You Have the Right to Remain Innocent

by James J. Duane

If a police officer encounters you in one of those moments, he or she has every right to ask you two simple questions. Memorize these two questions so you will not be tempted to answer any others: Who are you? What are you doing right here, right now?

The other problem is that they are working within a legal

system that is highly imperfect.

Because of laws like these and countless others, legal experts now agree that just about everybody in the nation, whether they know it or not, is guilty of numerous felonies for which they could be prosecuted. One reliable estimate is that the average American now commits approximately three felonies a day.

The next time some police officer or government agent asks you whether you would be willing to answer a few questions about where you have been and what you have been doing, you must respectfully but very firmly decline.

The bottom line is plain: you cannot safely trust a single word that you hear from the mouth of a police officer who is trying to get you to talk.

If you give the police information that turns out to be inaccurate, and the police mistakenly believe that you were lying to them on purpose, that fact can be devastating to your defense in three different ways.

Any time you agree to talk to the police or government investigators, you are rolling the dice and taking a terrible chance with your life.

The Department of Justice has now served official notice that it believes the courts should allow a prosecutor to argue under any circumstances that your willingness to assert the Fifth Amendment privilege can and should be used against you as evidence of your guilt.

Instead mention your Sixth Amendment right to a lawyer, and tell the police that you want a lawyer.

You need to say, with no adverbs, in only four words, “I want a lawyer.” And then you need to say it again, and again, until the police finally give up and realize they are dealing with someone who knows how our legal system really works.