NY Court Limits How Much Police Can Lie to Suspects

Two confessions tossed out

New York's highest court on Thursday ruled that although police can lie during interrogation of suspects in homicide cases, detectives can't lie too much.

As a result, two defendants in two cases won challenges to throw out their statements used as confessions because they were based on lies by police, the Court of Appeals stated.

In one case, police claimed a woman in Westchester County was still alive and that the suspect had to tell police if he had injected his girlfriend with heroin, leading to her overdose. Police said the information was needed to save the life of the woman and so the boyfriend could avoid a murder charge.

The woman was already dead.