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28 New Eng. L. Rev. 1 (1993-1994)
Just the Facts, Ma'am: Lying and the Omission of Exculpatory Evidence in Police Reports

handle is hein.journals/newlr28 and id is 29 raw text is: Just the Facts, Ma'am: Lying and the Omission of Exculpatory Evidence in Police Reports Stanley Z. Fisher* TABL oF CorNTTs I. Introduction ............................................... 2 II. The Reasons for Misleading Reports ........................ 6 A. Introduction ........................................... 6 B. Police Lying and Deception ............................ 9 C. The Place of Exculpatory Evidence in Police Reports: Police Norms and Practices ............................. 17 1. Scholarship on Police Investigation Practices ........ 18 2. The Questionnaire .................................. 22 3. Training Materials and Instruction .................. 26 D. Sum m ary .............................................. 31 III. Impact of Misleading Police Reports on the Criminal Justice Process .................................................... 32 IV. Remedies For the Failure to -Report Exculpatory Evidence .. 40 A. Judicial Remedies: Jones and Palmer ..................... 40 1. Tort Remedies ...................................... 41 2. Requiring the State to Record, Preserve, and Disclose Exculpatory Evidence: The Limits of Equitable Relief ............................................... 42 3. A Police Duty to Record Exculpatory Evidence: Scope and Implementation ......................... 48 B. Administrative Reforms and the Police-Prosecutor Relationship ........................................... 51 V. Summary and Conclusions ................................. 54 VI. Afterthought: Reporting Exculpatory Evidence and the Adversary Process .......................................... 56 * Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law. For helpful and encourag- ing comments on earlier drafts, I wish to thank Eric Blumenson, Michael Meltsner, Harry Subin, and my colleagues at the Boston University Law School faculty work- shops. Among the latter, I am especially grateful to David Rossman for so generously giving his time and insights. Finally, I appreciate the hard work and valuable contri- butions to this article by Christine M. Fortune, Mary Kuusisto Bejar, and Mark M. Seymour, student research assistants.