Innocence panel takes up recording interrogations.

Whipping out his smart phone, Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Belvin Perry waved it before the Florida Innocence Commission.

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"There's an old cliche that a trial is a search for the truth. And each and every day in courtrooms, not only in Florida but throughout this nation, we constantly hear about the 'CSI effect,'" said Perry, chair of the commission appointed by the Florida Supreme Court to make recommendations to avoid future wrongful convictions.

"Jurors not only want it, they expect it, and when they don't get it, it causes a lot of them to hang up on this thing of reasonable doubt. They often wonder, when they can reach into their pockets and pull out their iPhones or Android phones ... they can videotape. They can record. When they can go online and buy the same equipment to record items inexpensively, they wonder why law enforcement does not do it."

After listening to a nationally renowned proponent of mandatory videotaping of interrogations (see story, page 18), Tampa attorney Ben Hill made a motion to mandate that Florida law enforcement investigators electronically record custodial interrogations of suspects in cases of serious felonies--from beginning to end, including the Miranda warning. The sanction for not recording interrogations would be a cautionary jury instruction modeled after New Jersey's. The motion for the proposed statute--Admissibility of Unrecorded Statement Determined by Trial Court--passed by a vote of 12 to 7.

The group's law enforcement members--FDLE Commissioner Gerald Bailey, Charlotte County Sheriff Bill Cameron, and Tampa International Airport Police Chief Paul Sireci --voted "no," saying the consequences for failing to record should be decided on a case-by-case basis before an individual judge, not mandated by legislation, because every situation is different.

Others voted against the motion, because they said the sanction for not recording interrogations should be an even stronger remedy put forth by a work group led by Florida International University College of Law Dean Alex Acosta: Presume the defendant's statement is inadmissible in court if it is not recorded.

The debate sprang from the best way to prevent false confessions, a factor in some wrongful convictions. The commission has already made recommendations about reforming how eyewitness identifications are conducted (though it may revisit that issue after studying new research recently published).

At the next meeting, scheduled...