While literally anyone could commit a crime, it is police suspects that perhaps receive the closest interpretation to due process in our legal system.
My work often throws me in the middle of police misconduct, and as a result, I am constantly trying to understand it.
A Columbia Law Review article examines how police officers are treated during investigations and the special rights afforded to them, specifically the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBOR). Prosecutors routinely offer these protections, rather than hold bad actors accountable.
…as criminal justice insiders, police have dealt themselves special protections from police questioning based on their knowledge of what protections a suspect needs most when facing interrogation. Meanwhile, the police continue to argue that failing to use these selfsame tactics on other suspects will hamper their ability to catch and convict dangerous criminals.
The distributive inequality created by special police rights threatens the fairness and legitimacy of the criminal justice system in several ways: It skews the relationship between suspect sophistication and the amount of protection received, it sullies the appearance of justice, and it decreases the normative value of criminal law.
Unfortunately, another thing that isn’t new. There is a significant conflict of interest in police-prosecutor relationships that shouldn’t exist. Officer perjury and judicial deference to officers are also problematic.
In short, the system is in dire need of overhaul.
Check out the article here.
