Chris Tapp: Idaho: False confessions: Reporter Bryan Clark looks into ways of stopping wrongful convictions, in the Idaho Falls Post Register... “Detective (Jared) Fuhriman testified that he didn’t feed any facts to Chris Tapp,” Drizin said. “The video was powerful proof that that testimony was false. And in states where they don’t have an electronic recording, there’s really no way to challenge erroneous testimony by law enforcement officers about what was said during an interrogation. Without a recording, there would be no way to prove Detective (Steve) Finn threatened him (Tapp) with the death penalty. Detectives conveniently forget or misremember such threats in the absence of recordings.”.

STORY: "How to stop wrongful convictions," by Bryan Clark, reported by The Idaho Falls Post Register on July 8. 2017.

GIST: "The United States criminal justice system has seen a large, growing number of exonerations of wrongfully convicted defendants in recent years. ... “If there’s one lesson that can be learned from the Chris Tapp case, it’s that recording of police interrogations is absolutely essential to understanding how a suspect came to confess to a crime he may not have committed,” Steve Drizin said. Drizin is the former director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions. He’s defense council to Brendan Dassey, who was convicted of murder in 2007 after confessing. His case was spotlighted in the Netflix series “Making a Murderer.” Like Tapp, Dassey, who confessed under interrogation at age 16, says his confession was false, the result of police coercion. Two federal courts have sided with Dassey, finding that his confession was coerced by police. Drizin produced an expert report on the Tapp case focused on evidence of a false confession. He previously told the Post Register it was the “most contaminated and least corroborated” confession he had ever seen. Drizin is also the co-author — along with law, criminology and psychology professor Richard Leo, now at the University of San Francisco — of a seminal 2004 study of 125 documented cases of false confession. That study found that false confessions are highly likely to produce convictions, that failure to record interrogations is widespread and that not recording interrogations greatly increases the likelihood that a false confession won’t be discovered. Tapp’s interrogations were subject to perhaps more scrutiny in recent years than any other aspect of the case. But Drizin points out that things could have been much different, because Idaho is one of several states where police are not required to record interrogations. Drizin said that has the potential to leave big gaps in the record. “Detective (Jared) Fuhriman testified that he didn’t feed any facts to Chris Tapp,” Drizin said. “The video was powerful proof that that testimony was false. And in states where they don’t have an electronic recording, there’s really no way to challenge erroneous testimony by law enforcement officers about what was said during an interrogation. Without a recording, there would be no way to prove Detective (Steve) Finn threatened him (Tapp) with the death penalty. Detectives conveniently forget or misremember such threats in the absence of recordings.”.........During the investigation of the Angie Dodge murder, the IFPD recorded virtually all the interrogations of Tapp and other suspects they interviewed, though it wasn’t required by law or court decisions. But detectives didn’t record a Jan. 29, 1997, trip they made with Tapp to the crime scene. Prosecution-hired investigator Stuart Robinson concluded that this made it impossible to know whether any of the details of the crime contained in Tapp’s later statements were fed to him by police, as virtually every detail of the crime included in his prior statements had been. “By taking Tapp to the crime scene and not documenting any of it, (the trip) makes any information from Tapp (after the trip) questionable as to (its) reliability,” Robinson wrote.

The entire story can be found at:

http://magicvalley.com/news/how-to-stop-wrongful-convictions/article_4212b36b-29e0-5fb2-8af0-c5df3c47f47f.h

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy; Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;