Public Defense

Video of police interrogation of 8-yr old released

By Gideon

The Apache County Attorney’s Office has released 12 minutes of the video of the interrogation of the 8-year old charged with murdering his father and his father’s friend.

It’s absolutely disgusting. There are two cops talking to this child, without the presence of a parent, guardian or lawyer.

They repeatedly ask him if he’s lying and whether he was home before he says he was. He steadfastly maintains his version of events and denies being involved. He even describes with some detail a car he saw driving away from the house.

Obviously, this is not the part of the video where he “confesses”. Just listen to the voice of the 8 year old boy. It’s disgusting that they’re doing this.

I am quite curious about the prosecutor’s motive in releasing this truncated video. Any thoughts on that? It seems like a PR ploy, but I can’t quite figure out their angle. Are they bowing to media pressure? Are they trying to show the public that this was a conniving young boy? Portray him as a liar?

Whatever their motives may be, the bottom line is that the police should not have interrogated him for hours without the presence of an adult.

Sometimes cops are too eager to “solve” a crime and do so at the expense of Constitutional rights. This also strikes me as a situation where they have blinders on and are now committed to their theory that the boy did it, while other legitimate avenues of investigation are going cold.

I would be rather surprised if a judge admits this confession at a trial - and if by some miracle it is admitted - I would be even more shocked if an appellate court permitted the conviction to stand.

A shame, really, that this kind of shit still goes on.

An AP report with some clips of the video is below; the full raw feed is at this link.

Full post as published by A Public Defender on November 18, 2008 (boomark / email).