Challenges of criminal investigation in death in custody’s cases

This paper aims to consider some problems that challenge the criminal investigation of the cases of death in custody. While the complainants want their complaint to be recognized by the criminal justice system, systematic creation of some challenges marginalizes them and finally limit their access to justice in this kind of case. Reversing the truth, victim defamation, the control of the state on media, and arbitrary directing of the related news to the event as well as early comments of authorities before any independent investigation are some examples of the challenges ahead of the criminal investigation of death cases in prison. The paper along with using related sources to the issue of death in custody, by analyzing the content of reports, information and news as well as discourse analyzing of officials in relation to 12 cases of death in custody/prison in Iran, analyze the investigation challenges that concern the victim’s families of death in custody. Data analyzing of 12 cases of Iran show that reversing the truths related to the surrounding condition of the death and adumbrate of the event, makes it difficult to detect the real cause of the death. On the other side, defaming the victim and smearing his/her dignity or his/her family’s, distracts the attention from the misconducts of the prison officials to the failure of the victim him/herself and induces the deservedness of their death. In the same way, lack of liberty for media in reflection of the related news of cases, and bias the dependent media to the political system that generally express the cautious attitudes of the authorities, decrease the transparency of these cases. Finally, the early comments of authorities surrounding the cause of the deaths, challenge the possibility of an independent investigation in reaching to a different result of that comment.