New Jersey Appellate Court Finds Coercive Police Interrogation Techniques Must Be Redacted Upon Request

Yesterday, the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, issued a really interesting, and possibly first-of-its-kind, opinion on coercive interrogation techniques by police when they question a suspect. No, the opinion did not prohibit such techniques, but it did find that such techniques should be redacted from a video of the interrogation if they could goad the jury into believing the defendant is guilty.

In State v. Bolden, 2025 WL 1412825 (N.J. App. 2025), “[a] jury convicted defendant Darius D. Bolden of murder and related weapons offenses for the August 27, 2016 fatal shooting of Jason Dunbar on the front porch of Dunbar’s home on Fulton Avenue in Jersey City.” On appeal, the

defendant acknowledge[d] the trial court correctly determined the rules of evidence do not apply to investigative techniques utilized during police interrogations. But defendant argue[d] the court erroneously denied his application to redact “significant portions” of his September 4, 2019 statement because the evidence rules prohibit police from testifying about the same information at trial. Defendant maintain[ed] the failure to redact the following categories of the detectives’ commentary require[d] reversal of his convictions: (1) stating with certainty that the car depicted in [a] surveillance video was defendant’s vehicle; (2) expressing skepticism that defendant was truthful during the interview; (3) opining a jury would convict defendant based on his denial of guilt; and (4) reiterating hearsay that many people spoke with police about the fight video. Defendant claims the detectives’ statements constituted inadmissible hearsay or lay opinion.

In addressing this appeal, the court noted that “[t]he parties have not cited, and our independent research has not revealed, any authority solely addressing the inclusion of interrogation tactics in a statement admitted at trial when those tactics constituted inadmissible lay opinion, which could not be elicited from the detectives during their trial testimony.” As a result, this might have been a case of first impression.

In reversing Bolden’s convictions, the court then ruled as follows:

The detective’s statements were particularly troublesome because they interpreted the images depicted in the video footage, indicating their belief that defendant’s car was in the area of the fatal shooting – a disputed fact he never conceded. The detectives questioned defendant for about two hours, repeatedly challenging his “story” and claiming it was “impossible” that the video surveillance footage did not depict his vehicle in view of its distinctive characteristics. Further, the detectives expressed doubt that a jury would acquit defendant and suggested he had an obligation to explain himself, impinging on his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. Given their status as law enforcement officers, the detectives’ repeated commentary on defendant’s “veracity [wa]s particularly prejudicial.”…

Had the detectives made similar comments at trial, their testimony would have been excluded as improper lay opinion because those statements were “an expression of a belief in defendant’s guilt.”…The State cannot violate the evidentiary rules and defendant’s constitutional rights by presenting improper lay opinion through a different means. Ultimately, the unredacted interrogation video presented the same risk of affecting the jury’s perception of defendant’s credibility as the detective’s in-court testimony in Tung….

As our Supreme Court has explained:

We go to extraordinary lengths in ordinary criminal cases to preserve the integrity and neutrality of jury deliberations, to avoid inadvertently encouraging a jury prematurely to think of a defendant as guilty, to assure the complete opportunity of the jury alone to determine guilt, to prevent the court or the State from expressing an opinion of defendant’s guilt, and to require the jury to determine under proper charges no matter how obvious guilt may be. A failure to abide by and honor these strictures fatally weakens the role of the jury, depriving a defendant of the right to trial by jury. [Frisby, 174 N.J. at 594 (2002) (quoting State v. Hightower, 120 N.J. 378, 427-28 (1990) (Handler, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part)).]

The risk that the detectives’ statements might have led the jury to a verdict it would not otherwise have reached is compounded by the lack of a limiting instruction regarding how the jury should consider investigative techniques. “Our Supreme Court ‘has consistently stressed the importance of immediacy and specificity when trial judges provide curative instructions to alleviate potential prejudice to a defendant from inadmissible evidence that has seeped into a trial.’”… Here, the court provided no guidance on the detectives’ lay opinions.

Moreover, Stabile testified police sometimes suggest a witness is lying to gather more information from him or her and repeatedly confront a witness if they think he or she is lying. This in-court testimony exacerbated the problematic nature of the detectives’ interrogation commentary by further suggesting defendant was lying during the interrogation.

In summary, although the disputed statements may be viewed as proper interrogation techniques, they are not proper statements for presentation to the jury in an unredacted statement. We therefore conclude the disputed statements were lay opinions interpreting the evidence, a function solely entrusted to the jury.

-CM