PR: PRESUMED GUILTY: Dishonest and Unethical ‘Start By Believing’ Investigations

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

PRESUMED GUILTY: Dishonest and Unethical ‘Start By Believing’ Investigations

WASHINGTON / March 7, 2019 – Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE) is launching a national campaign to warn criminal defense attorneys, lawmakers, and others about the perils of Start By Believing (SBB) and other “victim-centered” investigative methods (1). SBB instructs law enforcement officers and prosecutors to take a “pledge” to “Start By Believing” complainants’ allegations. This flawed approach will likely lead to false arrests, malicious prosecutions, sham trials, and wrongful convictions.

Law-enforcement officials are ethically bound to conduct their investigations in an impartial, unbiased, and honest manner (2). In stark contrast, Start By Believing programs instruct investigators to start the probe with an “initial presumption” of guilt and engage in dishonest practices such as (3):

Deemphasizing inconsistencies in the complainant’s statements to “minimize the risk of contradiction.”
Slanting the investigative report to emphasize evidence that “corroborate[s] the victim’s account.”
Emphasizing feelings over facts to sway judge and jury in favor of complainants.

A Governor’s Commission in Arizona warned state law enforcement agencies in 2016 to avoid use of “Start By Believing” methods, correctly noting that “defense counsel likely could impugn investigators and claim that alternative versions of the crime were ignored and/or errors were made during the investigation as a result of confirmation bias created by the ‘belief’ element of the Start By Believing campaign.” (4)

Criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield has ridiculed the Start By Believing movement, noting (5):

“We’ve reached a very weird place in law, a post-factual society, when a government official needs to guide police to rely on facts rather than beliefs in the performance of their duty. Weirder still that advocacy groups are taken seriously when they demand that facts be ignored in favor of their beliefs. But then, conviction of innocents isn’t their concern, anymore than police treating all people with respect. Confirmation bias is still bias, no matter how much you want to believe.”

To date, over 150 criminal defense attorneys and other legal experts have signed an Open Letter condemning the use of “victim-centered” methods such as Start By Believing (6). Attorneys who wish to co-sign the Open Statement should send their name, affiliation, city, and state to info@saveservices.org

Citations:

SAVE (Stop Abusive and Violent Environments) is working for effective and fair solutions to sexual assault, sexual harassment, and domestic violence: www.saveservices.org

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