The Legal Updates Winter 2016 column contains cases which address the following issues:

• California Supreme Court upholds rejection of Dr. Richard Leo testimony
• The value of videotaping the interrogation in disputing intoxication claim
• Confession voluntariness: ambiguous invocation of right to remain silent and rejection of claim of coercive police tactics; rejection of exhaustion claims
• Court upholds suppression of incriminating statements because Detective read Miranda rights in a "garbled' manner
• Investigator's pre-Miranda statement rendered the subsequent waiver coerced and involuntary
• Military Appeals Court upholds decision to deny defendant's request for assistance of expert in coercive interrogation techniques
• Intrinsic falsehoods do not create a coerced confession
• Ambiguous invocation of right to remain silent; and, police officer's implication that defendant might see the outside again if he confessed to a robbery gone bad instead of a premeditated murder was not an inducement rendering his confession involuntary
• Expert should have been allowed to testify on the factors influencing the reliability of the defendant's confession
• The statement "[i]f I am under arrest, take me to my bunk; all these questions, we can just skip them because I want to go to court" was an unambiguous invocation of his right to remain silent
• Value of videotaping interrogation to demonstrate defendant's demeanor; lying about DNA evidence not coercive
• South Dakota adopts the "trustworthiness" standard to determine whether admissions are admissible and sufficient to support a conviction in criminal cases
• Threat of being raped in jail contributed to a coerced confession
• Defendant's statement that he had a personal lawyer and that "[C]an we get him down here now, or ...?" was not an unambiguous request for a lawyer
• Reference to the possible prosecution of his son did not render the confession inadmissible