Coercion in Interrogations

Although voluntariness is a mainstay of the U.S. legal system, voluntariness and its flip side, coercion, are ill-defined. Likely because of this ambiguity, admissibility decisions for contested confessions have been inconsistent. Some modern-day, often-used interrogation techniques (e.g., investigators feigning friendship) are coercive, even if they appear innocuous and non-adversarial.