during the interview" being a reason to consider a "not guilty" verdict is really, really high and (ii) making misstatements in interviews is regarded as a blot on the professional record of the policeman involved and making intentional misstatements a serious misconduct offence Plenty of other countries manage it.
marssaxman 2y ago
> Should a defendant walk if it they can prove at trial that the cop said something that wasn't true? Absolutely yes. These lies cause real harm, and the cops need to face consequences or they have no reason to abstain. A friend of some of my friends would be alive today if a cop had not lied to him about the consequences of a minor fender-bender, claiming he'd put someone in the hospital with critical injuries and it was uncertain they'd survive. (The cop was caught on tape telling his partner, "it's a lie, but it's fun"; nobody was actually hurt, at all.) Overwhelmed with remorse, feeling the world would be better off without him, he killed himself. The cop got a week's unpaid vacation for this.

LordDragonfang 2y ago

This isn't about white lies. This is about purposeful, blatantly false things to manipulate witnesses/suspects into giving confessions. Often false confessions - the article lists as one of the law's justifications that in the cases they looked at, 34% of minors reported giving a false confession (50% for under 14), but the adult rate is 8%, which is still appallingly high - if any other profession had a "vital tool" that ruins incorrectly someone's life 1 in 12 times, there would be major outcry and regulation.

vineyardmike 2y ago

> Should a defendant walk if it they can prove at trial that the cop said something that wasn't true? Should a defendant be found guilty if they were lied to by the cops? Explicit lied that are used to extract and manipulate confessions. Remember, people are innocent until proven guilty. We don’t presume someone on trial is guilty. If they weren’t properly prosecuted, we shouldn’t assume the guilt is proper either.

hnlmorg 2y ago

I don't think it is a tricky issue. Lots of other countries have "no lies during interrogations" laws and manage just fine. If a police officer makes an honest mistake then that's fine. But if a police officer is repeatedly stating things during interrogations that they've misunderstood then they're grossly incompetent for whole different reasons than lack of honest character. Just like if a developer kept pushing broken code without any unit tests, you'd have a quiet word with them that they need to put more due diligence into their work.

LordKeren 2y ago

The problem is that it leads to a classic game theory situation - where if you, an informed citizen, know that cops are allowed to lie to you, that the logical conclusion is to never believe a cop under any circumstance. It is deeply hostile and likely counter productive to the stated goals of police departments. There is no way for normal people to distinguish a lawful order given by a police officer from a lie.

rurp 2y ago

We could start with a standard of not willfully lying about facts and see how it goes. I agree that the gray areas could get tricky, but just starting with most obvious cases might provide a lot of the benefit. I think the current status quo, where cops can lie to citizens about anything and everything with no consequence, is pretty bad. Sure it might help with some specific convictions, but the immense lack of trust and goodwill that generates in the entire public must cause a huge amount of harm and lose a number of other solvable cases. Even though I'm not engaged in any criminal enterprises I am still wary about saying anything to police. Even though most police are decent people, mistakes happen and they are often under pressure to hit certain metrics. Indictments of innocent people are hardly rare and you never know what a cop's angle is, given their freedom to lie at will.

notahacker 2y ago
Yeah. It's really not very difficult to have a situation where (i) the bar for "the police officer made an inaccurate statement during the interview" being a reason to consider a "not guilty" verdict is really, really high and (ii) making misstatements in interviews is regarded as a blot on the professional record of the policeman involved and making intentional misstatements a serious misconduct offence Plenty of other countries manage it.

marssaxman 2y ago

> Should a defendant walk if it they can prove at trial that the cop said something that wasn't true? Absolutely yes. These lies cause real harm, and the cops need to face consequences or they have no reason to abstain. A friend of some of my friends would be alive today if a cop had not lied to him about the consequences of a minor fender-bender, claiming he'd put someone in the hospital with critical injuries and it was uncertain they'd survive. (The cop was caught on tape telling his partner, "it's a lie, but it's fun"; nobody was actually hurt, at all.) Overwhelmed with remorse, feeling the world would be better off without him, he killed himself. The cop got a week's unpaid vacation for this.