|
I think it's not quite as simple as "lie" or "no lie." The cops ought to be able to tell some lies, in some ways, in some situations, but not other lies, in other ways, in other situations.
"We have your buddy in the next room, and he implicated you. Want to tell your side?" Seems OK to me.
"If you don't give us the information we want, we'll make sure they take your kids away." Not so much.
Also, tactics are another issue. Lying may or may not be okay. Refusing to let a suspect go to the bathroom? Not okay. Interrogating him in a hot, stuffy room without giving him water, for like eight or ten hours? Also not okay.
We don't want to strip the police of all their potential advantages in obtaining a confession, but we do want to limit the ways in which the process can be abused.
Also, I'm just throwing this out here, it might help if we had laws that made more sense. Threatening someone with jail is okay in theory, but could go terribly wrong with the kind of draconian sentencing guidelines that we have in the US. Also, cops way too often end up rolling right over some guy to get information, just because they can squeeze him by prosecuting him for some minor drug offense. We get rid of draconian sentencing and stupid drug laws, I'd be more inclined to give the cops free rein on jamming people up in order to get information.
__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.
(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)
|