Was Wired 'Undercover Mom' the 'Functional Equivalent of a Police Interrogation'?
There’s one person even the most hardened criminal finds hard to resist, when asked to confess his guilt, authorities say—his own mother.
So when police are trying to get a suspect to talk, it’s a common tactic to try to persuade his mother to serve as an “undercover mom,” the Chicago Tribune reports.
In one suburban Chicago case, police in Joliet wired a suspect’s mother for audio and video, and say he then admitted to her that he had shot and killed his uncle, the suspect’s mother’s 48-year-old brother, the newspaper recounts. Police say Jason Gonzalez then repeated the confession to Will County detectives after they gave him a letter from his mom telling him to talk.
His lawyers are trying to get the statements to police tossed, arguing that Gonzalez had repeatedly asked for a lawyer and that his mother served as the “functional equivalent of a police interrogation.”
