Videotaping Confessions

Law Enforcement's Mixed Reactions to Videotaping

Over the past 25 years, there has been considerable ambivalence within the law enforcement community concerning the videotaping of interrogations and confessions. Long before the first DNA exoneration case in 1989, the police in some jurisdictions took the initiative and began experimenting with the videotape recording of at least portions of the questioning of detained suspects. For example, by the early 1980s, the district attorney's office in one borough of New York City had access to approximately 3,000 videotaped admission statements. According to statistics maintained by that office, videotaping produced an 85% guilty-plea rate and a nearly 100% conviction rate. In contrast, other jurisdictions have adamantly resisted the call for mandatory videotaping of custodial interrogations. Those in law enforcement opposing the videotaping movement have argued that the cost of equipment, storage, and transcription of videos is an undue burden for jurisdictions with limited budgets. Moreover, they fear that suspects will be hesitant to talk in the presence of a camera; judges and juries will disapprove of certain legally permissible interrogation tactics commonly used (e.g., lying about the amount and kind of evidence incriminating a suspect), thus rejecting the confession evidence as unreliable; and requiring videotaping will impugn the integrity of law enforcement agencies that have worked diligently to earn a reputation for honesty.

In the past 15 years, two large surveys have been conducted to assess the extent to which law enforcement agencies were videotaping at least some interrogations and/or confessions and their reactions to this procedural modification. The first was a report to the National Institute of Justice in 1992 by William Geller, who estimated that approximately one-third of law enforcement agencies serving populations of 10,000 or more recorded interrogations, or parts thereof, on some occasions in the late 1980s. Importantly, Geller found that the police, who had experience with videotaping, expressed strong support for the practice. As a member of the San Diego police put it, “Not using video would be like not using state-of-the-art fingerprint analysis [Page 845]equipment. If better technology comes along, and its cost is reasonable, the police should experiment with it if there is a reasonable chance that it can assist them in their work” (p. 153).

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