The Boston Globe casts doubt on an arson conviction of a man who has now been in prison since the mid 80s. It’s a familiar story-the primary evidence against him was a confession obtained after hours of police questioning. The details of the confession were are variance with the physical evidence at the scene, but who’s going to sweat the details when you have a confession?
We will never know what led up to his decision to put pen to paper. Is the interpreter’s (the convicted man was Hispanic) story true:
The translator who assisted in the police interrogation has made a dramatic reversal of the account he gave at trial. In a sworn affidavit provided to Rosario’s current attorneys, he says Rosario was delusional during the questioning and did not understand what he was signing.
It is a continuing mystery. Why do we allow a confession into evidence if the police do not also produce a complete videotape of the interrogation? It’s not like the technology is expensive or difficult to operate. If the police can’t handle it, they can hire high school kids, who could use the extra money.
Of course it’s not really a mystery at all. The police don’t want to do it, because it would deprive them of the ability to get quick and easy confessions, actual guilt or innocence be damned. The judges don’t want to require them to do it, and ditto with the state legislatures of the various states. Of course the police will maintain there is absolutely nothing untoward going on in the interrogations, and, absent overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the courts will profess to believe them.
In this case, at least according to the Globe, there was probably no crime at all. The fire in question was probably accidental. But the man convicted by his own confession has now been in prison more than half his life, and the chances are, at best, about even that he will get the new trial he is requesting.
In any sane world we would have an exclusionary rule: no video, no evidence.
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