What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
A Carrboro police officer who long suspected a man in the death of a missing woman testified Wednesday that he concocted a scheme to use a fake arrest warrant and letter from the district attorney's office to make the man think he was being charged with first-degree murder.
A while back on the blogs devoted to legal issues, there were stories about the dangers of police officers who knew suspects were guilty, but lacked any credible evidence to support their beliefs. Add this to the file.
posted by Biff Loman at 12:07 PM
4 Comments:
I dunno, how much different from telling them they won super bowl tickets is this? Everybody seemed to think that was pretty clever a few years ago. Even videotaped it and showed it on TV...
Yeah, that was pretty clever, but if I remember correctly--and there's a good chance I'm not--they had arrest warrants for those guys. This guy was only a suspect.
He was entitled to his constitutional rights and the rights given to him by their interpretation. Because it looks like they were denied him, he might get to go free.
No one wants that to happen.
Of course nobody wants a guilty person to get off because of a bonehead stunt pulled by the good guys, but last time I read the constitution, it didn't prohibit tricking suspects... leave a fake murder warrant laying around and the guy starts blubbering like a nancy boy. Reminds me of the urban legend about the cops with the Xerox machine that spit out a copy "you're lying" everytime the suspect answered a question...
No, that's true. The constitution does allow all sorts of tom foolery to get suspects to talk as long as they've been read their rights. They didn't, here, and that's the sticking point.
This is a little like the original Miranda case? In it, I think, the arresting officers started talking about what a shame it would be if some kid stumbled across the murder weapon (a shotgun, I believe) and accidentally killed himself, and Miranda told them where he put it. They said they weren't talking to Miranda, just chatting with each other, and that Miranda eavesdropped on the conversation, felt guilt, and talked. I could be wrong, but I think that was Miranda.
Of course, I could just walk my lazy ass across the room, to the bookshelf, and look it up, but naaaaah.
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