Shining the Bright Light on Police Interrogation in America

Abstract:     
This article reviews Richard A. Leo’s book 'Police Interrogation and American Justice.' Prior to entering legal academia, Leo served as an associate professor of psychology and criminology, and performed groundbreaking empirical research into how police interrogators obtain confessions and how their interrogation techniques affect suspects. His body of work shines the bright light on police interrogation in American today. Leo depicts the values and structure of interrogation in a way that few, outside of the actual subjects/victims of interrogation, fully understand. Although I do not agree with all of his conclusions and proposed reforms, his work convincingly raises a point that we must heed: If we are to ensure the integrity and fairness of confessions in this country, we must adopt universal videotaping requirements across all jurisdictions, and develop new reliability tests to screen out false confessions.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 26

Accepted Paper Series