The need for interrogations to be video- and/or audio-recorded (whether or not the polygraph is involved) has been a recurring topic on AntiPolygraph.org. On 22 June 2004,
USA Today published an article by George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley on this topic. Although he doesn't mention it, two of the false confessions to which he specifically refers -- those of Navy Petty Officer Daniel M. King and of Abdallah Higazy -- involved polygraphs.
Quote:Abu Ghraib images bring lessons closer to home
By Jonathan Turley
The scandal over the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib appears to be subsiding in Washington. In a ritual as old as the republic, scapegoats have been offered up by the administration and accepted by the Congress. For the military, however, the message and true meaning of the scandal could not be more clear: no more pictures.
The federal government, and particularly the military, has long understood the impact of photographs. Pictures represent a dangerous element in a world that remains largely visual. They are hard to spin or deny. Most importantly, such images are instantly credible for a viewer. (Recall the naked Iraqi prisoner on a leash.)
Knowing the dangers of such images, the federal government for decades has rejected calls for videotaping interrogations ? a practice followed by some states. Yet the government often uses videotape to record confessions, but not the interrogations that lead to them. As a result, any accusations of abuse during an interrogation is the word of the suspect against that of a law enforcement officer.
Day after day, lawmakers expressed outrage as the facts of Abu Ghraib came to light. Yet if members of Congress were serious about reform, the problem would not be the pictures from the Iraqi prison, but the absence of pictures in abuse cases within their own districts.
Evidence has emerged that the incidents at Abu Ghraib were carried out at the behest of military intelligence as interrogation techniques. Similar charges of abuse have been made for years in domestic cases, but they are particularly prevalent in the military system, where investigators have been accused of using sleep deprivation, threats and other coercive tactics to secure confessions.
Resistance to change
Despite such charges and ever-present concerns, the military and federal government remain adamantly opposed to mandatory taping. This, even as 238 police departments have policies to tape all interrogations, and four states (and the District of Columbia) require such taping, according to a study by Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions. Proposals for mandatory taping have been raised in 21 other states.
In a Navy espionage case that I handled as defense counsel, Navy Petty Officer Daniel King was interrogated for days with little sleep or food. Sessions lasted as long as 19 hours. Audiotapes were later discovered in which interrogators could be heard reducing King to a point of exhaustion and fear. What was striking is that the tapes suddenly ended. In a deposition, a Navy interrogator said he was called by officials in Washington and specifically told to stop audiotaping ? preventing further record of the conditions leading up to King's false confession. King was vindicated when a military judge threw out the charges as unsupported and possibly based on coerced confessions.
Confessions by the innocent
King's false confession is only one of many such cases, often involving accusations of abuse. Of the 143 prisoners in the USA who have been exonerated by DNA testing, 20% had confessed falsely to the crimes. In murder cases, the percentage of false confessions might be much higher because of a suspect's desire to avoid the death penalty. A study by Northwestern University Law School found that, of the 42 invalid murder convictions confirmed by DNA testing in Illinois since 1970, 60% were based on false confessions.
Federal prosecutors also have produced their share of false confessions. In a case involving Abdallah Higazy, the Justice Department produced a confession after a long interrogation. Higazy said he owned a ground-to-air radio found in his hotel room next to the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A hotel security guard later came forward to admit that it was his radio. But, once again, no recording was made of the interrogation of Higazy that had led to the false confession.
Notably, prosecutors and police officers do not oppose all videotaping. The police are happy to videotape all cars traveling on particular roads and all citizens stopped by cruisers ? including scenes aired on TV shows. However, when mandatory videotaping of interrogations is raised, these same officers become camera-shy.
This refusal to tape interrogations is particularly suspect when police routinely use videotape to record confessions for use at trial. These tapes are often worthy of Cecil DeMille. After working on a suspect until he confesses, police will clean him up and calm him down. They will then have him repeat the confession on videotape so it appears that he is a coldhearted killer matter-of-factly detailing his crime.
For years, Alaska and Minnesota have required the videotaping of all major felony interrogations without undermining law enforcement or imposing prohibitive costs. Groups such as the American Bar Association have called for mandatory taping. Videotaping also makes it more difficult for criminals to make false claims of abuse during an interrogation.
Congress has long been aware of the need for the taping of interrogations, particularly in the military. One thing is certain after Abu Ghraib: If such recording is not made mandatory, the military is likely to put as much effort into preventing future pictures as preventing future abuse.
When President Bush told the Arab world that the pictures at Abu Ghraib would not be tolerated in the United States, he was right. Under our current rules, there would be no pictures at all.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University.
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Abu Ghraib Images Bring Lessons Closer to Home (Read 6416 times)
