CMRJ306

50 WORDS AGREE OR DISAGREE

Interrogation and interviews consist of a vital portion of police work. This week’s reading brought into light the different strategies associated with obtaining information from witnesses and suspects along with the challenges of gaining in-criminating testimony. Though similar; interviews and interrogations are different. Interviews typically involve officers trying to obtain investigative and behavioral information, while interrogation is used for people officers reasonably believe are guilty (Strandberg, 2015).

Interviews are usually conducted on victims, witnesses and accuser with the purpose to raise the facts of the case and or incident (Vecchi, 2009). Officers conducting the interviews should be prepared to carefully scrutinize the information from both the accuser and complainant in order to filter out false or misleading information (Vecchi, 2009). Further, all those that will be interviewed should be separated in order to prevent any outside influences (Vecchi, 2009). It is also important to note that people may lie in order to protect the suspect from criminal charges an or invoke themselves (Vecchi, 2009).

Interrogations are implemented for people, such as suspects and accomplices whom officer believe are not willing to give information (Vecchi, 2009). It is vital for any case that officers inform individuals of their rights against self-incrimination, along with their right to remain silence and have a counsel present (Vecchi, 2009). Failure to do so can cause a conviction to be overturned (Cantrell, 2013). For instance, in Louisiana v. Taylor, a detective informed Taylor of his rights against self-incrimination (State v. Taylor, 2019). However, Taylor informed the detective he wished to remain silent (State v. Taylor, 2019). The detective then proceeded to ask him a self-incrimination question in which Taylor than answered (State v. Taylor, 2019). He was later convicted in trial court; however, his defense appealed the case and later his sentence was overturned. That is until the case went to the Louisiana Supreme Court (State v. Taylor, 2019).

Investigators should prepare themselves before conducting interviews and interrogations (Vecchi, 2009). They can do this by orienting themselves to the what is known of the how, where, when, what, who and the why details of the incident (Vecchi, 2009). Further interrogates can gather background information on the individuals being interviewed or interrogated such as level of education, criminal history and personal activities (Vecchi, 2009). Lastly planning a questioning procedure with open ended question that require the individual to explain can all also better prepare the investigator in achieving their objective (Vecchi, 2009).