Why It's Dangerous To Talk To The Cops -- Even If You're Innocent
Very important and very helpful Ken White post on his law firm's website, with the title, "If I Just Talk To The Police I Can Clear This Up" -- The Dangerous Delusion. An excerpt:
Good people -- honest people -- tend to think "I've done nothing wrong, so if I tell the truth now, I can clear this up." They think "talking can't hurt me because I haven't done anything wrong, and because I won't lie." It would be wonderful if that were true, but it's not.First, you may not know whether you've done anything wrong. There are tens of thousands of federal, state, and local laws. Many of them are obscure. Do you know all of them? If you talk to law enforcement without consulting a lawyer, you may confess to a crime without knowing it.
Second, you probably don't have an eidetic memory. You're capable of remembering things wrong, especially under stress, and especially when talking about complex or distant events. If you tell law enforcement something based on your faulty memory, they may decide that you are lying deliberately, and charge you with making false statements, or use your statement to attack your credibility later when you remember the truth.
Third, law enforcement agents may be questioning you not to investigate and discover evidence, but to trap you. It is routine now -- particularly with federal law enforcement -- for agents to approach a suspect at the close of their investigation, not at the start of it, in hopes of piling more charges onto the prospective defendant. Federal agents will approach a suspect, ask them if they did something, and if they say "no," add a charge of making a false statement onto whatever charges they were already seeking.
Fourth, regrettably, it doesn't matter whether you are telling the truth. It matters whether law enforcement thinks you are telling the truth, or cares. If those FBI agents interviewing you have already made up their minds about the facts of a situation, by talking to them you're only making it easier for them to mount a misguided case against you, or handing them an opportunity to charge you (unjustly) with making false statements.
...Ultimately, consulting a lawyer before you answer law enforcement questions is like wearing a seat belt when you drive. Is it hypothetically possible that in an accident a malfunctioning seat belt could trap you in a burning car, like you've seen on TV, so you die? It's possible. But refusing to wear a seat belt because of that remote, speculative danger is a foolish misapprehension of relative risks. It ignores the far more probable, far more dangerous risk presented by getting into an accident without a seat belt, and it ignores all the ways that a seat belt can dramatically mitigate your risk.
When I tweeted this link, somebody tweeted back:
Especially if you're innocent. If you're guilty, you have incentive to negotiate info for leniency
I tweeted this in response:
Whether guilty or innocent, talking to cops without a lawyer is wise on level of removing your own appendix w/a spoon
I also know never to let cops into my home. And P.S. The hardest drug I do is sauvignon blanc.
Spot on. A long-ish watch, but very worth your time:
https://youtu.be/6wXkI4t7nuc
Bolillo_SCZ at September 25, 2015 9:14 PM
Reminds me of a TV show that was on the air for a very short time several years ago. It was a NYPD version of the reality shows "Cops." Only it was following real-life NYPD detectives.
The one episode that I watched involved a murder in Manhattan around 3:00 AM; there were 2 young men and a woman. The one young man was shot and killed by someone else. The two survivors described what happened to the police - that a stranger ran up to them, demanded their money, seemed to panic and then shot the one guy, and then ran off. (without taking anything from the young folks)
The police didn't believe their story and found a "witness" which they believed helped to support the cops' alternative story.
The "witness" that the cops were relying on was more than a block away and around the corner. He heard shots and ran to see what was happening; he claimed that he never saw anyone except those three young folks. All very believable since he was around the corner and far away.
However, the cops came up with a crazy story - it was a love triangle gone wrong! Yep, they came up with this complete fiction that the two men were fighting over the woman and that she was now covering for the killer! And they claimed to have a witness to prove it. Remember, that witness was more than a block away and around the corner when the shot was fired. There was plenty of time for a stranger who did the actual shooting to run away before the "witness" saw anything since he was so far away and around the corner. This fact didn't seem to matter to the police. The Police believed since the "witness" didn't see anyone else the killer must have been the surviving guy.
The young man who was not shot ended up spending a couple of nights in Rikers - NYC's jail. Not a pleasant place to be - especially if you are innocent and not able to defend yourself from the criminals that are there!
Remember, this was reality TV, following NYPD detectives who talked to one of the shooting survivors who the cops then threw in jail. All based upon some stupid BS story that was complete fiction from the detectives' warped mind.
The gun was never found - despite the BS story the cops imagined that the young man "Must Have" thrown it in a garbage can nearby; how else would he have gotten rid of it so soon, they believed.
After a few days, the young man was released from Rikers, lawyered up, and refused to talk to the cops any more without his lawyer.
In the end, the cops tried to bully him by saying that "didn't he want to help them catch his friend's killer?" They told him that his refusing to talk to them would not help his dead friend. Kudos to that young man; his response was: "I DID talk to you, and you threw ME in jail!"
charles at September 25, 2015 9:28 PM
I love Ken White's writing on popehat.com and popehat twitter. Hes great at making it clear where the interests of citizens and law enforcement are in conflict. Even if your white and wealthy you should never talk to the police without a lawyer.
Freedomfan at September 25, 2015 10:36 PM
Actually, about that video, I write about why this is not a good position to be coming from in a lot of traffic stops in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck." http://amzn.to/1fFtWFy
For the book, I talked with another civil liberties lawyer I greatly respect, Marc J. Randazza, who saved my ass when TSA worker Thedala Magee got herself a lawyer and tried to squash my speech and squeeze me for $500K.
It's really more nuanced than "never talk to a cop!" if you're pulled over for speeding, etc.
Randazza himself is a case in point -- as I detail in the book, which I hope you'll buy a copy of. (It's only about $12, and new copies help me earn back my advance, get new advances, and continue writing books...which I'm doing now, for my awesome publisher, St. Martin's Press...working on the next one, which just this week stopped trying to kill me.)
Amy Alkon at September 26, 2015 9:12 AM
To be sure, you're correct that speaking to the police without an attorney present is ill advised.
My point on twitter was, there is at least the possibility for an upside for the guilty to cooperate. Whether a criminal should speak to the police without an attorney is another question.
My point was more that there is simply no potential upside for an innocent man in speaking to the police. It's all potential downside.
XBradTC at September 26, 2015 9:29 AM
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