Defense bar lauds call for videotaped cop interrogations.

Byline: Barry Bridges

Defense attorneys are hailing a recent concurring opinion by state Supreme Court Justice Francis X. Flaherty, in which he expressed his "ongoing and persistent misgivings as to the practice of interrogating suspects in police custody without the benefit of a videotape of the interrogation."

The question before the court was whether defendant Hasim Munir's confession to having sexually molested a child was knowing, intelligent and voluntary.

Although an audio recording of the interrogation was available, a police investigator testified at the suppression hearing that the video recording system was "not operable at the time" and was in any event not required.

While not disputing what occurred during the interrogation, the parties disagreed as to whether Munir was able to exercise his free will in light of the officers' sometimes overbearing conduct.

Justice William P. Robinson III wrote for the court in upholding Superior Court Judge Netti C. Vogel's ruling that considering the totality of the circumstances, the defendant's confession was not the product of coercion or threats.

But Flaherty, joined by Robinson, wrote separately to express his "unyielding belief" that Rhode Island should join the 25 states that now "require or encourage" custodial interrogations to be recorded.

"With the stakes as high as they are, there remains no cogent reason for such a shortcoming," Flaherty wrote. "I find it bewildering that depositions in civil cases are recorded with increasing frequency, but an interrogation with a defendant's liberty on the line need not be."

The 23-page decision is State v. Munir, Lawyers Weekly No. 60-062-19. The full text of the ruling can be found here.

False confessions antidote

North Kingstown criminal defense attorney Melissa Larsen said the defense bar had been advocating for the videotaping of interrogations in addition to audio recordings as far back as she could remember.

Larsen recalled that she was the prosecutor in State v. Barros, a murder case that landed at the Supreme Court in 2011. The justices held in Barros that due process does not require that criminal defendants have custodial interrogations electronically recorded in full.

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"With courts and police departments and defense counsel all seemingly agreeing to the need, what is standing in the way of this?"

S. Joshua Macktaz, Providence

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Flaherty also wrote separately in Barros, arguing that if a defendant on trial for a crime...