I never once said you shouldn’t know and assert your rights. But as some have pointed out having a hard and fast rule against speaking to a police officer under any circumstances can run into being paranoid and is contrary to being a good citizen and member of the community. Without the cooperation of the community almost nothing will get solved. I don’t want to live in such a community. The vast majority of public interactions with the police are not suspect/cop confrontations.
What he said was wrong. Of course you can fight it (at worst most courts encourage you to take a lesser charge to move things along). He is basing his ticket on the radar readings and his observation. If you go into court and in discovery found out he was never certified or it expired you win. If you find out the unit hadn’t been properly calibrated you win. If everything is in order and you were speeding you probably won’t. Regardless of what you said. No more than if you had said on tape “there is no way I was speeding” will get you out of it. Your statement can be dismissed as your untrained and inaccurate estimation of your speed. Even if you were looking at your speedometer, that isn’t calibrated scientifically. Traffic cases can be very hard to win as a defendant since they are very simple and there is not much that can go wrong or trip up the officer on the stand. “I saw the car going at a high rate of speed, the radar said 45mph, I pulled him over and wrote the ticket.” With a criminal jury trial that is not the case. I have spent 2 days on the stand. Its brutal. Trials are not fun. There is no way I would want to go through with a case I don’t believe in.
I would sometimes say “I pulled you over because…” sometimes I would do it the other way. The former tends to be quicker so I would use it more when time was tight or I didn’t feel like talking. Like if I was on a mandated enforcement detail.
I find it difficult to believe that a detective is always going to assume that the most obvious suspect did it, and stop looking at anyone else. I am even talking about situations other than where I can tell the cops that the next door neighbor just got out of prison after serving four years for rape, or something like that.
I find it hard to believe the cops would arrest me just because when they asked me “Did you and your wife ever argue” I said “Hell, we have been married for thirty years - sure we argued sometimes”. I understand that they are going to suspect the most obvious guy, but they also have to convict the most obvious guy, and that’s going to mean they need some evidence other than the fact that I don’t have an alibi or that I am the most obvious suspect.
Because sure, the cops get tunnel vision, they focus on me. Then they comb thru my background and find me mind-crushingly drab and normal, that there’s never been a hint of trouble in my background, that I gave every indication of loving my wife, and they have nothing to show that I did it. Sooner or later they will either have to frame me, or look at other suspects. And it is hard for me to believe that sheer laziness, or the desire to close a case come what may, is enough to get the cops in my area to frame me instead of spending the same effort looking for the next most obvious suspect.
You should understand that I live in the most white-bread suburb you can imagine. We haven’t had a murder here in thirty seven years, and our local crime report consists of people shoplifting at the local Target and drug dealers from the next city over. Maybe they aren’t experienced in investigating murders - but they sure as hell aren’t skilled in framing people for them.
But my point is that while you know whether or not I’m a suspect, I do not. Maybe paranoia is justified because if I think I’m being a good citizen and say the wrong thing, it’ll cost me my job, time in jail, tens of thousands of dollars, etc. And it is not a numbers game. It’s not like every 10 times I talk to the police I get 1 free “I killed the Lindburgh baby!”. The ONE time I say the wrong thing could be the time that costs me everything.
And I would also ask if you or other investigators let people know if they are suspects before you talk to them? If you suspect me of a burglary, are you going to come out and say, “I think you broke into your neighbors house.” then ask me questions? Even if you would, do other investigators do?
So the question to you is this. You come up to me and ask about suspicious activity. How do I know as a fact if you suspect me or not?
In my state, if there is evidence that you are a suspect the interview has to be videotaped. Plenty of suspect interviews end with no one being arrested. If there is any indication that you were considered a suspect and the proper procedures were not followed the case will be quickly thrown out.
I do have to emphasize that I live and work in probably the most suspect/criminal/defendant-friendly state in the country. Many of our court rulings go above and beyond SCOTUS precedent.
One thing I hope you understand is that your rights can not be taken away and you can exercise your rights at any time. So if you are asked if you saw something down the street last night and tell them but then they ask if you own a pink top hat you can stop talking. Exercising your rights can not be held against you.
I’m just curious how this works in the stage of an investigation where the detective is at least somewhat suspicious of person X but not ready for a full-blown accusatory sit-down at the station.
Say, the detective realizes something inconsistent in X’s alibi, the kind of thing that might be easily explained and confirmed. Does the detective show up at X’s house or office with a video crew, or drag X down to the station to ask him one question?
Do you recommend that women never talk to a man because that man might rape them?
Talking to a LEO doesn’t mean you have to let them search your car. If cops are looking for a shoplifter I believe it to be a perfectly reasonable request to look in your car. Feel free to say no (I would probably assent unless I was in a hurry) but agreeing to a search is different from talking to the cops.
I find this ironic in a thread where people assume that all cops are guilty.
Hold on a second - The scientific papers were “publicly available” only in the sense that the fruit sitting out on an outside fruit stand is “publicly available”. It’s still a crime to take them. And by the time he was caught, Schwartz was doing stuff like entering network closets to get a hard link to the network, since MIT had blocked downloading the documents by wifi. Most of his defenders claim he didn’t do anything worth 35 years; very, very few claim he didn’t actually break any laws.
My barber knows he has to open the new blade in front of me before shaving me.
Am I assuming he’s negligent or simply being cautious?
Locking the door assumes all my neighbours and passersby are thieves?
Also, defendng one’s rights needs no other explanation, they’re my rights.
There is a difference between a person of interest in an investigation and a suspect. I guess the easiest way to explain it would be if the investigation goes to the point where Miranda rights need to be read the interview needs to be on tape. If the detective tries to push the envelope and question a suspect improperly he runs the risk of the very likely possibility that all of the statements will be thrown out and the case irrevocably damaged. That’s a lot of time, effort and stress for nothing.
A traffic stop will certainly be more pleasant if you go along with the officer’s questioning, but there is no legal penalty for refusing to answer questions posed by a police officer. You can just be quiet, or you can say “I’m sorry officer, I won’t be answering any more questions tonight,” or “I would prefer that we deal with whatever infraction you stopped me for before we discuss anything else.”
If you get stopped on your way home from a nice dinner with your spouse, and at some point the officer asks you “have you been drinking tonight?”, you don’t have to give him an answer. If you downed a six-pack with dinner, it’s probably not going to matter what you say or don’t say; there will be outward physical signs of your inebriation. But if you only had a beer or two with dinner, it’s advisable NOT to admit that, and it’s also advisable not to lie by saying “no.”
Here’s an excellent example of a driver at a DUI checkpoint who steadfastly refuses to answer any questions by the officers. They do their goddamdest to intimidate him, but in the end they let him on his way without incident.
Well, it WAS decades ago, and as I said, this is all third-hand information. What I know for an absolute fact is that after the incident he did have to close down his daycare center, and he never had any jail time. The man was convinced afterward that he had pretty much convicted himself by talking too candidly to the police instead of getting legal help immediately.
That’s why, unless it’s the most casual sort of encounter, you should clam up and not talk to the cops. If you need to talk to the cops, hire a lawyer to represent you. They know what should and shouldn’t be said to the cops and prosecutors.
Given precedent in Berghuis v. Thompkins, you must positively exert your right, you can not merely stop talking. And in Salinas v. Texas, a person’s silence when they previously answered other questions can in fact be used against them. So the timeliness of exercising the right to silence is important, you can’t answer some questions and not others. I think it’s safer to treat it as all or nothing.
It’s still borderline paranoia. To use an example brought up earlier, practically speaking any man can attempt to rape any woman. It is wise for women to exercise some caution but it would be paranoid to advise women to never talk to a man because she might be raped.
So really there’s no point in bringing this up. We have no way of asserting the facts and the convicted is hardly the most reliable source for why he was convicted. As far as we know he was guilty of inappropriateness.
No. From what I read, they made the papers database available to the public. they then found out he was using a script to download the papers wholesale rather than searching out a few and reading them one at a time like a tech-illiterate anticipated people would.
If I leave a bowl of candy out on halloween with the sign “Help Yourself” it’s rude and inconsiderate to take them all, but it’s not felony theft.
He plugged his computer into the network to downoad items he was entitled to download. In that case, does the act of plugging in represent bypassing computer security? Would you bet 35 years on arguing that in front of a jury of 12 grey-haired old ladies?
Hmmm… Google Paul Morin (Redrum the innocent). When Christine Jessop went missing, the cops focussed on the next-door neighbour because he came across as a little weird. They spent ages trying to rearrange the timelines and trick him into confessing, including the “cop with a wire in the next cell” who testified he confessed despite the wire being unintelligible.
This article also discusses the David Milgard case, where the police “persuaded” the witnesses they were mistaken in exonerating him.
There was also Susan nelles and the baby deaths at the Toronto Childrens’ Hospital - the reason they suspected her was because she didn’t gasp, look startled, and start crying when they told her the babies had been murdered. It turns out there were plenty of eqqually likely suspects, and in the end, it was likely a lab error that wrongly concluded they had been poisoned.
Basically some cops can get a bee in their bonnet about a suspect and spend their time proving it. If you end up the person in their crosshairs, you’re screwed. I’d like to think that the majority are decent and honest guys.
Unfortunately, they have a job that puts them in contact with a large assortment of low-lifes, and that might skew their judgement of people and excite the righteous zeal of a few. I’d also like to think that based on the number of events in the news, tht number really is fairly small.
I just thought of something on the way home as a question for Loach.
Internal Affairs calls you in and asks you the following questions about a fellow officer named Wilson:
Would you say you and Wilson are friends.
Have you noticed anything unusual or suspicious about Wilson’s behavior?
What other officers does Wilson hang around with?
Were you in the office at anytime between 10:00am and 11:30pm?
(Assuming yes) Did you notice anything unusual during that time?
(Assuming no) Are you normally out of the office during that time?
Have you talked to Wilson at anytime during the last two weeks?
(Assuming yes) What did you discuss?
(Assuming no) Isn’t that unusual to not speak to a fellow officer AT ALL in two weeks?
Assuming you have the right to not answer the questions or for union representation, can you say you would be candid about all of the questions so you can help out IA? Or would there be any hesitation because something you say could get you in trouble?