Should I Talk to the Police? Won't I Look Guilty if I Don't?

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No and no. You should never talk to the police without first consulting with an attorney. Police officers are trained to obtain confessions, admissions and inconsistencies. If you are innocent, law enforcement can use inconsistencies in your statements as evidence of guilt. There may be things that you did that make you look guilty which law enforcement will exploit. They may take your statements out of context or misunderstand you. When the officer later testifies at a hearing or at trial, they will testify to what they remember that you said, not to what you actually said. It is often much like the telephone game where several children sit in a circle and one child makes up a sentence and whispers it into the next child's ear. That child then tries to remember the sentence and whisper the exact same sentence verbatim to the next child and on and on. By the last child, the sentence and meaning have been completely changed. Oftentimes, the officer may spend an hour or more speaking with you and investigating the case before going back later to write down one or two sentences that he remembers you saying. He may paraphrase your words, but write them down as if they were direct quotes. He then would later testify that you stated what he or she wrote down, which may be dramatically different from what you said.

You can get your side of the story out, but why would you without knowing the rules of the game? When you speak to a police officer without a lawyer present, you probably don't know every criminal statute on the books, each and every element to every statute, the rules of criminal procedure, the rules of evidence, and case law interpretation of those rules and statutes. You may think that you are talking yourself out of an arrest, but instead, you may be admitting to the elements of a crime that you didn't even know you committed.

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Absolutely not. It will make you look smart. The judges, prosecutors, and police officers all know the rules. If they were ever accused of a crime, the first thing most of them would do is pick up a phone and call a lawyer. This is a constitutional right and a protection you should utilize. Once you obtain a lawyer, that lawyer acts as a buffer between you and the police or prosecution. We can get your story across and any information that is helpful to you, but the State can't use it against you. In other words, no police officer can take the stand and testify that your lawyer said that you admitted or confessed to committing a crime or made any incriminating admissions. Additionally, the prosecutor cannot tell the jury that you didn't talk to police. They can't even mention it.

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You should tell the officer respectfully and politely that:

1) I would like to invoke my right to remain silent, and

2) I would like an attorney.

If you say those two things, all of the pressure the police place on you to talk goes away. They can't ask you any more questions. It's like magic. But if you don't say those two things, they keep applying pressure, lying to you, and convincing you that it is in your best interests to talk to them when it is not.

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We are often retained by people under criminal investigation. After we are formally retained, we immediately contact the law enforcement agent and tell them that we represent our client. We then discuss the investigation with our client and get all of the information we can about what is going on. We then contact the law enforcement agent or officer and discuss the investigation. Sometimes, we will arrange for our client to talk to the agent or officer, while we are present. We often acquire a "proffer agreement" where none of the statements made by our client can later be used against them in the State's case-in-chief. Other times, we relay information from our client, other witnesses and other evidence to the investigating officer or agent in an attempt to convince them that a crime did not occur or that our client did not commit the crime alleged. Every case is different and fact specific, but it is critical that you get an experienced criminal defense attorney involved as soon as possible.

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Yes. A new Florida Supreme Court decision, McAdams v. State has held that under the Florida Constitution, if an attorney goes to the police station and demands to see their client, whether the attorney was retained by the client or the client's family and whether the client knows that the attorney was retained or not, while an interview or interrogation is already under way, the law enforcement agency must inform the client that he or she has an attorney who is their to see him or her.

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