"You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to ..."

Factual Questions
1

" … yada yada yada. Do you understand there rights as I have read to them to you?"

What are the legal ramifications to you if you don’t answer that question?

What are the legal ramifications to you if you don’t say a single word from the moment a cop stops you, arrests you, takes you into custody, and puts you “in the system”?

2

The police can require you to identify yourself, fifth amendment notwithstanding. Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court of Nev., Humboldt Cty., available at: Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court of Nev., Humboldt Cty. :: 542 U.S. 177 (2004) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center

If you ever want to get a lawyer, you have to unambiguously invoke that right, so you will have to tell the police that you want a lawyer. See, e.g., United States v. Lee, available at: UNITED STATES v. LEE (2014) | FindLaw

If you want police to stop questioning you, you have to tell them to stop questioning you. Otherwise, anything you say even after hours of willful silence will be considered a waiver of your right to remain silent. Berguis v. Tompkins, available at: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1470.pdf

3

Wow, Tired! That might be the most well-documented answer I’ve ever seen on the internet!
Come to think of it, that might not be as a big a compliment as one would first assume. :smiley:

4

Don’t be too colloquial, either. For example, don’t say, “I want a lawyer, dawg.” Because a “lawyer dog” isn’t a thing so you didn’t ask for a lawyer.

Cite: The suspect told police ‘give me a lawyer dog.’ The court says he wasn’t asking for a lawyer. - The Washington Post

5

You’re welcome Dodgy Dude. That is an infuriating decision, RitterSport, and if you ever need an example of how the criminal justice system is biased against black people, that one will do it.

6

Agreed, but I think it’s specific enough to be a valid GQ answer – you really do have to follow the rules exactly or you may be in trouble.

7

There aren’t any. But it’s not like not admitting that you understood the Miranda warnings is a get-out-of-jail-free card. The court will infer that you understood the warnings - or at least, that they were appropriately given - and convict you anyway (assuming you said something after the warnings which was used as evidence against you).

8

Not only does it not cover basic biographical information you will most likely be charged with obstruction if you refuse to identify yourself in a situation where Miranda is warranted.

Very dependent on your state. I had a murder confession thrown out when the suspect used the word lawyer in a sentence without ever asking for one.

9

I agree with you completely and I think it’s a great contribution to the thread. I was also just editorializing about the inane, ignorant decision.

10

Or you could say it’s biased in favor of the 2 juveniles this guy raped.

I know who would get my sympathy in this case.

11

In addition to what was said above, if you refuse to identify yourself you could sit in jail forever. You won’t be released without being identified. I had this happen more than once during processing. Once we told them, “You don’t want to tell us who you are? No problem. Let the CO at the county jail know when you change your mind. Until then, get comfortable.” Every one of them changed their mind once they realized we were serious.

12

This has been making the rounds and although the concurrence does use the phrase “lawyer dog” the crux of the opinion is the statement the suspect made:

(emphasis added) As cited above, the request for a lawyer must be unambiguous and definite. He said IF the officers think he did it, then he wants a lawyer. It is not enough to make a conditional request for a lawyer.

Maybe the officers at that time are not sure if he did it or not and are asking questions of several people. A contrary ruling would require the officers to gauge the condition precedent and then determine its accuracy.

Imagine: If yo mamma is a slut, then I want a lawyer. Does the officer have to make a subjective determination of whether his own mother is sexually loose? What if he is wrong?

Nope. None of that crap. If you want a lawyer, you have to say you want one, not if X, then lawyer.

13

In my state and certainly with my county judges that would not fly.

14

First, I want courts to be neutral arbiters of law. I don’t want to pick who benefits from bias. Unfortunately, we have a system that is badly biased against (among others) blacks, Hispanics, and poor people.

Second, I couldn’t say it’s biased in favor of the juveniles. The defendant used a colloquialism common among black people by addressing an interrogating police officer as “dawg” in the expression, “I want a lawyer, dawg.” It is informal but perfectly clear to a person who spends their day talking with black people in their community all the time. The colloquialism “dawg” is much less often used among white people.

Imagine if a white defendant had said, “I want a lawyer, dude.” Consider all the people who had to misunderstand (or pretend to misunderstand) that expression for the result in this case. Here are the things that probably would have flowed from a white guy who said “I want a lawyer, dude”:

  1. The police would probably have given him access to a lawyer. (There is considerable evidence that black communities face greater violations of their civil rights, such as denial of counsel.) If not…
  2. The police would likely not have pretended that they didn’t understand the request for a “lawyer, dude” and stopped the interrogation. (Continuing an interrogation against a defendant’s constitutional rights leads to coerced, unreliable confessions.) If not…
  3. The transcriptionist probably would have recorded the request accurately, and not as something harder to understand or ambiguous, such as a request for a “lawyerdood (phonetic)” because in the transcriptionist’s community, people likely address each other informally as “dude” pretty regularly. If not…
  4. The district attorney when presented with the transcript would not likely have been able to argue in good faith that the request was ambiguous because there is no such thing as a “lawyerdood.” If not…
  5. The trial judge would probably have excluded the testimony as unreliable because it was taken in violation of the defendant’s rights. (The Supreme Court has said that a person “need not speak like an Oxford Don to invoke his constitutional rights.”) If not…
  6. The appellate judge would likely have understood that the defendant wanted asked for a lawyer, dude, and would have overruled the trial judge and excluded the unreliable confession.

All these things happened in this case because the defendant spoke like a black person in America and all those other people in the criminal justice process didn’t (or plausibly pretended not) to understand how black people speak in America. That is a systemic problem. It is a bias against black people. It is not, as you suggest, a bias in favor of crime victims.

The result in this case is a coerced and potentially false confession. People confess to crimes when they know that the police are violating their constitutional rights because if the police are going to violate their constitutional rights, they understand that the police can just make things up to send them to jail. At some point, defendants get tired, they know the police are going to say or do whatever they are going to do to get a conviction and by confessing, they can at least get left alone for a while. So, innocent people give false confessions. In fact, one in four people wrongly convicted but proven innocent through DNA with the help of the Innocence Project had given false confessions.

Crime victims and the communities they live in are not served by convicting the wrong people with false confessions. If there was enough evidence in this case to be sure the defendant was guilty without the confession, there would have been no effect of excluding the confession. If he was convicted only because of a false confession, no one has been served and he has been egregiously harmed.

Protecting defendants’ civil rights protects me from being falsely accused and railroaded. It protects us all. Someday, it might even protect you.

15

Here in Minnesota, in some jurisdictions police have a smartphone-like screen that can scan a persons’ finger and compare that fingerprint to the state fingerprint files. So if the person has ever been arrested before and has fingerprints on file, they will be identified. And it seems that a whole lot of the people detained by police have been previously arrested.

In smaller jurisdictions, the jail almost certainly has fingerprint scanning technology, so many (most?) people could be identified once they arrive there.

16

What would not fly?

17

I recognize that there is some subjectivity in determining whether this was an unambiguous request for a lawyer. I think that most reasonable people would see that as request for a lawyer.

It’s unclear from the opinion what part of the defendant’s invocation Justice Crichton objected to, but it seems the defendant’s reference to a “lawyer dog” was significant to Crichton.

Opinion here: http://www.lasc.org/opinions/2017/17KK0954.sjc.addconc.pdf

18

Maybe it’s off-topic, but I don’t read the lawyer request as part of the conditional at all. I would parse the statement like this:

This is how I feel, if y’all think I did it, I know that I didn’t do it.
So why don’t you just give me a lawyer dog ’cause this is not what’s up.

Not that it’s too important, since now you can just claim that it’s not a request, but a question about a request.

On the other hand, maybe the suspect should claim that everything he did after “if y’all think”, including his confession, was part of the conditional and not an actual declarative statement.

19

If you read the above, the other case from LA was also held to be ambiguous because of the “if.”

20

That is a solid way to parse the statement. But the law says that parsing is not required: the person must make a clear and unambiguous statement that he wants a lawyer.

That’s not such an insurmountable burden. Just say “I want a lawyer. I wish to remain silent. I will no longer speak to you!” Not, IF.