Florida Innocence Commission Moves Forward in Making Interrogation Recordings Mandatory
On July 2, 2010, Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles T. Canady established the Florida Innocence Commission to offer solutions to the Florida Supreme Court for decreasing wrongful convictions.
The commission met on October 10 to discuss recommending mandatory recording of interrogations in serious cases.
Ultimately, the group voted on recommending a mandate that Florida law enforcement investigators electronically record custodial interrogations of suspects in cases of serious felonies, with a cautionary jury instruction as the sanction for failing to record interrogations.
Opponents of the recommendation took issue with the light sanction attached to the mandate.
Florida International University College of Law Dean Alex Acosta, along with University of Florida Levin College of Law professor Kenneth Nunn and Senator Joe Negron, R-Palm City, argued that excluding statements should be the sanction for failing to record interrogations.
“I believe if you mandate something and the sanctions are relatively meaningless, you haven’t mandated anything,” said Jacksonville criminal defense attorney Hank Coxe. . . .
Kenneth Nunn, a University of Florida law professor, said: “What I am concerned about here is whether or not this jury instruction is the big bad junkyard dog with teeth that everybody says it is.” . . .
“Why not say to a police agency — if they can’t say they had good cause not to record that statement, that it wasn’t in a location where it was appropriate to do so, that the suspect said he didn’t want it recorded, or there was equipment failure — why not say you can’t use the statement? To me, that seems to be the biggest sanction you can have,” Nunn said.
Nunn joined Acosta and Coxe in asking whether the commission’s job is to come up with the strongest recommendations on best practices to prevent wrongful convictions — or to compromise on what is politically feasible.
Interesting. I have the same concern as Professor Nunn, will the jury instructions have enough bite to get law enforcement officials to record interrogations? You can read more here.
Thoughts?