Didi you even bother to read the posts in this thread?
Several posts said that citizens can lie with impunity to cops and I guess that is true. But I have read that there is a federal law that makes it a punishable offense to lie to a federal employee. I have lied to customs agents on many occasions. Example, I overheard (on a train) a customs agent tell the guy in the next seat that it was illegal to import any meds into the US. I certainly wasn’t about to let him confiscate my meds, so I lied that I didn’t have any.
I’m pretty sure cops can lie about whether they don’t need no badges.
It was the norm back in the day when I was a cop to tell someone that you would put in a good word for them with the prosecutor if they told you what happened with no bullshit. And we would. We would always say that he was very cooperative during the interrogation, etc.
Of course, we had no control over whether the prosecutors took that into consideration.
Can the cop bind the district attorney with some kind of deal?
“If you cooperate, you can plead to disorderly conduct and we won’t prosecute you for anything else.” If the DA goes ahead and charges me with mopery, can I get the charges dismissed?
Regards,
Shodan
The DA is not the final arbiter of a deal. Usually, the judge will go along with the DA’s deal, but he doesn’t have to.
Yes.
I don’t know who said that, but in the United States that’s absolutely not true.
Just ask Martha Stewart.
The federal law you refer to is 18 USC 1001. There are corresponding state laws in probably every state.
There used to be some question in the United States about the “exculpatory no” where you denied committing a crime to an investigator. For example, if an FBI agent asks you if you accepted any illegal bribes and you say “No I didn’t.” But the Supreme Court put that to rest in Brogan v United States by saying that no such right exists. Your choices are basically tell the truth or say nothing.
If there is no recording or witnesses available for the Miranda and a LEO grills you with and records that part then later claims he did in fact Mirandize, being as you are the one arrested, how could you expect to get anyone to believe he did not? Unless you have your own recorder, a lone LEO can do or say anything short of leaving you a bloody pulp above & beyond what it would take to subdue you and there is nothing you can do about it.
Absolute silence except for “I want a lawyer” is the only thing to do when one on one with an LEO because you never know if you got the one bad one. Just pray you can stand the ass whuppin if you did get the one bad one.
YMMV
I need to study up on what’s legal and what’s not… I’m moping around right now.
The famous video in which a law school professor gives a speech explaining why you should never talk to police, and then calls a LEO up to give a rebuttal, the LEO doesn’t rebut anything the professor says but confirms that as a defendant you should never talk to police whatsoever. (The LEO in question was also a student, finishing law school.)
Something the LEO says though is that he always tells suspects that, “if you tell us what you did, I’ll put in a word for you with the judge and prosecutor and it will help you.” He says that isn’t a lie, and that in his 20+ year police career it pretty much always did help somewhat.
What he goes on to say is that the suspect might be lead to believe that “putting in a word” will mean they don’t do any jail time, but what it really usually means is something like you will do 3 years in prison if the police officer advocates for you versus 5 years if you don’t cooperate and make the state go through all the effort of convicting you. So it’s deceptive but only in an “implied” manner, the officer doesn’t make a specific promise of anything.
The only time I remember Elliott doing that, he wasn’t pretending to be a therapist; he went in as one of the patients in a group-therapy session, spinning lies about why he needs therapy and listening attentively as other folks truthfully did likewise. So I’m not sure that would fall under the same blanket prohibition.
Yup, love that video. Here’s part one, where the professor explains how you can only hurt yourself. And here’s part two, where the LEO has the chance to rebut.
[nitpick]…steengking badges.[/nitpick]
“It’s all right. We’re authorized.” - Det. Fontana, Law and Order.
He got away with that at least five or six times. 