Associated Press
MILWAUKEE, Wis. (AP) - Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McMann said the police department should videotape interrogations of suspects to prevent a repeat of an incident in which a woman falsely confessed to murder.
Milwaukee County District Attorney McCann said he doesn’t want to see another incident like the Kristin French case. The mentally disabled woman falsely confessed to murdering a baby, and it took 1 1/2 years to get the case thrown out.
“If the police are doing things as properly as they claim, they shouldn’t be afraid to record,” said Peter Goldberg, one of French’s two public defenders.
McCann said videotapes don’t need to be used in every case, such as burglaries and car thefts.
“But it certainly would be helpful in significant cases, and it could be very useful in cases involving a confession from a person with borderline intelligence as in this case,” he said.
He said it should be a police decision, not a prosecutor’s.
French, 29, was sentenced to seven years of probation for child neglect resulting in death in the Aug. 7, 2000, death of 3-month-old Maleak Smith, who was found in a rubbish bin.
Smith’s body was found at the bottom of a garbage bin with a sock stuffed in his throat and leaves jammed in his nostrils.
French was supposed to look after him the night before while his mother partied. More than two dozen people came in and out of the apartment building where the boy and his mother spent the evening, but French never came to retrieve him.
After interviewing several people, police ended up with a purported confession in which French admitted suffocating the boy because he wouldn’t stop crying.
“Until they finally sewed up the confession, she was in custody about 36 hours and was interrogated six times in one way or another,” Goldberg said of French, who has an IQ of 52. “She was in the interrogation room from 11:15 at night until 7:15 the next morning.”
Prosecutors eventually agreed to drop a first-degree reckless homicide charge against French in exchange for the neglect charge, acknowledging that while French was guilty of not baby-sitting the infant, she was not the killer.
Goldberg said he was ready to present two witnesses who said they were questioned in Maleak’s death. He said they were screamed at, and the table was being pounded.
“If the police aren’t doing those kinds of things, as they constantly claim, why don’t they record the interrogation procedure?” he said.
Supreme Courts in Alaska and Minnesota have ordered recording of all felony interrogations, though Supreme Courts in about twelve other states have refused to order such confessions, said Richard Leo, an associate professor of criminology and psychology at the University of California at Irvine.
In other places, police departments voluntarily tape conversations.
“They realize it’s not that big a deal. They find that they don’t get fewer confessions, and it actually saves time because they don’t have to testify at the endless hearings on how the statement was obtained,” Leo said.