Deception in the investigative, interrogation, and testimonial Essay

Deception in the investigative, interrogation, and testimonial processes - Essay Example The fact is that the law often supports police detection, although police action is limited without an arrest or search warrant. The police conduct detection within a contradictory moral order wherein certain fidelities fuse with certain betrayals (Skotnick). The detection process has three stages and deception can and does occur in any or all of these (Skotnick, 1985). These are investigation, interrogation and testimony. Within the policeman's broad moral cognition, the acceptability of deception depends on the level of criminal process: It is most acceptable to the police and the courts at the investigation stage, less during interrogation and least at the testimonial stage in the courtroom. Increasingly stringent normative constrains account for the differences among the levels and stages. Courtroom testimony is given under oath, whereby witnesses sweat to tell only the truth and nothing but the truth. It is the norm to accept that a witness is telling the truth in court. Courtroom lying violates the basic justice system, which all the parties are assumed to uphold. A policeman who lies in the courtroom can work his way out of his predicament by insisting that judicial interpretations of his limitations can get on the way of his abil ity of performing his job. This appears to be true within the context of the forces, which operate within the investigative stage of an adversary system, wherein the end justifies the means. The policeman seems to have the "privilege" of lying to get to the truth in achieving justice through due process (Skotnick). It may be quaint and a contradiction of values and norms but it is also factual that police freely admit to deceiving suspects and defendants to catch them, yet lying policemen and detectives do not admit to committing perjury (Skotnick, 1985). Perjury is as systematic as police work and police know among themselves that they perjure as a norm rather than as an individual error. A study, conducted by Columbia law students on the effect of Mapp v. Ohio on police practices in New York City, on certain search and seizure cases showed that uniformed police fabricated grounds for arrest in narcotics cases in meeting the requirements of Mapp. This does not justify but only explains how police who falsely witness justify the practice for the sake of greater persuasiveness. They resort to lying as routine of shaking themselves out of a predicament or helping one another out of it and because of a skeptical attitude towards a system, which is disinclined towards the truth that would be favor able to the criminal. The law allows a policeman to lie during the investigative stage but forbids it during the testimonial stage in the courtroom where and when he is certain of the guilt of the suspect, unlike during the investigative stage. The lying policeman puts more value on a short-term objective of suppressing evidence than on the long-term principle of due process in protecting the dignity of the accused. The policeman's pursuit is to legitimize the evidence he presents rather than weigh and analyze its sufficiency. He is merely after complying with the arrest laws, although this compliance often involves manipulation