Today's New York Times has an article about how the Detroit police now plan to videotape interrogations of all suspects in crimes that carry a penalty of life in prison without the possibility of parole (here). This is indeed a welcome sign, because there is wide-spread suspicion that such interrogations sometimes go far beyond anything proper or humane. When they are videotaped, exactly what was said and done can be verified, which can be helpful not only to defense attorneys but also to the police.
In recent years there have been many criticisms of police interrogation
techniques. In 1992 William A. Geller strongly argued for videotaping
in his report to the National Institute of Justice (Police Videotaping of Suspect
Interrogations and Confessions). In a survey Geller conducted,
investigators found that in 1990 about a third of of all U.S.
police and sheriff departments serving 50,000 or more citizens were
then videotaping a least some interrogations, primarily in homicide,
rape, battery, and drunk driving cases. Departments
reporting that they videotaped said that they began the practice to
avoid defense attorney's challenges, to reduce doubts about the
voluntary nature of confessions, and to aid a detective's memory
when testifying in court about what took place. Every
police department surveyed said that it planned to continue the
videotaping practice. At first, detectives resisted the idea but most
of them eventually came to appreciate it, largely because fewer
allegations of coercion or intimidation were made by defense
attorneys.
One benefit to videotaping came as something of a surprise. A majority
of the departments surveyed reported that the videotaping
practice led to improvements in their interrogation techniques. Some
even used interrogation tapes as training materials for inexperienced
officers.
Notably unmentioned in the Times' article about Detroit's new decision
is that doesn't describe exactly how much of the interrogation the
police department actually plans to tape record. Obviously,
defense lawyers want the entire interrogation taped, not just the final
confession part. Some police departments say that it costs too much to
videotape everything, opting for recapitulations instead. I've worked
on cases in which, after hours of untaped questionning, the police
produced a five minute videotape of the suspect admitting that he had
committed the crime. We can never know what was said leading up to such
confessions or whether it was coercive or intimidating.
If the Detroit police want to do this right, they'll videotape the
entirety of the interrogations, not just the recapitulations.