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Comment by unclenoriega | Hacker News Reader

I was ready to agree with you, but the fact that opinion quotes "lawyer dog" makes me question what the judge actually thinks (or is claiming to think). Clearly it should be "lawyer, dog," instead of "lawyer dog". The judge does seem to be quoting the transcript, however, which leads us to the point of the article.

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I don't know why you're questioning anything. The judge gave his reasoning. He said:

>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?

'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'

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...

In this case ambiguous or equivocal means:

>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.

That's all well and good, but the judge is quite clear that it is 'the defendant’s ... reference to a “lawyer dog”' that is 'ambiguous and equivocal'.

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?

>That's all well and good, but the judge is quite clear that it is 'the defendant’s ... reference to a “lawyer dog”' that is 'ambiguous and equivocal'.

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.

I'd like to believe that, and I think I still do, but it just seems odd the way the judge phrases his opinion. I agree that the defendant's wording is ambiguous, but that last sentence gets me:

> 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.

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