If I were arrested and asked for a lawyer when the cops came in to question me, would they try and talk me out of it as a matter of routine? I believe in some states they ask you whether you would like counsel present after they Mirandize you, but I don’t know for sure.
Thanks,
Rob
I think once you are actually “arrested” it is assumed that you will be meeting with your own or court appointed counsel. The questioning that happens before you are arrested is where they hope you will talk without a lawyer present.
I was once advised to stop talking and to ask for a lawyer as soon as you are taken somewhere by the police for questioning… even if you haven’t been formally arrested.
They don’t routinely do that. I would think they’d save that for cases where they had some need for you to cooperate. Most of the time, if they’ve got you, they’ve got enough evidence on you as well. They do try to get you talking when they want you to roll over on someone else, like a drug conspiracy. Even then, in my experience, they’ll let you get a lawyer and then make their offer through your lawyer (who can tell you how screwed you are if you don’t cooperate).
Yes, but they do it more subtlety than telling the suspect not to get a lawyer.
The way Miranda is done in NYC is that they inform you of your right to have a lawyer (or one appointed if you can’t afford one) and then ask if you still want to talk with the police. This is not done at the beginning of the conversation, but right before the suspect is about to confess. The cop will say “hold on, lets get some formalities out of the way first…” and then dryly recite the Miranda warnings. Suspects usually don’t take the warnings seriously enough to ask for a lawyer.
If you actually ask for a lawyer while they question you, then all questions must stop until a lawyer gets in the room. Since the lawyer will just tell the suspect not to say anything, the police will let the DA handle the case from then on.
If the police are interrogating you, then they already have enough evidence on you to believe that you’re guilty. The only reason for interrogation is to get a confession in order to help secure a conviction. An interrogation is not done to further the investigation.
If you answer questions before they Mirandize you (as opposed to making spontaneous statements) are your answers admissible?
Thanks,
Rob
Police don’t usually have to do this. From my experience when I worked as a temp in a bail bond agency, it was the other way around. People WANT to talk. No one wants to be in jail or police custody one second longer than they have to. It’s not a good thing at all.
They want to get out and the more they talk, the faster they get it over with.
If you stop questioning and ask for an attorney, he just doesn’t magically appear out of nowhere 
You have to phone your attorney if you have one. A public defender is only given to you if you’re too poor to afford one.
If not you have to go before a judge and have him determain you can’t afford one and then get one appointed for you. The judge is going to make you fill out financial forms, listing assets, income, etc. Standards of what they can and cannot count as income vary from state to state.
Some states allow partial payments. In other words you’ll get a public defender but you’ll pay something on a sliding fee scale.
Public defenders are very busy. You may have little or no access to your attorney outside of court. It’s very common to only see your public defender on the day of your trial.
So if you can afford a lawyer it’s not going to be that big of an issue as long as he can get down to you in a decent time. But remember you have to wait in a lock up with a lot of unpleasent people if you aren’t going to answer the police questions.
I’m not a lawyer and this isn’t legal advice, but it would have to be a custodial interrogation for Miranda to apply. If you answer questions during a custodial interrogation before you’re read your warnings, then whatever you say (with lots of technical exceptions) won’t be admissible.
Any deal for immunity, reduced charges, or a certain plea offer in exchange for testimony comes through the prosecutor, not the police, since the police cannot guarantee what happens to a case after their reports have been submitted for charging.
This seems unlikely in any felony case. Even in the most streamlined of court systems, there are at least one or two pretrial conferences or appearances prior to the actual commencement of a jury trial. Since the vast majority of criminal cases are disposed of via plea agreements, unless a defendant has explicitly (as well as knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily) requested and had a judge approve of their decision to represent themselves, some defense attorney is required to advise a defendant of their rights and options before entering a plea.
I just pulled out my lawyer’s card from my wallet. It says something like this:
My attorney has advised me to refrain from talking about this case to anyone, to decline to answer questions, and likewise to refrain from responding to accusations. Call my attorney if you want to ask me any questions, search my property or my person, do any tests of any kind, do any lineups, or perform any other ID procedures. I do not agree to doing anything of these things without my attorney present, and I do not waive any of my constitutional rights.
There was a cop on here a while back who said he almost never reads the Miranda warning to people he’s arresting, because he’s not going to be asking them questions. If they start talking, that’s on them. Of course, many people want to give their story first, so they start right in. What they don’t realize is that their BS story has a higher probability of just hanging them more, once the cops prove any part of it to be false. The DA can then present the lies to the jury as another reason not to trust this person’s alibi.
As this professor points out, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhbJd2USUDI even a true alibi can be the wrong thing to tell the cops, because if they have any evidence it’s a lie, even if they’re wrong and don’t know it, you will be presented as a liar in court.
I never directly tried to talk someone of calling a lawyer but I did say something to the effect of “If you ask for a lawyer we are done talking. I can no longer speak with you until after you have talked to a lawyer. Even if you change your mind, I can’t talk to you (that was true at the time but since I retired I think the courts changed that to allow unsolicited “mind changing”). Once we are done talking you are going to jail and will not have the opportunity to tell me your side of the story. Having been advised of your rights and keeping all that in mind do you want to talk to me? Remember, if you even say the “L word”, we are done.” Generally, people want to delay going to jail as long as possible and there is always the hope that what they say may lead to their going home rather than to the lock-up.
If the cop really claimed that, he doesn’t know the law. Once the suspect is under arrest, it’s custodial, and unless he has been explicitly informed of his rights, no statement will stand if his attorney is competent. The only way to get a statement in would be for them to sign a Miranda waiver and then repeat their statements, and even that could get tossed out by a good attorney, because that can be coercive in itself (You already told us this, just sign the papers and repeat it).
And it’s not just questioning either. Things such as conversation between two cops that was intended to make the suspect talk, things like putting them in a room and saying “We’re going to wait here until we figure out what’s going on”, etc, are all interrogations.
And as for the cops trying to convince you out of calling your attorney, etc, that’s a huge nono. Once someone says they want an attorney, questions end, full stop, period, done. No “are you sure?”, no “That’s a bad idea”, etc. Anything past that point is inadmissible (with a few small exceptions based on the person changing their mind in a few states).
As was stated before, people are susceptible to authority, and police are scary; that’s why people talk to them or allow searches or whatever. But especially with the prevalence of videotape of interrogations, cops are much more likely to follow the law exactly, since one missteap means any statement (and potentially any information recovered as a result of that statement) will be thrown out. They count on people to be intimidated and ignorant of their rights.
That’s incorrect. A suspect’s spontaneous statements to police prior to any Miranda warning/waiver that are not in response to questions from a state actor that are designed to elicit an incriminating response will not be suppressed. Depending on the situation, the suspected crime involved, and the state of the person arrested, it is not altogether uncommon for arresting officers not to Mirandize suspects. Officers get into trouble (in terms of their compliance with Miranda) when a suspect makes an incriminating or inculpatory statement while sitting in handcuffs in the backseat and the officer asks a follow-up question or two to get more information without giving a Miranda warning.
Simply putting a suspect in a police interview room and letting them sweat (figuratively speaking) is not an interrogation. If an arresting officer transported a suspect to the police station and directly into an interview room, left him there, and a half hour later a detective walked in and the suspect immediately blurts out, “Not all of those drugs were mine,” this statement would not be considered to have been the result of an interrogation and would not implicate Miranda.
Afaik, the cops around here are ridiculously lazy. They want to make their case quick, and they’ll lie, cheat or steal to do it.
My former boss got in trouble for hitting a student. The police told him, “Everything’s going to be fine, it’s all going to go away, you can go home soon…just sign this.”
Of course, it was a confession. He came to work the next day all smiles and saying how he would be just fine and nothing was going to happen to him. I threatened to walk out unless he saw a lawyer, now. After seeing a lawyer, he narrowly avoided jail time and getting sued. Of course, his reputation was in shambles, but he wasn’t a smart cookie. I left a bit after.
This would only work on less professional criminals. A weekend in the cells is just an occupational hazard for your career criminal.