I read this story in the New London Day, but was unable to find a link there. It was these paragraphs that caught my attention:
ATTLEBORO, Mass. (AP) _ Massachusetts prosecutors in the Aaron Hernandez murder case said Friday there’s no truth to an allegation by lawyers for the former New England Patriot that investigators misled a potential witness.
The defense claimed in court papers filed last week that investigators visiting an inmate at a Connecticut prison in August told him they were there “to help Aaron out.” Hernandez’s attorneys said Everett Garcia told them that was the only reason he answered the officers’ questions.
Now, I'm willing to believe that in this particular case the prosecutors are telling the truth. But, in order to help them with their inquiries, and to help them avoid these types of claims in the future, I would like to inform them of a marvel of modern technology (it's barely seventy years old!) that would assure such claims are never made in the future. It's called a “tape recorder”. It's a nifty little gadget. Nowadays they make them small enough to carry around, and there are even apps for that. They take down every word that's said while they are running. Had the prosecutors been aware of the existence of such a device they could have used it while talking to Mr. Garcia and then we would all know whether they had misled him or not.
Being an expert on British police methods (I'm currently watching Season 10 of Midsomer Murders) I can report that British cops are already familiar with this astonishing device, and use it regularly while grilling suspicious characters.
Now, were this country still in the hands of an enlightened judiciary, it might occur to our Supreme Court to acknowledge the existence of this wondrous instrument, and wonder why it is not employed by the American constabulary. It might even occur to them to suggest, absent compelling evidence establishing the impossibility of using one during an interrogation, that no challenged statement should be admitted into evidence unless the forces of justice can provide a tape recording of the inquisition that led to the statement.
I understand that there are some machines that not only record sounds, but moving pictures right along with the sound. But it would probably be expecting too much to ask our protectors to consider using such a complicated device in the course of their investigations.
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