Maui electronic-enticement-of-a-child suspect "coerced" into confessing by a religious discussion and prayer

It's been almost a month since I last blogged. That's terrible. I thank those of you who have continued to check in periodically and even left comments. I can only plead an excessively busy schedule.

In lieu of all the substantive posts I've wanted to write over the last month but haven't, I'll point to this interesting involuntary confession case reporter Lila Fujimoto has in the Maui News today.

The 5th and 14th Amendment due process clauses in the federal constitution bar the admission in a criminal trial of involuntary confessions. Here, the defendant was arrested at Kalama Park in Kihei where according the the story, "he allegedly had gone to meet someone he met online and thought was a 14-year-old girl."

According to the story, the defendant initially refused to sign a waiver of his Miranda rights and asked to be allowed to pray with a friend who was an attorney. Interrogation ceased and as an officer was taking the defendant from the interrogation room to the cell block, the officer said he, too was a Christian and asked how the defendant, as a Christian could "get involved with something like this."

The defendant later asked for the officer, saying he wanted to speak and pray with him. The paper reports the officer as stating

"He talked a bit about his proclivity for young girls and child pornography," Prather said. "I then told him that I believed his contriteness, and he did not seem like a bad guy, but someone who had a problem to deal with. Goodman asked to pray with me about this, since he was scared. We prayed briefly together and afterwards, I told Goodman that he could give a statement if he wanted, and as a Christian, he needed to tell the truth."

Oops.

Go to the story to read the judge's analysis which, in a nutshell, was that even if unintentional and made in good faith, the officers actions amounted to improper coercion.