HYPOTHETICAL SET OF FACTS
One Saturday afternoon in early December, two men took a four year old boy to a remote desert area and killed him by shooting him three times in the back of the head. To cover their tracks, the men then went to a local area mall where they separated. One of the men, a platonic roommate of the mother, called her at home and told her that the child was missing from the mall. He enlisted the aid of the mall security guard and they called police to report the child missing. The mother also called Crimestop, even though the men told her that he and a security guard were going to call police.
Over the evening, police closed and searched the mall while the mother remained by the telephone at home in case her young son called her. Friends and relatives gathered at her apartment, and then searched the mall over the next several hours. The mother cooperated fully with police, undergoing interview after interview over the course of the long, sleepless, tear filled night. The mother explained to the police that she had met her roommate three years before when her sister befriended him. They had become and remained friends over the course of those years, staying in touch with one another sporadically. When the situation with her ex-husband became increasingly difficult, the mother and her son had moved in with the man three months before on a temporary basis. Thereafter, she secured a good job and had recently placed a deposit on a new apartment for herself and her son. With no word from the police about her son, the following afternoon the mother's family drove her to a neighboring city to see her father.
During the night and over the next morning, police repeatedly interviewed the two men involved. Police learned that the men were friends for over twenty years. Both men were Vietnam veterans with histories of mental illness and were being treated and prescribed medication through the local VA hospital. The story the two men had fabricated began to unravel with inconsistencies developing between the statements of the two men.
That morning, as police began to suspect that foul play may be involved, they called in a homicide detective who subsequently became the case agent. A twenty year veteran of the police department, this detective had spent the last six years as a homicide investigator. The detective subsequently retired before this case came to trial. After being briefed and monitoring and interview of the friend of the roommate, this detective interrogated the man again. Without benefit of an audio or video tape of the interview, the detective emerged from the interview with a confession.
The man claimed that he was only the driver and that his friend was responsible for shooting the child. He then led the detectives to the child's body and by the locations where other evidence was deposited. While so doing, the man implicated the mother in the death of her son. There was no physical evidence of the mother's involvement. Another detective later taped an interview of this man to memorialize the prior interrogation.
Immediately thereafter, and possessing no further information, the detective telephoned the local sheriff's office and had the mother escorted to their offices where she sat for over two hours waiting for the detective to arrive. The detective recruited a police helicopter and flew the fifty miles to the small town where the mother was staying with her parents. Though he was ordered by his superior officer to interview the mother and to tape record his interview, the detective did not take a tape recorder with him. He later stated that he assumed that the local sheriff's office would have one. He never asked anyone for the tape recorder.
Upon arrival, the detective went to a small room in the office where the mother was waiting with a family friend. He introduced himself and ordered the others out of the room, shutting the door behind him. A large man, approximately 6' and 230 lbs., the detective sat himself down in front of the mother. When she asked him whether he had heard anything about her son, the detective ignored her, took out his notebook and checked his watch. He then told her that "We found your son, he was murdered and you are under arrest." When she began screaming and crying, he told her that he would not tolerate her crying and to be quiet. He then read her rights under Miranda.
After the subsequent half hour interrogation, the detective emerged claiming that he was able to make the mother so comfortable with him that she confessed her involvement. Despite this, the detective never made any effort to record her statement or to get a written, signed statement from the mother. He stated that she did not want her statement recorded and that she asked for an attorney after she confessed. The detective later said that the mother faked her tears, and pulled up her blouse during the interview to expose her breasts to him.
The detective escorted the mother back to Phoenix. He told her to be quiet during the trip, not to ask him any questions. He did not handcuff her as he rode in the back seat of the car with her during the fifty mile trip.
The mother subsequently denied that she ever confessed to the officer. She acknowledged that he told her of her Miranda rights but states that she was so shocked by her son's death and her own arrest that she was unable to think of her rights. She told the detective early on that she didn't want a tape recorder, she wanted a lawyer. She explained that she pulled the corner of her sweater, the sweater she wore over her shirt, to dry her eyes and wipe her nose during the interrogation.
Three days after the interrogation, the detective wrote his report, and then destroyed the notes he took contemporaneous to the interrogation. The report contained no unequivocal statements of guilt by the mother. Rather, the report was full of statements that could be interpreted as either inculpatory or exculpatory depending on the context in which the statements were made. The report was written such that the reader is dependent upon the writer to provide the proper context for the statements.
