In Class, we watched a documentary called "When They See Us" about 5 suspected kids who were wrongly prosecuted on charges of sexually assaulting a female who was going on a run at night through the park. When they were being investigated by the police they were pressured into confessing that they were the ones who committed the crime. According to Ave Mince-Didier, the author of the article on the website below, "Under the Fifth Amendment, suspects cannot be forced to incriminate themselves. And the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits coercive questioning by police officers. So, confessions to crimes that are coerced, or involuntary, aren't admissible against defendants in criminal cases, even though they may be true." It also stated, to prevent the defendant from incriminating themselves the cops need to state their Miranda rights, but even if they did state the "Miranda warnings (and especially when they don’t), police can overstep their bounds by questioning defendants in ways that are too harsh or too unfair. When this happens, the prosecution usually cannot use the defendant’s statement (the involuntary or coerced confession) in court." If this is true, I'm confused about why they allowed the confessions to be used during the trial. Is it because they couldn't prove that the police officers did indeed try to pressure them to confess by threatening and violently beating them.
The website also listed examples of coercive tactics which are "depriving the defendant of food, water, or use of the bathroom, threats (although threats to carry out the law, such as threatening to arrest a codefendant, are usually fine), promises of leniency, kicking, striking, or otherwise getting physical with the suspect, and interrogating the suspect at gunpoint." The police officers did all of the above except the, interrogating the suspect at gunpoint. It feels like the American criminal justice system was unfair from the very beginning when it came to this case.
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When watching the documentary and seeing how these police men manipulated those young men made me really angry. Knowing that these tactics are commonly used makes me question the integrity of the people in charge, who's purpose is to protect us. What had been done to prevent this from happening again? I think that people choose to turn the other way because they don't want to accept the reality: that our criminal justice system has flaws that need to be addressed and solved.
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