Police Questioning: 5 Essential, Law-Abiding Tips You MUST Know
STOP TALKING!
Before submitting to police questioning, you must know these 5 essential law-abiding tips from local criminal defense attorneys Cox, Rodman, & Middleton, LLC.
In most criminal cases the most detrimental piece of evidence against a defendant is a voluntary statement or something found through a consent search.
Table of Contents
TIP #1: Be courteous
Being courteous or polite is not the same thing as being cooperative. Treating police officers with respect can keep your encounter from escalating and is your best defense against possible mistreatment or a prolonged encounter. By yelling, arguing, expressing distrust or disrespect, or acting aggressive, you are merely heightening police suspicions, situational tension, and the officer’s desire to hem you up. Speak calmly, display your open hands, avoid aggressive postures, and use respectful language like “Officer”, “Sir”, and “Ma’am.” In short, mind your manners. None of this means that you must agree to speak or offer information.
If the police have approached you aggressively, with guns drawn and shouting commands, accept that you will likely be arrested, follow their commands, do not offer information, and demand a lawyer. Your first priority should be your safety; you can fight the charges or police mistreatment in court later.
TIP #2: Provide only identifying information
If you are unsure if you are free to leave, ask if you are free to leave. If you are free to leave, then leave. If you are in handcuffs, you are not free to leave.
Police are permitted to gather identifying information, and it is one of the only things you are required to provide police without a warrant. Offer your license or provide your real name and possibly your address. Providing false information almost never works and will result in additional charges and guarantee arrest. Beyond this identifying information, you are not required to provide anything else. Your right to remain silent extends to all other requested information in most jurisdictions. You are not required to provide information such as where you are coming from or heading to, but choosing to do so or not is a judgment call on your part that depends on your level of concern. Declining to answer such questions is your right, but will likely result in the police giving you a more difficult time and extending the encounter.
TIP #3: Say/admit nothing
Start with the assumption that you can not talk your way out of an arrest. Many people cooperate with the police because they believe it is their best chance of avoiding a ride in a police car. Not only is this wrong, police know that you want to avoid arrest and use that desire to encourage cooperation with false promises in order to gather incriminating information. If police are speaking with you regarding an accusation, they have almost always already decided whether to arrest you. Talking will only make things worse for you, with very few exceptions. Whether to speak to the police is always your decision, but you should always remember that silence is your right and your friend.
Police are not required to read your rights to you until they are arresting you, meaning you are no longer free to leave. Everything you tell them prior to that time is considered voluntary and almost impossible for an attorney to later suppress in court, and everything you say after waiving your rights will be used against you unless and until you demand an attorney and stop talking.
If the police do read you your rights, they will tell you that “anything you say can and will be used AGAINST you.” You should understand that to mean that you can not help yourself by talking, even though police will tell you that you can help yourself or that they are merely trying to “help you out” by “clearing this up” so that you can “go about your business” once you’ve spoken with them. Many people speak to police because they think that the police will tell them what is going on or what the issue is or who may be accusing them of what. This is not a good reason to engage in conversation with police who suspect you of a crime. Police are allowed to lie to you during interviews or interrogations, so any information that you get from them will be untrustworthy anyway. This dishonesty is called “interview techniques.” Police can lie about every aspect of your situation, including (1) who your accusers are, (2) that they have you committing a crime on video even though they don’t, (3) that they found your fingerprints or DNA at a crime scene even though they didn’t, (4) that they have eyewitnesses who don’t exist, and on and on. However, if you give information that police believe is false, or that doesn’t match what someone else has said for any reason, or if you accidentally misremember something (like where you were at 6pm on last Tuesday), this will all be used as evidence of your dishonesty and guilt, even if you were truly trying your best to give honest information. Things said in such statements often lead to additional charges as well like False Statements to Police.
It is not easy or common for an attorney to find grounds to suppress a person’s statements to police, but it is easy for you to refuse to make that statement to begin with.
TIP #4: Consent to nothing
Police will often ask for permission to search your person, your car, your home, or your personal effects like purses and backpacks. Police may also ask your permission to perform scientific tests on you or your items. NEVER consent to such searches no matter how innocent you are or how certain you are that they will not find anything. It is your right to decline these searches, and when you agree to allow such a search you are waiving your rights. It is nearly impossible for an attorney to challenge a search that is based on consent. If you give police permission to search your vehicle, unaware that a passenger left contraband in your vehicle, you will have no recourse to challenge the basis of the search. Make police get a warrant or make their own decisions on how to proceed with a search. This puts the burden on the police to later prove the validity of their search in court. You can decline any and all searches politely but firmly.
TIP #5: Demand a lawyer
You should demand to contact a lawyer early and often if you are being questioned by police. You must make this demand clearly and firmly. Saying “I think I may need to speak with an attorney” is not good enough. Keep it simple: “I want a lawyer.” Once you have demanded an attorney, police are not allowed to speak with you. If they attempt to speak with you, simply restate your demand: “I want a lawyer.” You must not volunteer to speak to them after making a demand for a lawyer. If you later say, “Hey officer, let me ask you a question” you may have just waived your demand for a lawyer, at which point police can begin to try to convince you to “just talk to us to clear a few things up so we can cut you loose.”
Even if you want to speak with the police, demand a lawyer first. Having a lawyer present can help you make sure that your story does not get misinterpreted and that you don’t get tied up by confusing or misleading questions. Police are also less likely to engage in especially tricky tactics with a good attorney in the room.
Above all, remember that the goal is not to avoid arrest because that is a police decision that you can not control. The goal is to prevent causing harm to your side of the case so that your attorney can give you your best fighting chance in court.
Probation and Parole Feed Mass Incarceration in the United States
Revoked
Probation, parole, and other forms of supervision are marketed as alternatives to incarceration in the United States. Supervision, it is claimed, will keep people out of prison and help them get back on their feet.
Sometimes, judges ultimately refuse to revoke probation for failure to pay, believing it is unfair, said a former Georgia public defender, and former partner with CRM Law firm said.
But by then, as discussed below in Section III, “Pre-Revocation Confinement,” people typically have already sat in jail waiting for their revocation hearing for weeks or months, meaning much damage has already been done.
Throughout the past 50 years, the use of probation (a sentence often imposed just after conviction) and parole (served after incarceration) has soared alongside jail and prison populations. As of 2016, the last year for which supervision data is available, 2.2 million people were incarcerated in United States jails and prisons, but more than twice as many, 4.5 million people—or one in every 55—were under supervision. Supervision rates vary vastly by state, from one in every 168 people in New Hampshire, to one in every 18 in Georgia.
Over the past several decades, arbitrary and overly harsh supervision regimes have led people back into US jails and prisons—feeding mass incarceration. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), in the late 1970s, 16 percent of US state and federal prison admissions stemmed from violations of parole and some types of probation. This number climbed to a high of 36 percent in 2008, and, in 2018, the last year for which data is available, was 28 percent. A different set of data for the previous year from the Council of State Governments, which includes all types of probation violations—but is limited to state prison populations—shows that 45 percent of all US state prison admissions stemmed from probation and parole violations. These figures do not include people locked up for supervision violations in jails, for which there is little nationwide data. Black and brown people are both disproportionately subjected to supervision and incarcerated for violations.
Jury in Harvey Weinstein trial didn’t have enough to convict on predatory sexual assault charge: legal experts | Fox News
Former Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein was found guilty on Monday of two of the five charges relating to sexual assaults after a five-day jury deliberation in Manhattan, New York City.
Weinstein, 67, was found guilty of committing a criminal sex act for assaulting a production assistant in his apartment in 2006 and was also found guilty of the third-degree rape of another woman in 2013.
Weinstein was found not guilty on the most serious charge of predatory sexual assault – which could have resulted in a life sentence. Additionally, he was ordered back to jail immediately following the conviction.
Although Weinstein was convicted on two of the charges against him, many believe the former Miramax studio head could have been found guilty on the more serious predatory sexual assault charge had prosecutors been able to prove Weinstein’s conduct was “repetitive” or forceful – which can be difficult to justify given the jury heard the testimony of various women who stated they were sexually assaulted over an extended period of time.
“The verdict indicates that the jury found the witnesses and their testimony credible but were either not convinced that the state proved that Mr. Weinstein’s conduct was repetitive,” said a criminal defense attorney formerly with CRM Law firm – who was not involved with the case – told Fox News on Monday. “Most likely, the jurors compromised and agreed to convict for the offenses that they’d already indicated reaching a unanimous decision, and acquit on the charges they could not agree on.”
The jury of seven men and five women handed down the verdict on Monday after five days of deliberating.
“The jurors indicated, prior to the verdict, that they could not reach a unanimous verdict on the most serious charges, indicating that at least some jurors didn’t believe the state proved those counts beyond a reasonable doubt,” Cox continued. “In those instances, where not all jurors believe the state has carried its burden — it is the individual juror’s duty to acquit. Jury deliberations often result in compromise — it is difficult to get 12 people to unanimously agree.”
Cox noted that it isn’t uncommon for jurors on one side, or the other, of a verdict to persuade other members of the jury to change their minds, adding that the overall point of a jury is to be open to considering the points of other jurors through examining and re-examining the evidence presented to the court.
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