Corroborating Evdence for Confessions

[buggy151]

My question involves police conduct in the State of: Washington. I know what a police investigation is but say for instance a person confesses to a crime. Are they supposed to find evidence to collaborate with that confession. Like say a person shots someone infront of a motel and across the street is a gas station. Wouldn't they ask for the tapes from the motel, gas station and the tapes from the cameras on the bridge?

[PTPD22]

A confession is not admissible without corroborating evidence. That evidence can be circumstantial, but there must be something to back up the confession...other witnesses, physical evidence, confession includes details not publicly revealed, etc.

However, collecting recordings from surveillance cameras would only be done if it seemed likely that they would actually show something useful to the investigation. Most surveillance cameras record pretty low quality images. A gas station camera from across the street (even in the unlikely event that it was pointed in a direction to even see events across the street) would only show blurry silhouettes. The same for cameras on a nearby bridge. You could (probably) tell if someone was walking vs running or such, but you would not be able to identify anyone (probably not even tell male, female, race, or general age) or see if they were holding a gun. Motel cameras might well only cover the lobby/desk area. It's not like on TV where the detective gets an ATM camera from down the block and tells the tech to "enhance that area right there" and lo-and-behold they are able to read the bad guy's license plate from a reflection in a shiny hubcap of a parked car.

[Mr. Knowitall]

The threshold for corroboration is very low. If the defendant believes that video recordings may prove the confession to be false, it would make sense for the defendant to attempt to secure them.