With results from the July 2023 bar exam being released in states around the country, we will be posting several real MBE questions every week, with the answer to be posted the following day. Please feel free to email us with any questions about these, and if you were unsuccessful on the bar exam, submit your score report here for a free score report evaluation from our bar exam experts!

MBE Question of the Day – Answer

(C) is correct.
Issue: When will police dishonesty render a confession inadmissible.

Rule: The admissibility of a defendant’s confession or incriminating admission may involve
analysis under the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Fourth Amendment
provides protections relative to search and seizure. The Fifth Amendment provides guarantees
against testimonial self-incrimination. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to counsel.
The Fourteenth Amendment protects against involuntary confessions. Under the Fourteenth
Amendment, a confession is involuntary if the suspect was subjected to coercive conduct
sufficient to overcome the suspect’s will. Historically, the voluntariness standard was used to
determine the admissibility of a confession based on the totality of circumstances. Generally,
courts hold that efforts by the police to induce a confession in a suspect are permitted if an
innocent person would not be induced to confess by such police tactics. This means that police
may lie about circumstances of a crime, or facts surrounding the subsequent investigation.
However, courts generally find that misleading a suspect regarding points of law will invalidate
confessions as such efforts are fundamentally unfair.

Analysis: Here, the police falsely telling the defendant that a co-defendant’s confession can be
used against them at trial is misleading the suspect regarding a point of law, which has generally
been held to be unduly coercive. Thus, (C) is correct. The remaining choices are misstatements
about the facts of the crime which are permissible.

(C) is correct because it misleads the defendant on a point of law.

(A) , (B) and (D) are incorrect because these are deceptions surrounding the facts of the
crime that would not likely induce an innocent person to confess and that are thus permissible in
an interrogation.