A former Arizona firefighter is facing a raft of charges including counts of sexual assault and kidnapping after police in Glendale released a sketch of an alleged sexual predator and received a flood of calls. Police quickly identified and located the 52-year-old Phoenix Fire Department veteran, and officers say that he was subsequently taken into custody without a struggle.
The legal rights of people who have been accused of a crime in Arizona are well documented. There are stringent regulations governing the kinds of evidence that can be used in criminal trials, and the ways in which evidence may be gathered are the subject of an enormous body of law.
Arizona residents may be familiar with research linking false confessions with a controversial law enforcement tactics such as the Reid technique. This type of high-pressure approach is employed by police officers when they are dealing with uncooperative and truculent suspects, but poorly educated or mentally challenged individuals may sometimes confess to crimes that they did not commit just to put an end to the questioning.
Arizona residents might be familiar with the Netflix documentary entitled “Making a Murderer”. The series addresses the false confession of an individual who was 16 years old at the time a female photographer was murdered in 2005. A similar false confession case occurred in 2009, involving a man who allegedly raped and strangled a female neighbor in 1993.
Different individuals and groups enjoy special privileges when it comes to whether or not they must reveal information in certain formal proceedings. In addition to the rights of physicians, psychotherapists and social workers not to disclose information from their patients and clients during judicial goings-on, many spouses are granted a similar set of allowances.
