Mr. Big: Exposing Undercover Investigations in Canada.
The book talks about false confessions obtained in Mr. Big operation, and wrongful convictions that occur as a result of this operations. After reading the book I was left confused, and disappointed about some of the decisions made by the Criminal Justice System and the RCMP.
I believe that confessions obtained in this type of operations are not reliable, and therefore should not be admissible in court, or as evidence. The confessions should be more investigative tools than evidence, like a polygraph that you use to find more about a case, but the results are not admissible in court as evidence since they are not completely reliable. But if it is going to be admitted in a court of law, I believe that there should be hard evidence against a person to be convicted, an example would be a confession leading to the body or murder weapon, DNA, witnesses etc. Not just a confession that was given under duress, long interrogations, threats and false promises.
The problem that I see with Mr. Big operations is that you can only see a little part of what happens on this operation, we do not know if there is any kind of contamination error of the evidence since much of the grooming happens before police can wiretap or videotape, and the grooming is unrecorded (p.45). The jury only see the meeting with the boss where they make the confession, and some other tapes, but the jury does not know the whole picture of what happened in this operation if the accused was scared, threatened, and to what lengths did the undercover cops went to make them believe that this operation was real. E.g. aggressive scenarios, pretended murders, staged kidnaps, and beatings (p.20)
Making the jury believe that the target confessed because they are guilty, to not because of any other reasons. This made me ask why the Criminal Justice system is not doing more to protect society from cops who abuse the system and miss use their power to...