Admitting you committed a crime to the police is obviously not an intelligent decision. Often times, people will confess their crimes because they feel bad about what they did, because they think there is no way they can disprove their case, or because they simply just gave up. Later, these people will gravely regret their decisions, and wonder if there is anything they can do about it. As an experienced Orange County criminal defense attorney, the answer is a resounding yes.
Police have historically been known to use subversive and abusive techniques to extract confessions out of suspected offenders. What these are referred to as in the legal community are “coerced confession.” Normally, the word coerced tends to give the image that the police were physically threatening a person, or someone else, and that they used this threat to get the confession. However, this is not always the case. It has also been seen that police induced remorse (i.e., where they make a person feel guilty) can also be the basis for claiming that your confession was coerced.
What a court must consider in making the determination is whether “a suspect’s will was overborne by law enforcement conduct, without regard to whether the resulting statement was true or false.” Rogers, 365 U.S. 534 (1961). If they do find that you confessed because the police used techniques to overcome your will, then you will be able to prevent the prosecution from using that confession against you. People v. Ditson, 57 Cal.2d 415 (1962).
However, making this argument is very difficult, as the prosecution will naturally fight it in every respect. Thus, succeeding requires extensive legal research, as well as trained analytical thinking. Wallin & Klarich is a law firm with over thirty years of experience in handling criminal matters. Particularly, Wallin & Klarich has aggressively and successfully defended accused criminals in serious criminal cases, and have handled many that involve confessions where the defendant was able to avoid jail time. If you or someone you know is facing criminal charges and has confessed to the crime, the Los Angeles criminal defense attorneys at Wallin & Klarich can be reached 24 hours a day at 1 (888) 749-0034, and you can find more information about successfully defending the case at www.wklaw.com.
