If you ask a girl if she's LE, do they have to answer truefully?

And in everyone's opinion, is outcall safer than incall in avoiding LE?

Every law school freshman learns that sad truth quickly.
Lying by LE is a routine tactic.
They put two suspects in separate interrog rooms and tell each one that the other has rolled and blamed the whole crime on him, when neither has said a word.

Unfortunately it carries over to the witness stand all too often.
A federal judge in DC recently reprimanded the FBI for over 80 instances of misleading statements in a single case.

The US Supreme Court permits this and explains why it is necessary to bring to justice those evil criminals out there who are DATYing as we speak.



-- Modified on 11/17/2002 1:04:50 PM

> If you ask a girl if she's LE, do they have to answer truefully?

No.  They do not.  They are allowed to lie, and if she was LE she would.

Undercover police can do almost anything, even drink.  Many years ago many states required police to reveal themselves when asked, but it was declared not neccessary in an undercover investigation.  Back in 1998 I think that law was only still active in Alaska.  It may not be valid there anymore either.  Between that and the Partriot Act your privacy is pretty much screwed, so keep it clean.

my question is how many attempts  are  LE allowed to solicit someone unsuccessfully and it be called legal, when that in itself is  a violation to solicit someone as oppossed  to someone soliciting themselves. in other words if le  cannnot seem to get someone to break the law onthe first time, second time ,thrid fourth or fifth time, then by aquiring knowledge  lure someone whom has repeatedly resisted the enticement , to give into it by using an element that isnt  normally used  like say a sick relative  and  commenting on how  by  doing one thing could help the sick relative indirectly  ..blah blahblah  i think u can see where i am going.. it seems like an abuse of  something  that may be allowed in a particular arrest situation, but to continually  pursue something or someone whom has clearly  refused again and again  I think may be an abuse  and violation of  rights. people  are human and  in certain circumstances  can be  brain washed (for lack of a better  term) into compliance  , or threatened for that matter into  doing  something they refused to do.. any thoughts?

For what I learned from different people, LE can be as persistant as any man that is going after a woman!!.

For instance, take an escort that has been e-mailing back and forth with this "Joe Doe" (LE) for months and finally he gets a hold of her.

Absolute inmunity is a priviledge that they all have, they can lie and lie until they get the results that they want.

I learned that the State of California still honors that.

IANAL (I am not a lawyer), but:
You speak of entrapment, which is generally not something LE is allowed to do.  Generally, they can't do something like pressure you to do something illegal then arrest you for doing it.

Several years ago there was a child porn case where the FBI kept trying and trying and trying to get a guy to buy some child porn, over something like 8 months.  He finally agrees, and they arrested him.  Case was thrown out because it was entrapment.

Now, at least in CA, LE is allowed to entrap a suspect in prostitution cases, so this may not apply to our situations.

And of course, IANAL so I could be off on all this.

I thought it was entrapment if LE lies and says they are not. Any California lawyers know for certain?

v. United States; and the old "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine?  If the LE violates the law the derrivative evidence should be suppressed?  Or has the recent case law taken this out?

If the police are allowed to "lie," then why can't that be used to impeach the cop on the wit stand; or set up entrapment defense.

Byram's main claim throughout has been that he was tricked by Madore's assurance that he was not implicated in Bither's death, literally true so far as the murder charge was concerned but a suggestio falsi as pertains to a possible possession charge. Certainly some types of police trickery can entail coercion: consider a confession obtained because the police falsely threatened to take a suspect's child away from her if she did not cooperate. See Lynumn v. Illinois, 372 U.S. 528, 534 (1963). See also Spano v. New York, 360 U.S. 315, 323 (1959).

But trickery is not automatically coercion. Indeed, the police commonly engage in such ruses as suggesting to a suspect that a confederate has just confessed or that police have or will secure physical evidence against the suspect. While the line between ruse and coercion is sometimes blurred, confessions procured by deceits have been held voluntary in a number of situations. Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U.S. 731, 739 (1969) (confession obtained by false statement that co-conspirator had confessed); see also Holland v. McGinnis, 963 F.2d 1044, 1051 (7th Cir. 1992), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 1082 (1993). But see United States v. Rogers, 906 F.2d 189, 192 (5th Cir. 1990).

Given the narrowed definition of coercion in Connelly, it would be very hard to treat as coercion a false assurance to a suspect that he was not in danger of prosecution. (Of course, a false assurance might undercut the gist of a warning, raising questions whether Miranda had been satisfied; but that is a different problem that we need not address since no Miranda warnings at all were given here.) We conclude that under Connelly Byram's interview statement, like his trial testimony, would not be "involuntary" even if he were deceived, a legal conclusion that makes any remand pointless.

Outrageous Misconduct. Byram argues that regardless of coercion, the methods used to obtain his statements were so shocking to the conscience that they violated his rights to "substantive due process." The classic case is Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 172 (1952), where retrieving evidence by pumping the suspect's stomach was regarded as so at odds with civilized values that the evidence had to be excluded. Since Rochin, courts have from time to time invoked this standard to exclude evidence, but normally with some caution and only in the most extreme of cases. See, e.g., United States v. Fernandez-Caro, 677 F. Supp. 893, 894-95 (S.D. Tex. 1987); cf. United States v. Santana, 6 F.3d 1, 4 (1st Cir. 1993) ("[T]he outrageous misconduct defense is almost never successful.").

Given the district court's finding of good faith, the police conduct cannot be described as shocking to the conscience or beyond the bounds of civilized behavior. The police were investigating a homicide and thought, correctly, that Byram was a helpful witness, not implicated in the murder. As to the possession charge, Appleton did not tell Madore to omit the Miranda warning during the interview; and Madore, although he should have known that Byram was a suspect, said that he was focusing on the murder (and the district court apparently believed him).

Further, the Supreme Court's tolerance of police guile in Frazier makes clear that the police can often mislead suspects, at least where coercion is not involved; thus, it is impossible to treat all such false statements as improper, let alone outrageous or uncivilized. Police investigation can be a rough business, and untruths may sometimes be necessary to save a kidnap victim, retrieve a missing firearm, or for other reasons quite apart from the desire to solve a specific crime already committed. See New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S. 649, 656-57 (1984). In this case, "facts more egregious than those presented here" would be required to "rise to a level of a due process violation." Moran v. Burbine, 475 U.S. 412, 432 (1986).

Wong Sun is still good law, however many jurisdictions have carved out exceptions to allow undercover officers to lie to maintain their cover....  there is nothing that prevents a criminal defense atty from attacking the officer's credibility on cross, however, if you are not careful, you are just setting up the prosecutor to show why the officers have to lie, in re-direct examination, if they failed to make it apparent during direct examination.....also, the entrapment defense that is talked about quite frequently over here is not a simple defense.  The entrapment defense is an affirmative defense, in most states, that needs to be proven by the defendant.  The defendant would have to prove that had it not been for the pressure exerted upon him/her by the state that the defendant would never have committed the offense.

Simply stated, if you are induced into doing something you would not have done otherwise, then the tactic used to get you to do the thing you didn't want to do could be considered entrapment.  (Did I say simple?).  How would you argue that the cop saying no, I'm not a cop, induce you into the illegal act?  I think any jury would think that you you were induced into the act b/c of your libido (or $$$, in case of providers).