Opinion ID: 2614597
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Police Misrepresentations

Text: ¶20 We have recognized that `[a] defendant's will is not overborne simply because he is led to believe that the government's knowledge of his guilt is greater than it actually is.' State v. Galli, 967 P.2d 930, 936 (Utah 1998) (quoting Ledbetter v. Edwards, 35 F.3d 1062, 1070 (6th Cir.1994)). However, in certain cases, police misrepresentations may be sufficiently egregious to overcome a defendant's will so as to render a confession involuntary. See id. (stating [w]hile the detectives' half-truths ... should not be condoned, we are not convinced that this was sufficient to overcome his free will and spirit). We believe the number and nature of the misrepresentations in this case come close to or exceeds that threshold. ¶21 The district court cataloged some 36 false statements made to Rettenberger by the police during his interrogation. The overwhelming majority of these misrepresentations were not merely half-truths but were complete fabrications about testimonial and physical evidence of Rettenberger's guilt. The officers repeatedly misrepresented to Rettenberger that they had testimony of numerous eye-witnesses and co-defendants implicating him. They falsely informed Rettenberger that he had been the subject of an extenstive three-week undercover investigation. Finally, although they had no physical evidence linking Rettenberger to the crime, they told or suggested to him that they found fingerprints at the crime scene that the crime lab had confirmed were a positive match to his; they had ballistic test results implicating him; they had blood samples implicating him; they had a bloody shoe-print from the crime scene that matched his; they had found blood on his shoe; they had unspecified physical evidence that linked him to the crime; they had evidence that his car was at the crime scene; they had blood splatter evidence connecting him to the crime; they had found fingerprints of everyone involved at the crime scene; they had records of phone conversations incriminating him; they had knowledge of the gun used, implicating him; they had incriminating hand prints, palm prints, fingerprints, and shoe prints at the scene of the crime; they had found blood in his car; and they had more evidence implicating Rettenberger than the police had in the O.J. Simpson case. In sum, although the State, in fact, had no physical evidence implicating Rettenberger, the officers sought to convince Rettenberger that the State had an air-tight case against him. As Detective Corbin told Rettenberger, We know the answer to every question we're asking. We want to hear your version. ¶22 Chief among the many problems with such duplicity is that it may lead wrongly accused suspects to see themselves as either being set up or railroaded. Richard J. Ofshe & Richard A. Leo, The Decision to Confess Falsely: Rational Choice and Irrational Action, 74 Denv. U.L.Rev. 979, 1044 (1997). Such a suspect may well determine that continued resistance is futile (because the police have evidence that will convict him despite his innocence). Welsh S. White, What is an Involuntary Confession Now?, 50 Rutgers L. Rev. 2001, 2053 (1998). Such a suspect may also conclude that, given the futility of resistance, it is most prudent to cooperate and even confess falsely in order to get leniency. ¶23 A suspect may also be more likely to confess when faced with assertions, as here, that the State has evidence of fingerprints, palm prints, ballistic evidence and the like, implicating him because [b]oth the guilty and the innocent have a harder time explaining away evidence that is allegedly derived from scientific technologies. Ofshe & Leo, The Decision to Confess Falsely, at 1023. In this case, it is clear that Rettenberger became convinced that the police had sufficient scientific evidence to prove his guilt, as is evidenced by the following exchange that took place late in the interrogations: DETECTIVE CORBIN: We're going to tell you what we think happened, and it's up to us to prove it. MR. RETTENBERGER: You guys are going to prove it. DETECTIVE CORBIN: Do you think we are? MR. RETTENBERGER: Fingerprints  OFFICER TIMOTHY: Of course we are. MR. RETTENBERGER:  all this stuff, of course you are. Extreme duplicity as was used here may render a confession involuntary and, as here, raise serious doubt about its reliability.