Word: suspectible
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Fundamentals of Criminal Investigation, former New York City Detective Charles O'Hara goes far beyond the familiar Mutt & Jeff routine in which a suspect is scared witless by a "bad guy" detective and is then saved by a "good guy" who coaxes him to shame the baddy by talking freely. O'Hara not only stresses "bluff on a split
...pair" (falsely claiming an accomplice has talked); he also recommends "pretense of physical evidence," such as a faked lie-detector test or fake lab reports that play on the gullible suspect's "mystical notions of the power of scientific crime detection." Above all, says O'Hara, the interrogator "must dominate his subject and overwhelm him with his inexorable will to obtain the truth...
When Kroll appealed Danny's case to the U.S. Supreme Court, his idea for an objective test of police procedure reached friendlier territory. In federal jurisdiction, the FBI routinely warns all suspects of their rights to silence and to counsel; if a federal suspect talks, the prosecution must prove that he "intelligently and knowingly" waived his rights. Moreover, the Supreme Court's 1957 Mallory rule bars prolonged federal interrogation. On arrest, a federal defendant must be taken "without unnecessary delay" before the nearest U.S. commissioner, who reiterates his rights and furnishes a lawyer if the suspect cannot afford...
...Court worked out new standards under the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment, which is binding on states. A confession is voluntary, said the court, only if it reflects "a free choice to admit, or deny or refuse an answer." It is involuntary, and therefore inadmissible, if the suspect's will to silence was "overborne" by any pressure -mental or physical. The court voided one man's confession because he had not been allowed to call his family, and that of a woman because the police had threatened to take away her children. Indeed, since...
Total Confusion. For all that, the court's voluntariness doctrine lacked any objective test and turned instead on subjective appraisal of the "totality of the circumstances." In each case, the court tried to reconstruct the suspect's ability to resist the forces arrayed against him. The results were confusing. To weigh "totality," the court developed no fewer than 38 criteria, such as whether police conduct "shocked the conscience." In two cases similar to Escobedo, police barred the suspects' lawyers; one confession came after seven hours, the other after twelve. While voiding the first, the court upheld...