“Have you stopped beating your wife, yes or no”
“No.”
You just told people that you beat your wife.
When you explain twenty minutes later that your answer meant you that you have never beaten your wife, it will not erase that first impression that everyone has formed of you. Why should they care what you’re saying? You’re an admitted wife beater who’s just trying to weasel his way out of trouble.
Here’s what you say:
“Have you stopped beating your wife, yes or no”
“I have never beaten my wife.”
“I told you to answer with a yes or no.”
“I’m under oath and I couldn’t give you a true answer with a yes or no.”
Despite what you’ve seen on TV, an attorney cannot require you to answer a question “yes or no”. A judge may instruct you to do so if it’s a simple factual question and you’re being unresponsive or evasive – e.g. “Do you own a silver 2012 Hyundai Sonata?” "Do any of us really own anything in this oligarchic society . . . " And as a witness, it is often in your interest to answer questions with a simple yes or no rather than get drawn into a long explanation that opens you up to be contradicted on specific points.
But in the “have you stopped beating your wife” scenario, any decent judge would shred the lawyer for asking such a transparently loaded question. In my experience, trial judges don’t have a lot of tolerance for these kinds of games.
None of that indicates that unrelated materials, like drugs found while searching for a rifle, need to be overlooked or excluded from evidence. If they had a legit reason to search for a rifle and a search warrant to that effect, and they open up a gun locker but find heroin instead of drugs, nothing in the cite you have provided indicates they can’t then confiscate the heroin and come up with additional charges based on the illegal drugs, whether or not the rifle is ever found.
True, but then I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that there is a difference between the letter of the law, the spirit of the law, and—critically—how the law may actually be applied and the extent to which recourse can be reasonably had.
Using peremptory strikes to eliminate minority jurors, for instance, is a great example. You’re not supposed to be able to do it, but it’s easy enough if you’re even modestly clever (clever enough to be a lawyer) and don’t leave a paper trail from, say, the DA to the ADAs telling them how to skirt prior SCOTUS rulings prohibiting such behavior.
“I didn’t kill the bastard, but I wish I had. Would have saved me the cost of hiring that hit man. And the life insurance still hasn’t paid out, so I’m now in the hole thirty grand to Joe Smith of 1234 Rochester Lane, New Haven, New Mexico until it does or until one of us is dead. By the way, Madam Prsecutor, you seem to deal a lot with murderers. Can you recommend anyone who might have gotten off lately on a technicality?”