ALBANY – The constitutional limits of police deception, and the potential for trickery to cause a false confession, seemed to trouble the judges on New York’s highest court Tuesday as they heard two appeals challenging nearly 150 years of jurisprudence.
For more than an hour, the judges engaged in a lively give-and-take with defense and prosecution attorneys in two cases that are unrelated except for the fact that both involve defendants who confessed after they were tricked by police. The Court of Appeals has long held that police can resort to deceit and subterfuge to persuade a suspect to confess.
