Fred E. Inbau

Police Interrogation--A Practical Necessity

The author is a Professor of Law in Northwestern University. Long active in the field of scientific evidence, he served from 1933 to 1938 as a member of the staff of the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory of Northwestern University School of Law, and from 1938 to 1941 as Director of the Chicago Police Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory. Professor Inbau has been the Managing Director of this Journal since 1945 and is the author of Cases and Comments on Criminal Justice (1960) (with Claude R. Sowle); Lie Detection and Criminal Interrogation (3d ed. 1953) (with John E. Reid); and Self-Incrimination: What Can an Accused Person Be Compelled to Do? (1950). -EDITOR.

Self-Incrimination - What Can an Accused Person Be Compelled to Do?

In the course of criminal investigations and criminal prosecutions it frequently becomes important, or at least desirable, to require an accused person to perform some act or to submit to what might be termed an invasion of his bodily security. The usual situation arises from attempts to effect an identification of the accused, or to ascertain from an examination of his body certain facts tending to establish his guilt or innocence as a criminal offender. In such instances, to what extent does the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination afford protection to accused persons? A discussion concerning the scope and limitations of the privilege against self-incrimination necessarily involves a consideration of its history and of the policy which justifies its existence. Of this, however, only a brief treatment is necessary for our present purpose. The principal objective of this paper is to present a review of pertinent legal decisions, analyzed and discussed under various classifications based upon factual situations. These classifications, however, are offered merely for the convenience and interest of the reader and not as any indication that each group of cases warrants the application of a different legal principle in interpreting the constitutional privilege.

Law and Police Practice: Restrictions in the Law of Interrogation and Confessions

When the police handcuff a suspected criminal, they, as well as the arrested person himself, have a very definite understanding as to where he is going. The purpose of the handcuffing is also quite apparent. But when the courts handcuff the policeand it is suggested that some of them do-it is doubtful if they have a clear-cut notion as to where they are headed. It is also questionable whether such courts have given adequate consideration to other and perhaps better methods for coping with the police problems about which they are concerned. Artificial restrictions which the courts have imposed upon law enforcement agencies and officers are the result of two basic misconceptions regarding police misconduct. The first misconception concerns the role to be played by the courts with respect to the control or supervision of police activities. The theory has been developed by some judges that the judiciary is privileged to exert disciplinary control and supervision over the police. For this position constitutional authority seems to be completely lacking. Courts have the power, of course, to reject evidence illegally obtained, and particularly so where the trustworthiness or validity of the evidence may be affected by the methods used to secure it. But that is a distinctly different matter from the control or supervision of police activities themselves. Even within the federal system, there seems to be no constitutional authority for the exercise of any supervisory power by the Supreme Court over the activities of federal officers, although there is no doubt about the Supreme Courts supervisory power with respect to the lower federal courts and the evidence that may be admitted in the trial of federal cases. The fundamental concept of a threefold division

Firearms Identification--Ballistics

Judicial tribunals usually exercise considerable caution regarding the admissibility into evidence of expert testimony concerning some new phase of our ever increasing wealth of scientific knowledge. In certain instances this attitude has led courts of justice to reach apparently absurd results. The scientist occasionally reads with scorn the judicial denunciation of, or the refusal to consider, the application of a scientific principle or instrumentality. Yet the conscientious scientific investigator himself exhibits the same degree of caution, if not more, whenever there appears the announcement of some alleged discovery or invention.

A Law Enforcement Program for the State of Illinois

The primary responsibility for the enforcement of the criminal law in the United States has been assigned from the beginning to the agencies of local government-to the sheriff, the coroner, and the prosecuting attorney of the county and to the police departments maintained by our cities. During the last thirty years, however, public officials and private citizens in one state after another have come to realize that local government has failed to carry the burden of its responsibility in this respect. It has become increasingly apparent that the task of investigating crimes and of apprehending and prosecuting those persons who are guilty of criminal offenses must be shared in some large measure by the administrative agencies of the state governments themselves. In a few of the states-not more than twelve at the most-