# "You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to ..." **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 15, 2017, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-you-have-the-right-to/801703 "2017-11-15T18:22:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2017, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-you-have-the-right-to/801703/21 "2017-11-15T22:52:05Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > What would not fly? A statement like that would be taken as a request for a lawyer 100% of the time. Like I said above I have had statements thrown out because a suspect mentions the word lawyer without asking for one and he wasn’t immediately read Miranda again. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2017, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-you-have-the-right-to/801703/22 "2017-11-15T23:25:57Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > 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. Which is a clear bias against poorly educated people. Who’s going to send the memo around to these kids telling them exactly how to request a lawyer or assert their right to remain silent? It’s almost like what the Sovereign Citizens believe, that there are magic words and phrases that have magical effects. Edit: The intent of the law is that a suspect must have access to a lawyer if they want one, it shouldn’t be up to the suspect to formulate their request in such a way that it meets certain opaque requirements. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2017, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-you-have-the-right-to/801703/23 "2017-11-16T04:45:09Z")
> [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > Which is a clear bias against poorly educated people. Who’s going to send the memo around to these kids telling them exactly how to request a lawyer or assert their right to remain silent? It’s almost like what the Sovereign Citizens believe, that there are magic words and phrases that have magical effects. > > Edit: The intent of the law is that a suspect must have access to a lawyer if they want one, it shouldn’t be up to the suspect to formulate their request in such a way that it meets certain opaque requirements. What is “opaque” about “I want a lawyer”? Or “I won’t talk to you until I have my lawyer.” Or any statement asking for an attorney that isn’t conditional? I mean, seriously. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2017, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-you-have-the-right-to/801703/24 "2017-11-16T07:37:27Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > What is “opaque” about “I want a lawyer”? Or “I won’t talk to you until I have my lawyer.” Or any statement asking for an attorney that isn’t conditional? > > I mean, seriously. Seriously, what is opaque is that some of the cited rulings and incidents would come as a surprise to many of the lay non-legal types here – specifically those incidents where in any common understanding the person is asking for a lawyer, but it’s deemed not to meet the legal threshold of a “properly worded” request. That seems like legal semantic gamesmanship directed against the accused. I’m not even sure that your second example, “I won’t talk to you until I have my lawyer”, qualifies. Maybe it does, maybe not. Damned if I know. And that lack of charitable straightforward interpretation is a problem. If one wanted to, one could construe that example to just be belligerence; the person is not going to talk until he gets a lawyer, but he isn’t going to request one, so by the same crazy rules he could be construed as saying, not that he wants a lawyer, but that he has no intention of ever talking. ISTM that the proper way to handle any of these difficulties, including the potential ambiguity of what might seem like a conditional request, is for law enforcement to simply clarify what the accused wants. ISTM there’s no excuse for a legal version of having to say “Simon says” or it’s no good. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2017, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-you-have-the-right-to/801703/25 "2017-11-16T07:57:29Z")
> [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](#): > > 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. [Except](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/11/03/the-lawyer-dog-decision-isnt-obviously-wrong/?tid=hybrid_collaborative_1_na&utm_term=.c3c264dad2e2) it’s not as “inane and ignorant” as you seem to think. It’s kind of like the whole Twinkie Defense thing. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2017, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-you-have-the-right-to/801703/26 "2017-11-16T08:58:30Z")
> [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](#): > > Imagine if a white defendant had said, “I want a lawyer, dude.” I assume he’d get a lawyer with bleach-blonde hair who thinks everything is “gnarly” and “tubular”. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2017, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-you-have-the-right-to/801703/27 "2017-11-16T11:32:15Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > What is “opaque” about “I want a lawyer”? Or “I won’t talk to you until I have my lawyer.” Or any statement asking for an attorney that isn’t conditional? > > I mean, seriously. How is the suspect to know to use those words? How are they to know that “get me a lawyer, dawg” isn’t good enough? What exactly is wrong with “get me a lawyer, dawg”? Do you not see a problem with my middle-class white-man english just happening to coincide with the correct wording to request a lawyer while the lower-class black-man version doesn’t? How would you like it if _you_ were arrested, asked for a lawyer using the words “I want a lawyer”, only to find out some time later that you had to say “get me a lawyer, dawg, pretty please, with sugar on top”? ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2017, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-you-have-the-right-to/801703/28 "2017-11-16T11:38:13Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > [Except](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/11/03/the-lawyer-dog-decision-isnt-obviously-wrong/?tid=hybrid_collaborative_1_na&utm_term=.c3c264dad2e2) it’s not as “inane and ignorant” as you seem to think. > > It’s kind of like the whole Twinkie Defense thing. The problem with this whole thing is that the guy needed a lawyer just so he knew how to request a lawyer. I think there should be some kind of impartial person there right at the outset who explains clearly to the suspect exactly how to request a lawyer. That’s probably the original intent of the rights speech but I don’t think it goes far enough and it is not from an impartial person. Or the police should be forced to ask a yes/no question every 30 minutes, “would you like a lawyer?”. The less educated someone is, the more likely the are to really need a lawyer, and the less likely they are to be able to get one. That’s a problem. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2017, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-you-have-the-right-to/801703/29 "2017-11-16T12:46:42Z")
I don’t believe the “dawg” part is the ambiguity. It’s more ‘if I did it, get me a lawyer, but I didn’t do it’. It would have been better if the police had gotten him his lawyer, of course, and then we wouldn’t be wasting time over this kind of nonsense. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2017, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-you-have-the-right-to/801703/30 "2017-11-16T13:09:29Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > 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). How would that work in a case akin to the original Miranda, in which he really didn’t understand what was being said? ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2017, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-you-have-the-right-to/801703/31 "2017-11-16T15:25:09Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > 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. \*Accused \*of raping. _Accused_. People are innocent until proven guilty. Sometimes innocent people are accused of vile crimes including rape and child molestation. Sometimes the police bully innocent people into false confessions. All these rules are not meant to protect criminals, they protect you and me from false accusation. Without them, criminal justice becomes the Salem witch trials. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2017, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-you-have-the-right-to/801703/32 "2017-11-16T19:40:54Z")
> [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > The problem with this whole thing is that the guy needed a lawyer just so he knew how to request a lawyer. Seriously. The same thing with the right to remain silent. You have to explicitly say that you’re making use of that right. If you _just_ don’t talk, then that doesn’t count. The police can badger you with questions for hours. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2017, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-you-have-the-right-to/801703/33 "2017-11-16T21:06:03Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > \*Accused \*of raping. _Accused_. > > People are innocent until proven guilty. Sometimes innocent people are accused of vile crimes including rape and child molestation. Sometimes the police bully innocent people into false confessions. > > All these rules are not meant to protect criminals, they protect you and me from false accusation. Without them, criminal justice becomes the Salem witch trials. Accused. And admitted to.\* And convicted. \*That was what this appeals case was all about. Later in the questioning he admitted to having sexually assaulted the girls. Which was why his lawyers were working so hard to get that confession thrown out of court. And people are not innocent until proved guilty. This guy was guilty from the moment he did the crime(s). People are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. These are court rules, and they apply to trials in a court. The Judge & Jury must presume innocence. But it would just be silly to say that police detectives must presume a suspect is innocent, and so can’t go out to gather evidence about a person that their training & experience tells them is probably the guilty one. Heck, every time I’m reading a mystery book, I’m constantly presuming that every character might be guilty, and am looking for evidence against them. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2017, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-you-have-the-right-to/801703/34 "2017-11-16T22:57:19Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > Accused. And admitted to.\* And convicted… So was John Proctor. And, according to the article “He is being held in the Orleans Parish jail awaiting trial.” No conviction yet, unless you have an update. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2017, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-you-have-the-right-to/801703/35 "2017-11-17T04:46:26Z")
I always have the right to remain silent… I just usually don’t have the ability. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![AI\_Proofreader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@AI\_Proofreader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AI_Proofreader)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2017, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-you-have-the-right-to/801703/36 "2017-11-17T09:05:42Z")
> [@MikeF](#): > > 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. Also worth noting that “the right to an attorney” can, and often does, involve a 5-minute consultation with a public defender immediately before you are taken before the judge for your hearing. Also, your right to a phone call, where you might do useful things like contact an outside attorney, inform your employers you’ll be away from work so you don’t get fired, let family members know what happened to you, and obtain bail, has become an Orwellian nightmare. I was held for a week, and never received a phone call - because their phone system did not allow collect calls, and required that the person you were calling had set up, in advance of the call, an account with the jail in order to speak with you. There was a spot during the 30-second call out in which you could say something before cut off, but it was automatically timed and you ended up speaking while the phone was still ringing. So, in order to speak with you, someone had to already know you were there, and have placed money in account, and had it processed. I was finally discovered to be missing and tracked down when my employers called my emergency contacts, and they finally figured out why they were getting strange calls and hangups from the county jail. I of course had no recourse for either of the above, because I was technically given access to a lawyer, and technically given access to a phone, though I received neither legal services nor a phone call. ---
**Author:** ![sbunny8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@sbunny8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sbunny8)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2017, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-you-have-the-right-to/801703/37 "2017-11-17T18:49:50Z")
> [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > How is the suspect to know to use those words? How are they to know that “get me a lawyer, dawg” isn’t good enough? What exactly is wrong with “get me a lawyer, dawg”? > > Do you not see a problem with my middle-class white-man english just happening to coincide with the correct wording to request a lawyer while the lower-class black-man version doesn’t? How would you like it if _you_ were arrested, asked for a lawyer using the words “I want a lawyer”, only to find out some time later that you had to say “get me a lawyer, dawg, pretty please, with sugar on top”? sudo get me a lawyer [obligatory XKCD](https://xkcd.com/149/) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-you-have-the-right-to/801703.md?page=1)