A person suspected of a crime, offense, or wrongdoing; someone about whom a belief is aroused. (See also perpetrator and victim.)
The recent scholarly and media attention to police brutality has highlighted the need to protect suspects’ rights and reduce reliance on coercive interrogation tactics. Less appreciated is that police receive formal advantages in the form of negotiated and statutory investigative protections that essentially shield officers from many of the same confession-inducing tactics used against civilian suspects. This special treatment, reflected in the legal definition of “suspect,” raises numerous systemic problems. It undermines a core goal of constitutional criminal procedure and sullies the appearance of justice, a principle that applies most often to judges but that should also be extended to law enforcement officers who are inherently the most important gatekeepers to the criminal justice system’s legitimacy.
When compared with the overall investigative picture, LEOBOR and Garrity create a picture that favors “savvy suspects—defined as recurrent players in the system who make rational choices unaffected by the inherent coerciveness of arrest and interrogation.” These suspects are questioned at times when they are most alert, within time limitations, by only one investigator, and without using abusive language or false promises of leniency to induce statements. By contrast, the investigations of vulnerable suspects are typically far less accommodating. In the real world, these interviews often involve repeated use of coercive tactics that result in involuntary and false confessions. These include requiring suspects to give an initial account of the crime, probing for incriminating information, and presenting fabricated evidence to encourage them to confess.