by TChris

It may be counterintuitive, but it is undeniable that persons arrested for crimes they didn't commit sometimes give false confessions.

There are a wide array of reasons. Juveniles are often manipulated into confessing. Tricky questioning, physical coercion or suggestions that a confession is the best way to avoid a lengthy sentence, or the death penalty, persuade many adults to admit crimes they did not commit.

An editorial in the NY Times notes that videotaping of police interrogations is a critical safeguard against interrogation tactics that lead to false confessions. Just as significantly, videotaping preserves the exact words used by a suspect -- protecting against misunderstanding, spinning, quoting out of context, and outright fabrication of the suspect's statement.

Honest officers have no objection to the transparency that videotaping brings, because it protects them from false claims that they used coercive questioning techniques and it prevents a defendant from falsely denying that the statement was made. That's why police in the few jurisdictions that require recording are enthusiastic about the practice. As the Times suggests, "the states and localities that do not require recorded interrogations now should start to do so."