St. John's University Law Faculty Blog

On April 4, 2018, Professor Kate Levine participated in an invited symposium for the University of Illinois Law Review.  The symposium was on “Federal Responses to Police Misconduct.”  Kate will co-author a piece for the symposium issue with Stephen Rushin (Loyola Chicago Law School).  Their piece, tentatively titled, Interrogation Parity, will address the rights police erect for themselves when they become the subject of internal or criminal investigation. It will recommend a Federal Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBOR), that is conditioned on police departments offering the same interrogation protections they want for themselves to ordinary citizens. The essay will argue that many of the rights police negotiate for themselves, including allowing for bathroom breaks, sleep, food, and preventing long interrogation sessions, lies about penalty exposure, and abusive psychological tactics, although not guaranteed by the Constitution, should be applied to all suspects for numerous reasons. Perhaps the most important reason to extend these rights to all suspects is the frightening number of exonerees who were convicted based on false confessions, many of these exonerees are particularly vulnerable suspects — children, the mentally ill, and the intellectually disabled. Unlike many who study state LEOBOR’s, Levine and Rushin, also believe that police deserve certain protections when they face interrogation, and argue that criminal justice reform advocates urge parity through federal legislation extending these rights to all rather than attempting to strip these protections from the police.

Posted on April 5, 2018 at 8:19 pm in Uncategorized   |  RSS feed |   Reply   |   Trackback URL