Interrogation Assignment This documentary showcases a number of police interrogations that are problematic. The one that I believe is the most egregious is the interrogation of twelve year old Thomas Cogdell in the murder of his little sister, Kaylee. His entire interrogation was one big violation of his constitutional rights, not to mention it verged on psychological torture. The first of Cogdell’s constitutional rights to be violated was his 6th Amendment right to counsel. Although he was not yet placed under arrest, he was being interrogated in a police station and being asked incriminating questions. Any average person, especially a kid, would reasonably believe that they were in police custody. Furthermore, he technically was in custody seeing as he was deprived of his freedom in a significant way, in his case being held at the police department for hours. Therefore, Thomas Cogdell deserved to have a lawyer present during his interrogation. The second of Cogdell’s constitutional rights to be violated involves a case decided before the Miranda case, but is still applicable nonetheless. Police lied to Thomas throughout the interrogation, but most importantly telling him that they found a fingerprint on the bag that they were going to use to convict him. In reality, investigators could …show more content…
This practice is extremely unreliable and is already banned from use in Europe. More specifically, I think the practice of telling suspects that they have failed the polygraph test in order for them to confess to crimes that they may or may not have even committed should be banned. Many innocent people go on to confess to someone else’s crimes because they believe that the polygraph is infallible. By telling them that they failed the test even when they haven’t, it results in many innocent people being convicted of