I am thinking about funding equipment for our local PD's to record audio confessions digitally on CD's, rather than tape. Better sound quality and uniformity among local PD's. Does anyone else do this yet?

John:

Our investigators have begun recording interviews on DVDs. Several agencies within the county use CDs to record audio (whether interviews or phone calls). We haven't had much trouble with authenticating so long as an original disc is burned and marked into evidence at the time the recording is made. And it certainly makes producing the information much quicker and easier.

I am interested in how much the equipment would cost and whether other equipment would need to be purchased to make copies for the prosecution and defense.

I have asked our PD's to get some quotes on wiring an appropriate interview room (good "whisper" microphones) connected to such DVD/CD equipment. Including installation, the entire room costs just under $5,000. Sounds like a pretty good investment of drug forfeiture money, to me. I am just dog tired of trying to listen to bad video recordings.

I know several officers (my husband included) that have digital recorders that they keep with them at all times and use on traffic stops and when taking statements. The info can then be downloaded and kept on computer or put on disk. The quality is amazing and the recorders are relatively inexpensive.

I have just stepped into the MP3 world, now that the prices are extremely reasonable, and you might want to consider that format- even more portable and stable than cd or dvd, since the media generally is in the form of a card or stick. They are backward-compatible with other forms of media, so you could transfer even from a VHS tape into MP3. I just bought myself a 20 GB portable jukebox, fits in my pocket, that will store up to 500 HOURS of music. If space is ever an issue, big savings.

My investigator uses a small digital recorder. He has a "hot-sync" to his PC and transfers the statement to his hard drive and then copies the statement to a disc. Using this method, when discovery time for a case comes we give the defense attorney his own disc with digital statements & digital photos when available. We are currently working a computer to convert all analog video and audio to digital for the same purpose. It also makes the statement much easier to redact when the defendant discusses his long criminal history during his confession. I love digital and it is not very expensive.

I had a murder case last year where the defendant made 3 videotaped statements (never quite confessing)in which he insisted on dating events by their relation to when he got out of boot camp or committed other crimes. Original statements were on VHS, but we had them put on CD for ease of editing and were prepared to redact.

As luck would have it, defense failed to object and jury got to hear the whole thing. I do not expect to always be so lucky and it is much easier to edit the digital.

Sounds like you bought an ineffective assistance of counsel claim. If you leave in the extraneous offenses, how do you answer the ineffective claim? What strategy leaves it in?

Strategy = "I wanted the jury to feel sorry for the poor defendant, who has already paid his debt to society / is down on his luck / really had no other choice because of his history." PLUS, would the ineffective assistance have changed the outcome - usually not. If the defense let this evidence in without objection, I probably would not bring it to their attention, but also would not focus on it in argument - that should make the job of the appellate section a little easier.

Should have explained that D's statements, while always denying crime, were overall highly inculpatory in that he first denied knowing V, then admitted a casual acquaintance, then tried to put that casual acquaintance deep in the past, etc. He finally admitted to having known V for almost 10 years and having a sexual relationship with V. On last tape, he hints that he might have been at V's the night of the murder. Point is that it was the movement from denying any knowledge/involvement to almost admitting the crime which was highly inculpatory and highly important to the State as largely circumstantial case with some real evidence problems. Every time he gave on tape was based on "when I got out of boot camp" or similar. As can be seen, the dates were important in allowing the jury to understand D's initial position that all this was in the past and his movement to admitting more recent intimate contact with V. Edited version essentially made no sense. That may have been why D didn't object. We had hearing on suppression immediately prior to playing tapes for jury. Maybe we shouldn't have risked the ineffective, but we thought we really needed the undedited in. The edited was prepared as a backup in anticipation of possibly losing the argument on the extraneous offenses. We made no mention of them in argument