Indeed, some cops are so skilled they can befuddle just about anyone into giving contradictory or inconsistent accounts of their actions, whether or not the person did anything wrong. This can greatly facilitate scoring convictions in cases where the cops can't find the real criminal.
Police take training courses in how to lie to a suspect in order to elicit a confession. Folks might object if I said this makes them professional liars, but they certainly aren’t amateurs.
Yeah, I’ve seen “My Cousin Vinnie”, too. Of course, in that case, there was a series of unlikely (and in the real world somewhat implausible) coincidences and faulty eyewitness identifications. Any lawyer worth his retainer could and would show that the allegedly incriminating statements could in that case were at best ambiguous.
In the notorious Boston Strangler case, the alleged perpetrator, Albert Desalvio, was weak minded and talked into a confession by police posing as his friends. He was never tried for any of the murders, and it is unlikely he could have been convicted. That was case where the police were eager to close a case that actually did have the whole town terrified.
Yeah, I’ve seen “My Cousin Vinnie”, too. Of course, in that case, there was a series of unlikely (and in the real world somewhat implausible) coincidences and faulty eyewitness identifications. Any lawyer worth his retainer could and would show that the allegedly incriminating statements could in that case were at best ambiguous.
In the notorious Boston Strangler case, the alleged perpetrator, Albert Desalvio, was weak minded and talked into a confession by police posing as his friends. He was never tried for any of the murders, and it is unlikely he could have been convicted. That was case where the police were eager to close a case that actually did have the whole town terrified.