Document Category: Consent

This draft section of a motion to suppress details how judges’ and jurors’ assessments of the voluntariness of consent are likely to be impaired by a systematic psychosocial bias that makes them underappreciate the degree to which suspects feel pressure to comply with police search requests and overestimate the likelihood of freely-given consent. These tendencies persist even if police inform individuals that they have the right to refuse consent [p. 8]. This motion ultimately encourages courts to require reasonable suspicion before permitting requests for consent as NJ, RI, and CT already do [p. 8-10] or – at the very least – to take into account these psychosocial realities when analyzing the totality of the circumstances to determine whether consent was voluntarily given.  The research in this motion and the arguments raised could also be used to address the voluntariness of a decision to waive Miranda rights and give a statement to police.