I've posted a couple times now on the need for law enforcement to make use of the latest (well, within the last half century anyway) recording technology and use it to record their interrogations with suspects see here and here. In that way they could eliminate any doubts about the conversation leading up to the confessions they obtain. Let me be as clear as possible that I'm really FOR putting the bad guys in prison. But I argue that this should be done fairly and that the police should provide ALL the evidence found in their interrogations, not just what is in the tail ends of them, like when the suspect breaks down and confesses. Other fields, like linguistics, require us to provide all the information on which we base our findings. Some police departments appear to be lagging in this important requirement.
I'm suggesting is that the police do this during investigations but the
rest of us should not go around surreptitiously taping the
conversations of our friends and enemies. There are laws against this,
to say nothing of the ethical problems involved. For example, how many
of you readers have never heard of Anthony Pellicano? Peering through
our new special CIA-developed reverse optical scanner devices
that make it possible for us to see you with the equipment
recently installed in our Language Log computers (just kidding of
course), as you read this, I can't see any hands going up. Of course you've heard of him.
You read the newspapers. He's the Hollywood "private eye of the stars"
who has recently been indicted in Los Angeles on 110 counts of
racketeering, conspiracy, wiretapping, witness tampering, identity
theft and destruction of evidence. If you want to catch up on
Pellicano's recent activity, Wikipedia has a nice summary of it here. He's
accused of using his private eye skills in electronics and tape
recording to covertly tape the private conversations of people like
Sylvester Stallone, Gary Shandling and Kevin Nealon, among many others.
It's a huge investigation that goes beyond Pellicano to his clients and
even to some of the lawyers representing them. It's a classic example
of the way that tape recording should NOT be used.
I met Anthony Pellicano in the 1980s, when we were both helping
the defense lawyer in John Z. DeLorean's narcotics case, summarized here. That was
back in the days when Pellicano's career as a private eye to Hollywood
stars was just beginning to blossom. The FBI had made 64 undercover
tapes of DeLorean talking with various people, trying either to get a
bank to give his nearly bankrupt auto company a loan or to buy a big
chunk of DeLorean Motor Company stock (I describe my role in this case
in chapter 4 of my book, Language
Crimes, Blackwell, 1993).
Pellicano had produced transcripts of those audio and video taped
conversations. He was a pretty good private investigator but his
transcripts were often way off the mark. He just didn't have the
linguistic skills to do this. When we first met in attorney Howard
Weitzman's office in Los Angeles, Pellicano made it clear that he
wanted nothing to do with a linguist who might disagree with him, so,
to put it mildly, our acquaintance was very short-lived. DeLorean used
my transcripts rather than Pellicano's and was eventually acquitted of
all the charges. Linguistics won that dispute.
But my point here is this. Let law enforcement officers tape record
their interrogations from beginning to end, not just the part they want
the jury to hear. Maybe even force them to do this. Then make sure that
the transcripts of those interactions are accurate. The rest of us
should obey the laws about taping other people without their knowledge
and consent. Let Pellicano's legal problems teach all of us, even the
clients and lawyers who allegedly benefitted from his services, and be
our guide.