A woman who was walking alone in the city was brutally raped, beaten and left for dead. After the attack the women was in coma. In the part of the city where the woman was found a young gang had been terrorizing people. Early that evening, a gang of young men were seen in the area assaulting and threatening others, who were passing by where the attack took place. The responding officers picked up two 14-year old young men near the location of the crime after they fled the scene and they were then held for questioning by the police. They have previous criminal records for robbery and assault and are members of a gang.
As a police detective working in the criminal justice our concern is prosecuting the guilty and respecting the right of the accused protecting the victims and creating a safe community. I work with a partner in which we handle the majority of homicide cases in our town. We are put into dilemmas that require us to judge ourselves in the moral and ethical decisions we make.
My partner and I have been assigned to this case. My partner had decided to do the interviews of the suspect on his own without having the video monitoring on and without the presence of the minor’s parents. The law states that minors must be informed of their legal rights to have their parents present during the interview and the proper use of videotape during the interviews. My partner pushed aside this ethical obligation of following the correct procedure in spite of the laws set forth for such circumstances. After my partner completed the interviews he tells me that both of the suspects have confessed to the attack and that with the confessions we can now close the case. I asked my partner about the absence of their parents and his comment was “Don’t worry about it; they are both guilty as sin”.
With my partner not following procedure, I have been put into a moral and ethical dilemma. My dilemma is do I just go along with his decision, which morally I know is wrong or do I dispute my partner and go to our superiors. My decision has been to go to my immediate reporting supervisor. His answer to me was to “trust my partner and go to trial”. I am still not comfortable with the decisions to move forward to prosecute these two young men, due to the fact I do not have enough evidence collected to eliminate any reasonable doubt and the victim is still in a coma so there is now way to obtain a verbal or written statement from her. Nor can she identify her attackers in a lineup. Now I also have the ethical and moral dilemma of doing what I know is not completely right and take the chance of losing my job and ruining the career of my partners as well. The risk of ruining two careers is not one that I am willing to take and have chosen to follow the direction of my superior. If an unethical situation arises in the future my choices will be go along with the situation or ask to be reassigned with another partner. I do not feel comfortable continually doing what I feel is not right.