What Happens When Police Lie To You?

If the police want to talk to you about a case, know your rights. You may need strong representation now. Jack Rice is a Board Certified Criminal Law Specialist, former prosecutor and criminal defense attorney. Call today at 651-447-7650 or fill out the form for a free confidential consultation.

Imagine receiving a call from the police and they are doing an investigation and say you might be able to help. What does that mean and what do you do? Imagine coming down to the station and honestly trying to help as they requested. Now, what happens if as soon as you sit down, the police start lying to you about the case? It gets worse. They claim:

“We have videotapes of you committing the crime” or “We have fingerprints on the gun proving it was yours” or “That person is dead because of you” or even “Your friend told us you did it.”  

These are all very strong statements of fact but what happens when every one of them is a lie? In other words, there is no videotape.  There are no fingerprints.  There is no dead person. Nobody said you did anything. And then the police ask you to explain why they have all of that evidence that they don’t actually have? The police wouldn’t lie, right? Wrong. How are you supposed to respond?

The police here in Minnesota and across the country are trained on the job and at police academies to lie to people during interrogations. In fact, the police are trained to lie even to children when they interrogate them as well. Worse, the Courts don’t sanction this behavior. In fact, they encourage it by letting in all sorts of reports, statements and everything else that comes from those lies. The police are then congratulated and frequently promoted for being really convincing liars. This just encourages and perpetuates more of this behavior.

In case you doubt what we’re saying, consider this. As of this writing, there are no laws in Minnesota or anywhere else barring the police from lying to you during interrogations. That’s right, its legal for law enforcement to knowingly na purposely lie directly to you. They can lie to you if you are an adult and, believe it or not, they can even lie to you if you are a little kid.  It appears that the logic is that the ends justifies the means. However, does it?  Does it really?

It is only now that Illinois is considering, considering mind you, that police shouldn’t be able to lie to kids, not adults, just kids. This would be ground breaking as it would be the first state in the nation. Here in Minnesota, the police can continue to feel confident in lying to both children and adults when they call you in to talk.

Believe it or not, people are starting to realize that police officers’ lying is a bad thing. Here is what we know. People are convicted for things they simply didn’t do. According to the Innocence Project, false confessions have played a role in about 30% of all wrongful convictions overturned by DNA evidence.  In other words, they couldn’t have done it and DNA provided objective truth. And yet, the police were able to convince people to admit they did something they couldn’t have done.

This ignores the cases where DNA was insufficient or didn’t exist at all.  Contemplate the numbers of people tricked into confessing or confused into admitting things that simply weren’t true. As if that weren’t bad enough, for people under 18, kids are 2-3 times more likely to falsely confess to something they didn’t do.  And yet, the lying continues.   

One of the problems with the police lies is that it can drive inconsistent answers based upon those lies. The police and prosecutors then use those same inconsistent answers as proof of guilt even those they caused the inconsistency.

So, what happens when the police lie to you? The answer, sadly, is probably nothing. If you receive a call from the police, know this and know your rights. Jack is the Founder of Jack Rice Defense, a Minnesota based Criminal Defense firm. He is a Board Certified Criminal Law Specialist, a former prosecutor, a former U.S. Federal Agent, and a criminal defense attorney. If you have received a call from the police and they “just want to talk,” call Jack today for a free confidential consultation. He sometimes even steps in pre-charge.