The New York Court of Appeals has issued a landmark decision on coercive interrogation tactics in People v. Adrian Thomas.1 It overturns what is most likely a wrongful conviction based entirely on the coerced confession of a young father accused of murdering his 4-month-old son.
Writing for a unanimous court, Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman reaffirmed the bedrock principle that regardless of how convinced the police are of a suspect’s guilt, they “may not by coercion prove its charge against the accused out of his own mouth.” The decision implicitly overrules the long-established but unconstitutional holding of People v. Tarsia that shifted the burden to the defendant to show that deceptive tactics are coercive.2Thomas further clarifies that although tactics likely to induce a false confession will render the resulting statement involuntary, that may not be inverted into a rule that tactics are not coercive unless they are likely to induce a false confession.
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