Witness to Abuse - Human Rights Watch

time—how could he have signed a G-28 in prison? I called county jails,
the FBI, the INS. No one knew where he was. 184
Failure to Compensate Material Witnesses
The Supreme Court requires the government to compensate material witnesses who are
incarcerated without bail. The law guarantees them $40 per day. 185 However, none of the
witnesses we interviewed were informed of their right to compensation or received any
compensation for the days they spent in jail. In fact, many never received compensation
for their travel home from far-away jails, or the wages they lost while they were detained.
VII. Abusive Interrogations
International human rights law 186 and U.S. constitutional guarantees 187 protect persons
against coercive interrogations. Within these limitations, law enforcement officials can
use a wide variety of questioning methods. Our research suggests that almost all material
witnesses have experienced aggressive interrogations more commonly faced by criminal
suspects. Even where the interrogation methods themselves have not violated human
rights and constitutional standards, the absence of legal safeguards normally available to
criminal suspects has placed the material witnesses in situations equivalent to unlawful
coercion.
184
HRW/ACLU telephone interview with Mitchell Gray, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, July 2004. See also
“Presumption of Guilt,” describing difficulties of lawyers and clients unable to find relatives held after September
11.
185 Hurtado v. U.S., 411 U.S. 578 (1973), re-hearing denied, 411 U.S. 978; 28 U.S.C. § 1821.
186
International human rights law prohibits law enforcement officials from conducting coercive interrogations.
The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), G.A.
res. 39/46, annex, 39 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 51) at 197, U.N. Doc. A/39/51 (1984), entered into force June 26,
1987 (ratified by the U.S. in 1994), available online at: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/h2catoc.htm,
accessed on June 17, 2005. CAT prohibits torture and other mistreatment under all circumstances, and
includes “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a
person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession.” Ibid., article 1.
Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment are also prohibited under article 7 of the ICCPR.
Principle 21 of the U.N. Body of Principles states: "No detained person while being interrogated shall be subject
to violence, threats or methods of interrogation which impair his capacity of decision or his judgment."
187
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the rights of individuals not to be subjected to coercive
interrogations. In Haley v. Ohio, Justice Frankfurter stated in a concurring opinion: “An impressive series of
cases in this and other courts admonishes of the temptations to abuse of police endeavors to secure
confessions from suspects, through protracted questioning, carried on in secrecy, with the inevitable
disquietude and fears police interrogations naturally engender in individuals questioned while held
incommunicado, without the aid of counsel and unprotected by the safeguards of a judicial inquiry.” Haley v.
Ohio, 332 U.S. 596, 605 (1948) (Frankfurter, J. concurring). In Stone v. Powell, Justice Burger opined that: "A
confession produced after intimidating or coercive interrogation is inherently dubious. If a suspect's will has
been overborne, a cloud hangs over his custodial admissions; the exclusion of such statements is based
essentially on their lack of reliability." Stone v. Powell. 428 U.S. 465, 496 (Burger, J. concurring).
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