Legal Updates Spring 2016 The Legal Updates Spring 2016 column contains cases which address the following issues:

• Detective erroneously associates “sleep deprivation” with the Reid Technique
• Plaintiff claims Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism framed him for murder
• Lying about DNA evidence is not coercive
• Use of falsified documents purporting to represent the official results of a state-police lab’s DNA examination was coercive
• Court finds that the investigator fabricated the plaintiff’s confession “out of whole cloth”
• Promises to the defendant he would not face criminal charges if sexually touching a seven-year-old child was a mistake or accident was coercive
• Expert should have been allowed to testify re defendant’s mental disabilities on issue of confession reliability
• Suggesting to the defendant that he might get a better deal if he was “first to the table” and that he should consider the impact it would have on his son if he was in prison were not coercive statements
• Value of video recording the interrogation to demonstrate confession voluntariness
• Questioning the defendant at the scene of a stabbing was not custodial interrogation
• Minimizing the seriousness of the crime is not coercive
• Defendant suffering from withdrawal is capable of giving a voluntary confession
• The value of video recording the interrogation to refute false claims of promises of leniency
• Promises of leniency and threats of the death penalty are coercive
• If invocation of right to remain silent is ignored (“I'm done talking. I don't wanna talk no more.”) the resulting confession is inadmissible
• 7 hour interrogation not coercive