NEW YORK – It was a long interrogation. But after 22 years, the cold-case detectives could afford to be patient.
Twelve hours in, the man being questioned, Conrado Juarez, was ready to confess. He admitted killing the child known for years as Baby Hope, smothering the girl his cousin, Anjalica Castillo — with a pillow while sodomizing her, prosecutors say.
Days later, however, Juajrez, 52, retracted his story, telling a reporter on Rikers Island that the confession had been coerced. The detectives, insisting on his guilt, had badgered him for hours, he said.
“So after a while and after so much pressure, I accepted it and said what they wanted,” he told the reporter.
AFP PHOTO / Emmanuel DunandThe grave of "Baby Hope," an unidentified girl whose body was found murdered in a picnic cooler 22 years ago, is adorned with flowers at St. Raymond Cemetery in New York, October 11, 2013.
The notion of a coerced confession could be rebutted in court, had the police videotaped the entire interrogation, a practice that is becoming more common around the country and has been adopted in Chicago and some other major cities.
But they did not.
Instead, investigators followed a standard practice in New York: Juajrez’s confession was recorded after an assistant district attorney, Melissa Mourges, arrived with a video technician from the Manhattan district attorney’s office to take his statement, law enforcement officials said.
A year after the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, pledged in a speech at the Carnegie Council that the department would begin videotaping interrogations from start to finish in murders and sex crimes, two-thirds of detective squads in the city have not yet begun recording interrogations of any kind.
The Cold Case Apprehension Squad’s interview room in Brooklyn was not outfitted with video equipment.
AP Photo / John MinchilloFormer NYPD detective Jerry Giorgio smiles alongside Commissioner Ray Kelly, right, after a news conference at One Police Plaza where it was announced that after an investigation that lasted more than two decades they had arrested the killer of a then unidentified child who was nicknamed Baby Hope, Saturday, Oct. 12, 2013, in New York.
So far, only 28 detective squads — there are more than 76 across the city — have an interview room set up with recording equipment, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, John J. McCarthy, said.
Only two detective squads, in the 67th Precinct in Brooklyn and the 48th Precinct in the Bronx, record homicide interrogations, McCarthy said. In the other precincts that have video equipment, detectives are taping interrogations for only felony assaults and sex crimes.
McCarthy said the department was putting the new policy into effect as quickly as it could. Detective squads are being trained to work while the camera is rolling. Precinct interview rooms require soundproofing. Camera angles and acoustics have to be tested to ensure that the recordings capture statements no matter how quietly spoken.
“It’s not the flip of a switch,” McCarthy said. “You are building a recording studio in dozens of unique spaces across the city.”
Taping interrogations has gained acceptance in many states in recent years as more wrongful convictions have arisen. Police departments in Baltimore, Chicago and other cities have embraced the idea. Seventeen states require the police to videotape interviews of people suspected of serious crimes.
“New York is clearly out of step,” said Steven A. Drizin, a professor at Northwestern University School of Law who advocates taping. “In an age where everybody on the jury has a cellphone that can record fairly high-quality video, juries expect to see video, and they are skeptical of the cops saying they can’t do it.”
In Albany, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo supported a bill that would have required the police to tape interrogations of suspects in homicide and rape cases. The measure failed to pass during the last session, even though it had the full-throated support of the District Attorneys Association, the New York State Justice Task Force, led by Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, and most of the state’s police officials, including Kelly.
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Kelly had long resisted taping interrogations, but he shifted his position in 2010, announcing that a pilot program would begin in a few precincts. Last year, he said, the results persuaded him to expand the practice to all homicide and rape investigations.
He has not had the full support of the rank and file. The Detectives Endowment Association has long raised objections to taping interrogations, saying it is expensive and impractical.
“There are certain tricks of the trade, I should say, that I think should not play out in front of the jury,” said Michael Palladino, the head of the detectives’ union. “In the end it could be a training tool for criminals.”
That the police did not tape their interrogation of Juarez is unlikely to affect the outcome of the case, prosecutors said. For decades, the Manhattan district attorney’s office has won convictions with similar videotaped confessions after the police have finished long interrogations.
Erin Duggan, a spokeswoman for the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., declined to comment about the videotape.
“We don’t talk about evidence in detail outside of court,” she said.
Juajrez’s lawyer, Michael Croce, made it plain this week that he would make the interrogation an issue as the case goes forward.
“I am suspicious of any kind of confession given after he was in custody for so many hours,” he said.