Headline: Governing, 3/17/2025
In Brief:
- Police often deceive people they question — for example, lying about having DNA evidence that incriminates them. Officers’ goals are to persuade guilty people to confess, but such tactics can pressure innocent people to confess, too.
- People sometimes make false confessions because they fear they cannot prove their innocence and hope to get leniency, or because it’s the only way to get out of an arduous interrogation.
- Several states bar police from deceiving youth, but Massachusetts lawmakers are considering a bill that would restrict deceiving adults, too. The bill would prevent confessions from being admitted as evidence in court, unless the commonwealth can prove the confessions were voluntary, reliable and not obtained via deception.
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