ALBANY – Judge Robert Smith of the Court of Appeals (See Profile) granted leave yesterday in a criminal case where a central issue is the potential for police to coerce an involuntary or false confession by deceiving the suspect, an issue that has resulted in conflicting opinions from two appellate panels.
Although the court never explains why it grants leave in a particular case, at oral argument in chambers last week on the leave application in the case of Adrian Thomas, Smith expressed concern with false or involuntary confessions, whether admissibility of testimony on the science or social science of psychological coercion is purely a matter of judicial discretion, and whether abuse of an infant constitutes depraved indifference murder under the court’s mystifying jurisprudence on depravity.
