Many people have heard of their Miranda rights. Movies and television shows routinely tell us about these rights with the famous beginning line “You have the right to remain silent…”. Part of the Miranda rights also implicate your right to have a lawyer present prior to questioning and during questioning and if you cannot afford a lawyer then one could be appointed to represent you. The Sixth Amendment guarantees each person a right to counsel. A person’s access to an attorney during a criminal investigation is of tremendous importance, yet many people do not appreciate the power of having an attorney ready to protect you from the police.
I do not mean to imply that the police physically beat their suspects into giving confessions. Although, there are times when it may happen, I would suspect that they are not as frequent as you may suspect. The other type of coercion that an attorney can protect you from is the psychological coercion. The way a person is treated by the police often times can aid the police in getting YOU to talk about a criminal investigation that YOU are the target of. “Wait a second,” you say, “I know my rights.” While this may be true, knowing your rights and being able to exercise your rights are two very different issues.
I recently had the opportunity to represent a person who the police believe has committed a very serious crime. As luck would have it, this person came to my office hours before the police arrested this person. While at my office, I explained to this person that the police can and do employ many tactics of interrogation including lying and indirectly promising opportunities that simply do not exist. I also told my client the police do not ask you to come down to the police station to simply have a cup of coffee and a donut and shoot the breeze. Rather, if the police have enough evidence to arrest you, then they will do so. The only reason they want to talk to you and have you come down voluntarily to a police station is so they do not have to read to you your Miranda rights. I also told this person not to speak to anybody about their situation and that if they are arrested, to immediately inform the officer that they are represented by an attorney and here is his telephone number.
My client must have been listening to something that I said, because sure enough not even an hour later, I was being informed that my client was under arrest and that the police were alerting me to this fact. The reason the police were alerting me to this fact is because they wanted to gather more evidence against my client and have the client speak to them. Despite the fact that I was tired and would rather have spent the evening with my family, I got into my car and drove down to the police station where my client was being held. My client was reread Miranda warnings and they were quickly invoked by me. Despite my invocation of rights, the police continued to attempt to engage my client. First, they turned to my client and asked the client what the client wanted to do. Talk about insulting one’s intelligence. Here I was, an expert in criminal trial law, hearing the police disregard a clear invocation of legal rights by a client’s attorney and they had the audacity to turn to my client and ask the client what the client wanted to do. Fortunately, my client had enough sense to follow my directive and gave the police the answer that the client would follow the legal advice provided to the client.
Not to be discouraged by this, the police then attempted another tactic. The police dangled out in front of me the opportunity to “see” the evidence against my client. As tempting of an offer that this may have been, I knew that through the legal rules, I would get to see all of the evidence at some point in time. However, I played along. Once again, the police turned their attention to my client and proceeded to tell the client about how they talked to someone that the client supposedly knew very well. Once again, the police wanted my client to acknowledge the police statement as being accurate. I quickly advised my client not to answer any questions of the police. Well, that must have hurt someone’s feelings because the next thing I knew, the show and tell session was ended and all I got to see was one horrible picture.
On my way out of the police station, the detectives told me that this was a great opportunity for my client to set the record straight. Somehow I got the feeling that no matter what my client said, the police were not going to remove the handcuffs from my client and apologize for the client’s inconvenience no matter what the client said. As I walked to the car, I started to become aware of how stressful the situation was for me personally. I was not even the person who was subject to the criminal investigation and yet I was stressed. The point is, a person who is the subject of an investigation who does not know their legal rights, often times provides key evidence against themselves without even realizing it. Too many people believe that they can somehow talk their way out of the situation that they find themselves in. This simply cannot be accomplished because you are at a disadvantage. The police usually have more information than you do and know more about the case than you think they do. The old saying “Loose lips, sink ships,” is equally applicable to how you should deal with the police. If you find that you are the subject of criminal investigation, the best thing you can do is to clearly state that you want a lawyer present and that you are invoking your right to remain silent. Trust me, you will be under enough stress that anything you say will not set you free. Remember, police officers do not have the authority to make any deals with you and you need an attorney to protect your legal rights.