Opinion ID: 1225502
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Police deception concerning evidence.

Text: (3a) While Detectives Bell and Reed questioned defendant, police forensics personnel were attempting to lift fingerprints from the body of Norma Painter through the use of lasers. Although it appears the detectives did not have the forensics reports in hand at the time of their interview (which in any event were negative for fingerprints), they nevertheless told defendant that his prints had been lifted from the victim's skin, including her neck. These misrepresentations, defendant argues, made his confession the product of a species of coercion. We disagree. (4) Lies told by the police to a suspect under questioning can affect the voluntariness of an ensuing confession, but they are not per se sufficient to make it involuntary. ( People v. Thompson (1990) 50 Cal.3d 134, 167 [266 Cal. Rptr. 309, 785 P.2d 857].) Rather, there must be a proximate causal connection between the deception or subterfuge and the confession. A confession is `obtained' ... if and only if inducement and statement are linked, as it were, by `proximate' causation.... The requisite causal connection between promise [or deception] and confession must be more than `but for': causation-in-fact is insufficient. ( People v. Benson (1990) 52 Cal.3d 754, 778 [276 Cal. Rptr. 827, 802 P.2d 330].) Here, defendant argues, the detectives made up stories about evidence, including that fingerprints could be taken off skin, and clearly misled [defendant]. This deception must be taken into consideration in determining whether the confession was voluntary under the totality of the circumstances. (3b) We agree with the assertion, as far as it goes, that police deception is a factor to be taken into consideration in determining the voluntariness of a confession. Here, however, the circumstances in which the statements were made by the detectives to defendant, as well as the statements themselves, fall short of what is required to make out a case of prejudicial deception. Assuming it is true that current laser technology is incapable of successfully lifting identifiable fingerprints from a corpse, it does not follow that telling a murder suspect in the course of questioning that his prints had been lifted from the neck of the homicide victim caused him to confess. The link between inducement and statement in this case, in other words, falls short of being proximate.