In the Netflix series, “The Confession Tapes”, the first two episodes were about the murder of the Rafay residence, and how the investigation was conducted unethically and imprisoned two innocent people to life in person with no parole- Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns. The Bellevue police at the time had no witnesses except Rafay and Burns, and that’s when they started to pin the case on them. However, I disagreed with their actions because they didn’t have solid evidence that Rafay and Burns were involved . For example, when they found hair in the shower that belonged to Burns, it didn’t make sense to automatically accused Burns because he was staying the household a few days before the murder even happen; so obviously, his hair count is going to stack up in the shower. There was also another hair found that didn’t match anybody, so that meant that somebody else was in the household. The police even had a reliable informant that talked about how he was with the real murderers at the time, and that they were part of an extremist organization that planned the attack on the Rafays because of the father’s statement on the True East. Despite this testimony, they ignored it and still wanted to pin it on the kids. The police didn’t have hard evidence at all, and when solid evidence was given to them, they ignored it and wanted the kids to take the blame.
Another unethical practice was the Mr.Big operation that was conducted in Canada. This operation is illegal in the United States because it violates the Fifth Amendment – a person can’t self-incriminate for a crime. The Constitution wouldn’t allow this evidence at all in court, but the court still considered it admissible. In the tape, it was believed that Burns and Gary were doing criminal braggadocio- they were making false confessions to impress the gangsters because they felt threatened and wanted to fit in. Also, the arrogance personalities the two had was a defensive mechanism: Burns stated himself that he wanted to act tough so he wouldn’t break down in front of the media, and really, he was grieving about the case.