Friday, November 20, 2009
Means of interrogation
The means of interrogation used with Dick and Perry in order to retrieve the correct information were both decietful and misguiding. However they were effective and retracted the necessary information from the murderers. Does the cruelty of what Dick and Perry did the Clutters justify the deceptiveness of the interrogators? Is it still a wrongdoing to lie despite everything that the murderers did? Why should the interrogators be held up righteously for getting the information out when they used cruel manipulation to get it?
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ReplyDeleteThe means of interrogation used to get the confessions was not what one would call moral. If compared to a law text the confessions would be thrown out because of the means used to get them. However, in the eyes of the people, namely the jurors, the importance of the Clutter family and the type of crime balance out the interrogations. As long as the towns people don’t have a problem with their confessions it seems that nothing can be done about it. Yes, Perry and Dick can appeal to the federal court, but this doesn’t help them much when there is no one willing to really look into the complaint, and no one to testify that the confessions were giving because the agents used deceitful and misleading tactics to get them. As murder’s it seems that it is okay to take away their rights, or at least that is the way to towns’ people see it. And so they are willing to celebrate those who caught them, those who got the confessions and to let Dick and Perry hang.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the way the invesigators went about interrogating Dick and Perry was slightly immoral, however do two people who supposedly just murdered an entire family really deserve moral treatment? When considering Dick and Perry and how unhuman what they have done is, i feel that any way the detectives can get them to confess, they should. The detectives got to them through misleading questions and tricks, however i feel that in general, that is how many confessions work. Someone who has just committed a crime of this stature is not going to directly come out and say what they did, and why they did. From the eyes of the people any method is justified because of the severity of the crime, and the obvious lack of remorse that Dick and Perry exhibit. Dick and Perry killed an entire family, the manipulative way of interrogation should not be of concern. The detectives needed to find away to get them to truthfully confess, and if by manipulating them and twisting the questions around were the only way to do it, then i think that the method is completely justified.
ReplyDeleteThe means of interrogation were cruel and decietful, and the end does not justify the means. While emotions were running high, mainly because of the popularity of the Clutters themselves, it does not justify lying and more continuation of corruption and unjust. While the murders were cruel and completely unjust, that means that we should not necessarily turn the other cheek but offer a better example for how to live. By the methods of interrogation, the interrogators went from compassionate human beings to blatant hypocrites. There is never an excuse to not live the way you think others should.
ReplyDeleteIt depends on how one looks at this situation to understand whether it was wrong for a detective to lie to a prisoner in order to extract a confession. What comes to my mind in this situation is the methods of torturing prisoners in the days of old. While not as extreme as torture, deceit by a person with authority still has the same moral implications. In that sense, it was wrong for the detectives to make Dick confess through that method. The reason that deceit has been branded as a method that should not be used is when the accused is innocent. If Dick had not murdered the Clutter's, then the pressure from the detectives might have caused Dick to break down and confess to something that he had not committed. I was actually a bit shocked when reading this portion. I thought that the detectives would do this case by the books, not with shady tactics. With that said, the detectives did get results. They had little evidence that supported their case. It was a bit of a leap to use deception to convince Dick to confess. I think that in a moral sense and under the law, it was unjust. When looked at for practicality, it achieved results, which matters most.
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