My advice to my son has always been: if you’re arrested for any reason, whether you did the thing or not, you become a Pokémon named ‘lawyer’.
This is better advice than staying silent (at least in the US). If you stay silent, then police can keep questioning you for as long as you’re silent and they want to. When you say you want a lawyer, then they’re required to stop questioning you.
In other words, the act of remaining silent is not enough to invoke your right to silence. You need to break your silence in order to invoke your right to silence
It took me a while! “Lawyer…”, “law…yer…” “laaaawyir”.
No matter the question: ‘lawyi… lawyi… lawyer!’
Just be careful not to evolve into a LawyerDawg
For anyone who doesn’t get this, a person wanted to envoke their right to an attorney and asked for his “lawyer dawg.” The police maliciously interpreted this as asking for a lawyer dog, which you have no right to, and the court agreed that that was a reasonable assumption and that the guy did not envoke his right to an attorney, so they did nothing wrong by not providing one.
Surely that can’t be true?!
That is so ridiculous 😂
You need to specificly say “I want to speak with my lawyer”, cops in the usa have been able to deny someone saying something like ‘dont I get to speak to a lawyer’ isnt specific enough
Dude got denied once for saying “I want a lawyer, dog.” The courts upheld the he might have been referring to a dog that is a lawyer.
Lawyer?! I hardly even know her.
…the right to remain silent is literal. Don’t do propaganda for cops and prosecutors. You can be completely silent; it is your right to, and you should exercise it (or reply “no comment”, but literal silence falls under the right to remain silent too).
Actually, there was a Supreme Court case about this. If you just sit there and say nothing after they give you your Miranda rights, they can make assumptions about things or simply continue for as long as they want. The case concluded with- you must declare that you understand your rights in some way and that you are invoking that right.
assuming everyone is USAmerican
The right to remain silent exists in plenty of places other than the US.
Throughline’s We the People recently did an episode called, The Right to Remain Silent.
He didn’t win though
He’s till sitting there
I am familiar with the case in this picture. He hacked up a fellow college student and placed her body parts in a hobo. Both were graduating law school at the time. He is serving LWOP.
I’m sorry, “in a hobo”? I have literally never been more afraid to ask if this is a typo…
No typo. (Hobo as in garbage cart) It literally happened. They were classmates and lived in same apartment complex. He had been stalking her.
Phew. somehow that is a relief. What a sad story though
