People sometimes assume that the police have to be honest with you if you’re facing arrest. They can talk to you about what happened, but they have to stick to the facts. It feels like this would be a fair way to administer justice.
But don’t buy into this myth. It is actually quite legal for the police to lie to you, and they do it frequently. This tactic has often been used with juvenile offenders, for instance. The police may lie during an interrogation.
A controversial issue
It’s fair to say that this is a controversial process, especially when it relates to juvenile defendants, as noted above. There have been cases in which people have admitted to crimes that they didn’t commit during these interrogations. There are those who believe that this type of deception is unfair to young people, who are more likely to be swayed by it.
But the police still see lying as a valuable tactic, in some cases. For instance, they may tell one defendant that someone else has already come forward and testified that they committed a crime. In reality, the police do not have an account from anyone else that incriminated that individual, but they were simply hoping that lying about it would influence that person to it admit that they had been involved in the alleged criminal activity.
The key takeaway here is that you should always remember that the police don’t have to be fully honest. This is just one of the reasons why it’s so important to have your legal team at your side when you talk to the authorities.
