Throughout 2015, there have been multiple instances of police officers caught lying,
breaking procedural rules, or outright committing crimes.
This has created a public air of distrust in law enforcement.
In one case, a Texas state trooper was indicted for lying in an affidavit concerning a case
where a woman died in jail after her arrest.
But although police are not allowed to be dishonest in official legal documents, or
in a court of law, there is some significant leeway in terms of interrogations and one
on one interactions with the public.
So, we wanted to know, when can the police lie to you?
Well, it’s a common misconception that if you ask an undercover officer if they’re
a cop, and they say no, it is considered entrapment.
Obviously, if that were the case, there would be no way to conduct things like drug busts
or similar operations.
Entrapment is basically when an officer coerces you into doing something illegal that you
weren’t already likely to do.
So, if an officer threatens or pesters you to commit an illegal act after you’ve already
said no, it would potentially be inadmissible in court.
More broadly, police are allowed to lie to civilians in the course of their police work.
This is especially true in cases of interrogations while attempting to get a confession or valuable
information out of a suspect.
However, this does not give officers or detectives free reign to lie about circumstances and
consequences.
The baseline rule is that a confession can be ruled invalid if a law enforcement agent’s
lies would have otherwise made an innocent person confess.
This is effectively the line between a voluntary confession versus a coercion.
For example, an officer can suggest that a confession would lead to less jail time, but
they cannot promise that it will.
They can also lie about DNA evidence linking you to a crime when there is none, or that
your friend has already turned you in.
Since police interrogations are often, by their very nature coercive, when a confession
is retracted, courts need to determine if the interrogation tactics were appropriate.
For police, these guidelines mean that while they can be dishonest, and even trick suspects
into confessing, they still have to walk a fine line, in case their tactics enter coercive
territory.
In 2014, a New York court conviction was thrown out when it was discovered that police told
the suspect that his dying son could be saved if the suspect confessed.
It was ruled that “any… parent [would] provide whatever information they thought
might be helpful, even if it was incriminating.”
However, it is rare for a higher court to overturn a lower court’s judgment.
And in the end, the line between coercion and deception is so vague that while there
are cases where police lying can invalidate a case, these are few and far between.
While many police are doing their jobs, many in the U.S. argue that police forces are too
militarized and shouldn’t be equipped with such powerful weapons.
Learn about the controversy in our video.
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