No one _actually_ thinks that was a misunderstanding, right?
>And the basis for this comes from the second interview, where I believe the defendant ambiguously referenced a lawyer— prefacing that statement with “if y’all, this is how I feel, if y’all think I did it, I know that I didn’t do it so why don’t you just give me a lawyer dog cause this is not what’s up.” As this Court has written, “[i]f a suspect makes a reference to an attorney that is ambiguous or equivocal in that a reasonable police officer in light of the circumstances would have understood only that the suspect might be invoking his right to counsel, the cessation of questioning is not required.” State v. Payne, 2001- 3196, p. 10 (La. 12/4/02), 833 So.2d 927, 935 (citations omitted and emphasis in original); see also Davis v. United States, 512 U.S. 452, 462, 114 S.Ct. 2350, 2357, 129 L.Ed.2d 362 (1994) (agreeing with the lower courts’ conclusion that the statement “[m]aybe I should talk to a lawyer” is not an unambiguous request for a lawyer). In my view, the defendant’s ambiguous and equivocal reference to a “lawyer dog” does not constitute an invocation of counsel that warrants termination of the interview and does not violate Edwards v. Arizona,
https://www.lasc.org/opinions/2017/17KK0954.sjc.addconc.pdf
It's pretty obvious that the judge does not think that there are lawyer dogs and that the word "dog" in that sentence has no bearing on the judges opinion.
>defendant ambiguously referenced a lawyer— prefacing that statement...
It's crystal clear that he is referring to this portion of the defendants statement:
>if y’all, this is how I feel, if y’all think I did it
I'm a little bit stunned that people actually think this is how the legal system works. You think that a prosecutor would seriously argue that a defendant didn't request a lawyer because they added "dog" to the end of that request? Or that a judge would take that argument seriously?
Stunned or not, it seems pretty clear the judge is referring specifically to the phrase "lawyer dog" in the summary of their judgement. I don't see how 'reference to a "lawyer dog"' could be interpreted any other way...
>ambiguous or equivocal in that a reasonable police officer in light of the circumstances would have understood only that the suspect might be invoking his right to counsel
So the judge isn't saying that he is confused and thinks the statement is ambiguous because he doesn't know what a lawyer dog is. He's saying it's ambiguous because the statement didn't clearly request a lawyer, canine or otherwise.
This isn't anything confusing to a lawyer or someone familiar with the law. It's a well known legal standard. What the article claims is equivalent to saying that Java takes a lot of memory because the code is so verbose. It's just so obviously wrong to anyone with legal knowledge.
I'd be curious about your views on why the judge chose to include that sentence if the 'reference to a “lawyer dog”'' wasn't relevant to his decision?
In that it was not a clear and unambiguous invocation of the right to counsel.
>I'd be curious about your views on why the judge chose to include that sentence if the 'reference to a “lawyer dog”'' wasn't relevant to his decision?
I don't know why he chose to quote "lawyer dog" and not more or less of the defendant's quote. I'm not a mind reader. But when he writes:
>I believe the defendant ambiguously referenced a lawyer
It's clear that the ambiguity he is arguing does not derive from his lack of knowledge of what a lawyer dog is.
> In my view, the defendant’s ambiguous and equivocal reference to a “lawyer dog” does not constitute...
Maybe it's just in jest or intended to be a (racially-coded?) slight at the defendant. It doesn't change the overall argument, but it stands out to me. Why wouldn't you just say "lawyer" there, probably without the quotes?
Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I would like to imagine legal opinions are written carefully. Hopefully I'm missing something.
A white suspect who said the same thing would probably have gotten a lawyer. The idiom "dog" is widely understood and used outside the black community, like "bro," "dude", "man", and there is no possible way “Why don’t you just give me a lawyer, dog?” was honestly interpreted as a request for a canid that passed the bar exam.
The most reasonable interpretation is that it is an insult, along the lines of "Why don’t you just give me a lawyer, asshole?" (or motherfucker, or asswipe, or shithead...)
Note that it happens to be a question. That isn't really the proper way to ask for something. The answer to the question may well be "Because you haven't demanded one yet, parakeet".
The best assumption for a random mysterious word is an insult, especially when used as name for you. If you don't know what "kike" or "tard" means and you assume it is an insult, you wouldn't be wrong.
I'm a 40-year-old out-of-touch white dude and I know exactly what "dog" means in this context. So do my 65-year-old parents.
Maybe your life has been so far removed from mainstream American culture that you haven't heard basic slang for the last quarter-century at least. That doesn't mean it's reasonable or excusable for a working cop.