Do we live in a world of NECESSARY deceit and lies?

[LittleDeb]

Hmm. This troubles me, even though I’m sure it is an urban legend. There have been cases where police did in fact lie to suspects in order to get a confession.

But often, police don’t even need to lie. They just tell the suspect over and over again, repeatedly, for hours on end, that he did the crime, and they state how he did it, filling in all the details from the way they believe it may have happened. There have been several famous cases wherein police have obtained false confessions in this way. The suspect, though innocent, simply wrote a statement to match what the police told him, just to make the browbeating come to an end.

The police didn’t lie to him; they just suggested, over a course of hours, what he must write down and sign in order to make all this stop and allow them to ‘help’ him.

And this is the type of problem that does concern me. I often wonder if I could be led to believe something as truth in a case like that. They aren’t lying because they believe they have truth on their side. Truth is objective, but our understanding of it is not.

 

[JimG]

And this is the type of problem that does concern me. I often wonder if I could be led to believe something as truth in a case like that. They aren’t lying because they believe they have truth on their side. Truth is objective, but our understanding of it is not.

Kind of off topic, but as far as I know, police investigators are acutally permitted to lie. They have lied to suspects telling them they failed a lie detector test when they passed it. They have obtained false confessions through intimidation. Some suspects just don’t know to clam up and ask for a lawyer. They figure they’re innocent so it’s okay to talk. Bad idea.

I read a book called “No Crueler Tyrannies” by Dorothy Rabinowitz. It recounts the case of some preschool workers who were accused and convicted of outrageous crimes of child abuse and sent to prison. But they weren’t just innocent. The crimes alleged never even happened! It’s a case study in how prosecutors can get things horribly wrong and yet never change their mind.