The ultimate and easiest answer is of course to
contact a
criminal defense lawyer immediately," but here is why:
The first and most important thing
you need to come to grips with when the police have left word that
they are looking for you to "speak" about something is that in all
likelihood, they are not interested in coming to tea.
The odds are they want to arrest you. In most cases,
by the time law enforcement makes it personally known to you that
they want to "speak" with you, the decision to arrest you has
already been made.
This bears repeating.
The decision to arrest you has already been made.
This bears repeating again.
The decision to arrest you has already been made.
I repeat myself because so many people have needlessly caused
themselves so much misery because they could not accept that the
decision to arrest them had already been made.
Nobody wants to be arrested. People are afraid of being
arrested (and justifiably so). Therefore, people will bend
over backwards in their own minds to convince themselves that if
only they can sit down and calmly discuss things with the police
that everything could be straightened out.
The police know this and so will go out of their way to take
advantage of this. They will always use nice phrases like
"straighten everything out", "get it out in the open", "cooperate"
and a dozen other meaningless buzzwords when contacting people they
already intend to arrest. They won't say, "Could you have your
son contact us so that we can get him to admit to a B violent
robbery for which he faces a mandatory minimum of 5 years in
prison." Instead they will say, "We would like to straighten
out a little problem involving your son and another kid's lunch
money."
The desire to believe that you are not going to be arrested is so
great, and the belief that if you are innocent you couldn't possibly
get arrested is so great, that some people who read this very
article, when personally faced with the prospect of police wanting
to "talk" to them, will choose not to believe what I have written.
Instead they will choose to "cooperate" with the investigation --
and most of them will severely damage their own situations and
create a higher than necessary likelihood of bad things happening
(including potential prison time).
This should obviously not be taken to mean that anyone should
ever flee when the police start leaving messages to contact them.
Quite the opposite. Running from an investigation is never a
real answer and inevitably causes untold greater difficulty.
There is a difference, however, between running from an
investigation and making uncounseled statements to the police in a
matter in which you or a loved one could end up being wrongly
accused of a crime.
The most sensible course of action when you are being sought by
the police is to contact a criminal defense lawyer immediately, if
possible, so that the criminal defense lawyer can act as an
intermediary between you and the police.
A criminal defense lawyer can in many cases find out definitively
whether or not you are the target of a criminal investigation or
whether you are simply being sought as a potential witness to some
criminal activity.
The determination of whether you are being sought as a witness or
as a target is nowhere near as clear and easy a determination as you
might think. If you agree to speak to police officers on the
theory that you are a "witness" you had better be extremely sure of
yourself. Keep in mind that your idea of a "witness" as a
non-lawyer may be different from the police's idea of a "witness".
Non-lawyers tend to imagine that everyone is a potential witness who
didn't actually do the obvious criminal act.
For example, non-lawyers perceive the people who are watching two
people fight as "witnesses". The police may (and frequently
do) treat people who watch two people fight as "accomplices" to
whoever wins the fight. If the police treat you as an
accomplice and not a witness, then you can be arrested as if you
threw the punches yourself under a theory called "acting in
concert". People are often amazed to find themselves arrested
under such circumstances when they thought (and may even were told)
that they were talking to the police about the fight they
"witnessed". To be sure they may have defenses to the charges,
but that doesn't stop the police from arresting them and that
doesn't stop the prosecution from prosecuting them and forcing a
jury trial if necessary.
Furthermore, once you have a criminal defense lawyer involved on
your behalf, you save yourself the trouble of having to listen the
enormous amount of complete nonsense you will likely have to listen
to from the investigating officer or detective. Nothing the
police say to you as a potential target in a criminal investigation
can be trusted. Nothing. Lies, deception, and trickery
are all time tested, legal, classic methods employed by police when
attempting to get suspects to make statements or otherwise
incriminate themselves. Many of the techniques employed by the
police are quite powerful and tempting to believe. Therefore,
the less you are subjected to it the better for you.
In those rare cases in which you are contacted before the
decision to arrest has been made, they are usually attempting to see
if they can do or say something to you that will convince you to
make their case for them. If there is a criminal defense
attorney involved, then you will be insulated from such
conversations. The police will not get any damaging
information from you and you may actually never be arrested.
One of the biggest dangers of speaking to the police is that you
cannot know what they know already. They may know far less
than you think going into the interview. Therefore, you may
tell them things they didn't actually know and may never have known
but for your own words.
A classic example of this is when someone "cooperates" with the
police, gives a statement that denies guilt, but still nevertheless
ends up convicting him. The "I was there and saw the whole
thing, but I didn't do it" statement is seemingly harmless because
the upshot of it is that the defendant denies guilt. So what's
the big deal? What if the identification evidence that the
defendant was the person was very weak? What if the police had
some doubt in their minds about whether or not the suspect was
actually present? That doubt has been removed by the
defendant himself who conceded that he "was there". Now the
only thing that remains to be determined is the defendant's role.
They may also know far more than you think they do.
They may also lie to you about what they know or about what other
people said. By the way this is considered perfectly legal and
even encouraged as good police work. For example, a police
officer may tell a suspect that the person he stabbed pulled through
the surgery and is going to be all right. The suspect, worried
about a murder case, may feel it "ok" then to admit to having
actually stabbed the person. If in fact the victim had
actually died in surgery, the police have a nice confession on a
homicide case.
The bottom line is that as a suspect in a criminal case, you have
no idea whether any little thing you say will end up connecting you
by some bizarre coincidence to a piece of evidence that just might
get you wrongly convicted of a hideous crime.
One thing not to worry about excessively is that your request for
a lawyer or insistence on having a lawyer pre-arrest will somehow
tip the scales and cause the police to "know" that you are guilty,
and therefore cause them to arrest you when they might not have
arrested you otherwise. Remember the first assumption when you
are contacted by the police (or have you forgotten already?) -- THE
DECISION TO ARREST YOU HAS ALREADY BEEN MADE. They already
think you are guilty.
You are far less likely to be harmed by the assumption that the
police want to arrest you because if you accept that assumption then
you will immediately contact a criminal defense lawyer who will help
you determine whether or not it is true. If it is not true,
then great. You overreacted but you protected yourself.
Finally, you need to contact a criminal defense lawyer. You
don't need a real estate lawyer. You don't need the lawyer who
wrote your will or the lawyer who sued your neighbor for denting his
car. You need somebody who really knows what he is doing in
the criminal justice system.
The police officer who contacted you does nothing but operate in
the world of the criminal justice system. The prosecutor who
will prosecute you if you are arrested does nothing but operate in
the world of criminal justice. The judge who will rule on your
case as it makes its way through the criminal justice system likely does
almost nothing but criminal cases.
So then why, on God's green earth, would you want your one
advocate in the criminal justice system, the one person who will
defend you against an army of professional police and prosecutors to
be anyone other than someone with significant criminal defense
experience? Aunt Martha's brother-in-law who does "a little
bit of everything" is going to have to play catch-up against people
who do nothing else.
I have been a criminal defense
lawyer for nearly 16 years.
When I bought a house, I hired a real estate lawyer who does a lot
of house closings. In theory, I could have handled it myself
and saved some money. After all, I am a lawyer.
According to the bar association I am capable and licensed to
handle just about any legal matter in New York State, certainly a
house closing. But I would have been a fool. Criminal
defense in New York City is what I know - not house closings.
In the rapid-fire unforgiving fury of a criminal trial in New York
City where my client's freedom is at stake I am as confident and
comfortable as if I were in my own living room. But I would be
lost at a house closing.
I say these things not solely to convince you to contact me if
you are faced with police contact (although I certainly would not
object if you did), because there are a great many wonderful
criminal defense lawyers in New York City any one of whom would be
in a position to help you through the difficult times associated
with police contact. But do make sure that you find someone
who actually practices criminal defense. Criminal defense is
not a hobby.
At Shalley & Murray,
criminal defense is what we do. We can be reached at
718-268-2171.
Please do not hesitate to contact us
at
any time at the first sign of police contact.
