NY court: Some police lies to suspects are unfair
Source: Associated Press
NY court: Some police lies to suspects are unfair
By MICHAEL VIRTANEN Associated Press
9:24 a.m.Feb. 20, 2014
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Police can lie when interrogating suspects, but when the lies become "patently coercive," any confession cannot be used as evidence, New York's highest court ruled Thursday.
The Court of Appeals, ruling unanimously, threw out the murder conviction of 31-year-old Adrian Thomas, whose infant son died with a head injury and infection in 2008, and the court ordered a new trial without the Troy man's purported confession.
Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman wrote that Troy investigators' lies became "a set of highly coercive deceptions" as they tried for hours to coax a confession from Thomas.
Investigators told Thomas they would next pick up his wife if he didn't confess to injuring his son. They told him that his child — though already brain dead, which Thomas didn't know — would die if he didn't explain how the boy hit his head, Lippman wrote. They also told Thomas 67 times it was an accident, 14 times that he wouldn't be arrested and eight times that he would be going home.
Read more: http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/feb/20/ny-court-some-police-lies-to-suspects-are-unfair/
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