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Articles Posted in Police Mistakes

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If you have been accused of a crime and have not yet retained an experienced criminal defense attorney, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the police’s demands to discuss the alleged charges. When you are unrepresented, police are more likely to employ illegal tactics to get a confession from you. These tactics include using violence, promises, or threats to force a confession. To best protect your rights, it is important to know how police can – and, more importantly, cannot – elicit a confession from you during their investigations.

Any confession made involuntarily cannot be used against you in court. However, not all involuntary confessions fall under this category. A forced or coerced confession has only occurred when the police have threatened to use, or have used, violence against the accused which directly leads to their confession. Some examples of this type of force include:

  • Use of violence, including choking, hitting, or pushing a suspect
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A fingerprinting expert for the Orange County Sherriff’s Department has been under internal investigation since October 2016, even though the State Attorney’s Office of Orange and Osceola County are just now finding out about it. An 18-year veteran fingerprinting expert, Marco Palacio, was said to be “sloppy” when performing his work and has been removed from his position.

Over the weekend, Employees at the Orange County Sherriff’s Department worked to identify cases in which Palacio was listed as a witness; by midday Monday, there were 2,640 –  of which 130 are still active cases. Now, the State Attorney’s Office is sending letters to Orlando-area defense attorneys informing them of the possibility of harm to their clients from fingerprinting mistakes made by Palacio. However, the State Attorney’s Office will not be determining whether anyone was wronging convicted or jailed because of possible error in fingerprinting analysis. That burden is shifted to the defense attorneys on those cases, whether from the Public Defender’s office or privately hired.

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