A cop asked me to lie about fingerprints early in my career. He said he had a suspect who refused to confess. The cop wanted me to stick my head in the door and say I had identified the suspect’s fingerprints. He said it was okay to lie to the bad guys. I had never been asked to lie before and I was confused. I knew lying was wrong, but I still believed in the righteousness of cops. So I hedged. I put my fingerprint on a lift card and wrote the suspect’s name on the card next to the print. Nothing else. I went into the interview room and dropped the card on the desk without saying a word. The suspect confessed. The cop was happy. I was not. My scruples had been violated and a sense of guilt still pervades my thoughts decades later every time I think about it.
#FalseConfessions are a serious problem at all levels of the #CriminalJustice system. Some people voluntarily confess to crimes they didn’t commit without any prompting or interrogation. Others, while being interrogated, confess out of willingness to appear compliant and cooperative, or just to please the cop. Still others confess under pressure in order to escape the mental strain of interrogation. #CriminalDefense attorneys would be well advised to challenge both the evidence and the confession when the client maintains innocence.
Saul Kassin has made a career of studying false confessions.
See one of Saul’s articles here: https://nce.fd.org/sites/nce.fd.org/files/publications/False%20Confessions_Kassin.pdf
For more information, check out Saul’s book here: https://www.amazon.com/Duped-Innocent-Confess-Believe-Confessions/dp/1633888088
In varying degrees, the courts have upheld the legality of police lying to a suspect to induce a confession. While it may be okay for the cops to lie about the evidence they have, it is a gross violation of professional codes of ethics for forensic scientists to engage in that behavior.
And yet it is still done. Coworkers of mine have fallen victim to the scheme far more often than my one lapse early in my career. Some have made a regular practice of it.
Herm Wiggins was a San Diego cop who fabricated dozens of cases of #FingerprintEvidence against innocent people in the 1970s. Almost all pled guilty. After all, you can’t beat #Fingerprints.
Detectives in Troop C of the New York State Police fabricated fingerprint evidence on a wholesale basis in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Sometimes they had the right suspect, other times they did not. First, they would try to coerce confessions using the fabricated fingerprint evidence. But if the suspect wouldn’t confess, they would take the fabricated fingerprints to trial. They would win.
Saul Kassin and I have discussed a joint research project to publicize and raise awareness of the problem of false confessions prompted by bogus claims of fingerprint identifications.
If you know of such cases and especially if you can cite specific examples, please email me at [email protected] and tell me about them. The more detail you can tell me, the better. We want to gauge the extent of the problem and discuss how it makes a fingerprint examiner feel to be used as a tool and asked to lie by a detective. I would be happy to respect your request for anonymity if you want your name kept out of any summaries I compile.
Please let me know about cases in which you have been asked to lie about fingerprints to help get a confession.