'Disappointing' issues emerge with video confessions

A Cook County judge who sat and watched the roughly 12-hour taped police interrogation of a suspect in an Elk Grove Village killing said Thursday the experience was "both interesting and somewhat disappointing."

Judge Thomas Fecarotta Jr. said the recorded content -- required under a law affecting all homicide cases beginning in 2005 -- shows police questioning the suspect for about a half-hour without reading him his Miranda rights; shows police coming "dangerously close" to diluting those rights to the extent that they wouldn't count; and shows authorities not reading the rights again after a break in the interview.

"Everyone knows that before a person can be interrogated, they must be read their Miranda rights," he said Thursday. "Once a defendant is in custody, the law is clear."

Fecarotta barred the first chunk of the video -- about 45 minutes or so of general questions that come before suspect Michael Davis is given his rights -- from being used in court. The rest of the interview footage, including Davis' incriminating statements, still will be allowed.

Experts say such rulings could become increasingly common -- fueled by the now-required videos, which provide a rare glimpse of who said what to whom inside the police interrogation room.

Defense attorney Kathleen Zellner, who successfully got the bulk of murder suspect Diana Thames' taped statements and eventual confession barred from a Cook County courtroom in August, said then that such tapes will allow judges to "make much more enlightened rulings."

Thames' words were ruled unallowable after Zellner argued her client, captured on tape for hours, was denied her right to an attorney and intimidated into confessing to the 2005 murder of a Palatine elementary teacher.

That's not true for Davis, Fecarotta said Thursday. He ruled the 22-year-old Chicago man, charged with fatally beating Grayslake resident Krystal Heskin in an Elk Grove Village motel in 2006, understood all his rights and voluntarily waived them --later talking to police without being coerced into doing so.

Davis' defense attorneys earlier had argued otherwise.

Still, Fecarotta suggested there were times police could have been more careful.

"Why not reread the rights?" Fecarotta said, referring to a portion of the tape where police start questioning Davis again after a break. "Why take the risk? That doesn't make sense to me."

The questioning was conducted jointly between Elk Grove Village and a regional major crimes task force, authorities said. Elk Grove Village police did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment. Task force director Mike Brady declined to comment on the case.

The Illinois law requiring police to tape interviews with murder suspects -- the first legislation of its kind in the U.S. -- kicked in in 2005, and was hailed by supporters as a way to protect both police and defendants by creating a record of what really happened behind closed doors.

The taping was pushed for years by defense attorneys, who cited Illinois' record of wrongful convictions based on sketchy confessions.

But some lawyers say the law can prove troublesome in cases where an unintended misstep by the interrogator gets a key piece of testimony banned from the courtroom.

"When you have this new requirement, you in essence hold the police departments to a higher standard," said Doug Godfrey, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law. Detectives must get every portion of their script just right, he points out, "because now we've got it on camera."

Godfrey added he has reservations about the young law because of the fact that no one will ever know what may have happened before the tape was actually rolling.

Most police, though, follow the law and handle homicide interrogations as they should, said Thomas Sullivan, a Chicago attorney who was a key player in the legislation.

"They know the consequences if they don't," he said. "It's a self-complying thing. They lose their cases if they don't; it's so simple."

Police detectives at departments statewide were re-trained in the months before the new homicide taping law took effect, Sullivan said.