About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

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.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

profiles profiles most