The Legal Updates Spring 2015 column contains cases which address the following issues:

• Court rules that a minimal understanding of Miranda rights is sufficient to make a knowing and intelligent waiver
• Court excludes the testimony of Dr. Deborah Davis regarding false confessions
• Aggressive behavior does not lead to a coerced confession
• Defendant not under arrest in his home even though his movements are monitored
• The propriety of utilizing a suspect's family member during an interrogation
• "[n]o arrest, no matter how lawful or objectively reasonable, gives an arresting officer or his fellow officers license to deliberately manufacture false evidence against an arrestee"
• Confession voluntariness - a case study
• Prosecutor inserts false confession in police interrogation transcript
• Failure to call expert witness to testify about false confessions was not basis for finding of ineffective counsel
• Statements inadmissible because the investigator advised defendant he would protect him from going to jail
• Court admits the confession the defendant made to the victim's mother in a child abuse case
• Value of video to help determine if schizophrenia caused "unknowing or involuntary" responses
• "I just as soon wait until I get a public defendant or whatever" ruled an unequivocal invocation of request for an attorney
• Intoxication (methamphetamine ice, cocaine and beer) did not render incriminating statements inadmissible: value of video
• Lying to a suspect and "playing on his emotions" does not render the confession inadmissible