Electronic Recording of Statements Made to Police Should Be Mandatory
Whether statements and confessions given by suspects to police should be electronically recorded is an issue that is beginning to come to the forefront of criminal law across the nation. Proponents of mandatory recording argue that recording is necessary to ensure fairness for defendants and efficiency in the courts. The thrust of their argument is that if all statements and confessions had to be recorded, there would be no question about what the defendant said or admitted to during interrogation and there would also be evidence of whether or not various constitutional requirements were met concerning the interrogation, such as whether the defendant was properly Mirandized. Opponents of mandatory recording argue that such a requirement would impede the interrogation process, make defendants less likely to give statements, and would interfere with the discretion of law enforcement in doing their jobs.
Associations such as the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, The Innocence Project, and the American Civil Liberties Union are all in favor of mandatory recording of interrogations, with good reason. Studies by those groups have shown that rather than the interrogation process being hindered by mandatory recording, jurisdictions that have implemented mandatory recording have noticed that suspects are no less willing and in many instances more likely to give statements or confessions than before.
The benefits of mandatory recording are numerous. First, it ensures that suspects are protected because they are allowed to have their exact words recorded electronically rather than having a statement or confession written for them by a law enforcement official. In this way, it also protects law enforcement officials from accusations of coercion or intimidation because the entire confession is recorded and available verbatim for use at trial. Electronic recording also helps to protect suspects from false confessions resulting from coercion, intimidation, exhaustion, etc. There are many more benefits to electronic confessions that can be found in this article from The Justice Project.
Simply put, there is no reason given the state of technology today that some form of electronic recording of interrogations should be mandated in all fifty states, including Tennessee where there is no such mandate currently in place. Electronic recording of interrogation would provide an important safeguard against false and coerced confessions at merely the cost of a tape recorder or video camera. Given that the liberty of suspects is at stake, there is no persuasive reason why the interrogation process should not be preserved verbatim for use during the trial process.