The Associated Press
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) - Interrogations at most police departments in North Carolina are not taped or recorded in their entirety, though a national survey of law enforcement shows widespread support for the practice.
The study showed that videotaping of interviews and confessions prevents disputes about officers’ conduct and the statements made by suspects, reduces the number of defense challenges and spares officers from allegations of coercion.
Defendants frequently force hearings, which can last for hours and sometimes days, while judges determine whether their confessions were made voluntarily.
Many departments, including Winston-Salem, typically use audiotaping as a tool during investigations. But they do so after a suspect has confessed, and not during the early parts of the interview.
A growing number of departments in almost every state are recording entire interviews. They say that it helps their credibility and can be a training tool.
“It’s invaluable in that we can critique and evaluate the job that the investigators are doing,” said Lt. Marshall Williamson, a supervisor in the Wilmington police criminal-investigations division, which has been videotaping interviews since January 2002.
“If the tools are available and we want to come into the 21st century and be open and honest, and be who we say we are ... then we should be open in a 360-degree arena.”
Christopher Levon Bryant went to Winston-Salem police headquarters voluntarily last November to talk with detectives about the death of Nathaniel Jones. Officers had gone to his neighborhood to pick him up, telling him they had heard that he had information about the case.
His mother encouraged him to go, so he went.
What happened over the next several hours became the subject of a court hearing, and the case illustrates the growing discussion, nationally and in North Carolina, about whether police interviews should be videotaped.
Sometime during his interview with detectives, Bryant, then 15, wound up implicating himself in the crime. At his hearing to suppress his confession in March, Bryant described how the police were asking him in which arm he would prefer the needle, referring to lethal injection, the state’s method of executing people convicted of first-degree murder.
The detectives knew that Bryant was too young to get the death penalty, but Bryant didn’t. A judge ruled in the state’s favor after the hearing, and Bryant is now awaiting trial with two other defendants in the Jones case.
Two teenagers have already been convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison. All of them argued that their statements were coerced.
A study last year by the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University’s School of Law in Chicago showed strong support for videotaping by the 238 agencies in 38 states that do it in felony investigations.
Police in Denver, for example, said that recording statements reduced the time officers needed to testify in hearings, the length of hearings and the number of people called to testify. It increased guilty pleas and the likelihood for a conviction.
The departments said that recording did not interfere with officers’ ability to get the cooperation of witnesses or suspects, or a confession.
Most states, including North Carolina, allow police to electronically record interrogations without the suspect’s knowledge. Recordings aid in the search for truth, the study said.
The Chapel Hill Police Department has had a camera in its interview room for several years. Using it is at the discretion of each investigator.
Sgt. Robert Carden of the department’s criminal-investigations division said he has taped some interviews but usually does not. He and other officers worry, he said, that the tapes might hurt the state’s case, and that juries may not like some police tactics used during interrogations.
One case he chose to tape involved first-degree rape.
“I felt like at the time he obviously did it - he does want to tell the whole story,” Carden said.
Forsyth County District Attorney Tom Keith said he supports videotaped interrogations.
“It’s a benefit to law enforcement because it will settle cases and encourage pleas,” he said.
But Keith echoed another common anti-videotaping theme: “It’s going to be expensive in funding equipment.”