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Comment by wisty | Hacker News Reader

This is kind of a myth. That was only part of the reasoning.

The suspect actually said:

"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."

Is he actually requesting a lawyer? Maybe, or maybe he's saying he's innocent and asserting that he will defend himself (getting a lawyer) if charged. The police aren't required to execute subroutines either. You can't say "give me a lawyer if you think I'm guilty" or "give me a lawyer if Bobby was the snitch" or "give me a lawyer if the Collatz conjecture is true" (well you can, but they don't have to give you a lawyer then). You have to unambiguously ask for a lawyer if you want one.

And he's saying it's how he feels. He says he feels he should get a lawyer if they think he's guilty. This is not a clear request for a lawyer.

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I don't buy this for a second. "If you think I did it" is clearly a preliminary clause akin to "If that's the way it's going to be," not the beginning of an if-then clause.

But the point here is that there shouldn't be such a test in the first place. "If y'all think I did it" was him (belatedly) realizing that he was a suspect, after the police put on a kabuki-show of pretending that he wasn't, which they are trained to do, specifically to get suspects to talk without asking for a lawyer. The whole thing is a farce. "It's okay to screw him because technically he didn't quite do the thing that we intentionally put in place to let us screw people more" is the sort of claim that's wrong even when it's right, because it's so very far removed from a genuine attempt to discover the truth of the matter.

The police "screwed" him by following the exact letter of the law as they questioned him, and didn't give him the "get out of jail free" card that he almost managed to get. And while it's not totally relevant, he was hardly just some kid with a joint on the floor of his car (it was a serious violent offense).

Yes, the police sailed a bit close to the wind. But maybe the law is currently too suspect-friendly in the USA (which then is compensated with extreme penalties for the tiny number of suspects who are found guilty in a trial). The US system is such a mess that the police and suspects basically conspire to avoid it (plea bargaining). And while it's easy to just blame the "law and order" crowd, they're partly just reacting to the fact that it's almost impossible to fairly convict a savvy criminal in the US without physical evidence or multiple witnesses.

In most of the world, police interrogations aren't optional (if you know the cheat codes). I believe that in the UK, Canada, Australia you have the right to remain silent, but police or prosecutor can tell the jury which questions you did not answer (and then the lawyers will argue over why that was the case). The right to council is often for the trial, not telling you how to avoid answering questions during a police interview. If the purpose of legal systems is to "discover the truth of the matter", then I think the US does a poor job (making it far too easy for a smart criminal to simply shut down a case against them), and a lot of the disfunction they have seems to be an attempt to compensate for all the rights that a smarter criminal can have.

>I believe that in the UK, Canada, Australia you have the right to remain silent, but police or prosecutor can tell the jury which questions you did not answer (and then the lawyers will argue over why that was the case).

Your summary does not seem to be correct. The police/prosecutor can tell the jury that you refused to answer questions, but only in limited circumstances. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_silence_in_England_an...

Hmm, you might be right. I still think the US system tends to be very heavily driven by the opposing forces of the constitution and the government though, and has a lot of hard rules that don't seem particularly realistic (if a defendant says some magic phrase they fall under the constitution's protection, otherwise they're in trouble - it's a little like something sovereign citizens might dream up). While most countries let governments or the courts strike what they consider to be a balance.

> if a defendant says some magic phrase they fall under the constitution's protection, otherwise they're in trouble

This is not true. Every US citizen is protected by the constitution, all the time, and has the right to a lawyer, no matter what. The "magic" in that phrase is that if you try to exercise your right to a lawyer, and the cops refuse, and in so doing break the law and defy the constitution, saying the magic phrase means that they are more likely to get in trouble for doing so.

> And while it's not totally relevant, he was hardly just some kid

It's absolutely not relevant. Everyone has rights. This "people who seem guilty should have a harder time in the legal system" take your comment is leaning into is a self sabotaging approach to justice, I hope for obvious reasons.

People who seem guilty absolutely should have a harder time in the legal system. That is the group of people who are more likely to be guilty. Police have quite a lot of discretion in who they arrest and that is already a fairly strong "looks guilty" signal.

What is important is there must be minimum standards to try and remove individual bias and push the system towards evidence based outcomes. If there is no evidence someone did something, they should not be punished. But if there is overwhelming evidence from the get go that they've committed a crime then the police can go through the motions and interpret the procedures unhelpfully.

It isn't perfect (in fact, the system is terrifyingly arbitrary) but it must be acknowledged that a case looking to be open-and-shut is suggestive of guilt and should influence how procedures are applied.

I guess it's easy to look at things this way if you're not on the wrong end of this "how things look" situation. Your argument strikes me as incredibly dishonest at best, and just plain evil at worst.

Enforcing the law is, in a sense, evil. At the end of the day enforcement is some combination of violence, coercion and thoughtfully depriving people of life/liberty/comfort.

The enforcement system is wildly imperfect and a side effect of that is the people involved have to make judgement calls about how to treat the people who get caught up in the legal system. If you can think of a way around that then you'll get your name in the history books.

> Your argument strikes me as incredibly dishonest at best, and just plain evil at worst.

Hopefully the path from dishonest to evil passes through some more positive places, because there are a lot of options that seem to be missing there.

It is because of viewpoints like yours that I celebrate the U.S. legal system, and that I despise the enforcement apparatus for it's discrimination against highly intelligent people. It is not difficult to become the butt end of the prosecutor's ire; and when faced with the resources of the State, how amazing that one can not only actually hold the State accountable to follow it's own process for depriving one of one's own life and liberty; and that one can actually fight tyranny at the same time by forcing the Government to tip their hands, and reveal their methods through sufficient attention to detail and the right questions.

How fantastic that a legal system acknowledges that a State with an agenda will wring all sorts of construed meaning out of silence; and pre-emptively writes out large swathes of that type of testimony (even if I disagree with some courts interpretation of testimony). Restricting the State to having to make a case on material facts.

Many warts that our legal system may have, most of the more pressing ones are problems of will to prosecute or investigate tough cases and lackluster investigatory technique when done.

The "seems pretty sus" barrier has no place in a justice system. Material facts. The world around a genuine wrong-doer will tell more than enough to convict them without playing games with "well they made the investigator's life more difficult by not opening the door and answering questions" and a follow up game of who is better at formulating the more intellectually palatable leading questions. Not one person should have to lift a finger to help contribute to building the walls in which the State seeks to contain them, and every innocent suspect deserves the finest council to help them navigate the vagaries of the legal system, and even the guilty deserve to have the case depriving them of life and liberty be conducted to the squeakiest degree humanly possible, with the aid of a robust defense.

To do anything less is an affront on human decency, and the integrity of the judicial apparatus.

>didn't give him the "get out of jail free" card that he almost managed to get.

no, they didn't give him the fair process card that he should have had.

> I believe that in the UK, Canada, Australia you have the right to remain silent

In Australia, not always true. You have no right to remain silent if questioned by an Examiner of the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC), a rather Star Chamber-esque federal law enforcement agency tasked with investigating terrorism, organised crime and other “major crimes” (a rather ill-defined category; pretty much any murder investigation could be given that label if they wanted to, although most murders wouldn’t interest them.) However, while they can force you to answer questions, they aren’t directly allowed to use your answers to prosecute you (but they can use them to prosecute other people, and they may be able to use them against you indirectly, if your answer leads them to discovering new physical evidence or witnesses.) You have the right to a lawyer, and the lawyer is allowed to object to questions, but you still have to answer them-if they object, they can attempt to get a court order after the fact to stop the answers from being used, if your lawyer doesn’t object at the time a court can dismiss an application for any such order on that basis. Also, if they call you in for questioning, it is a crime for you to tell anyone except for your own lawyer that they are questioning you.

> The right to council is often for the trial, not telling you how to avoid answering questions during a police interview.

It is important for the interview too. One’s lawyer can object to leading questions. They can give advice on how best to answer questions-you can be telling the truth, but some ways of phrasing the truth can sound much better than others. They can give advice on when it would be best to exercise one’s right to silence, and when it might be better not to.

Sometimes it even just serves to scare the police off. One guy I know was a bit of a hothead when he was younger, ended up in a fistfight, he put the other guy in hospital. He claimed self-defence, and it was one of those iffy “Who started it? Did he use excessive force in defending himself?” cases. He swears the only reason he wasn’t prosecuted, is he turned up to his official police interview with this really expensive, locally well-known criminal lawyer, and that scared the police and prosecution off, he was never charged. Who knows, but he’s probably right. Probably there’s some other guy out there who was in a similar situation, whose parents couldn’t afford that kind of lawyer (or didn’t know who they were or where to find them), and ended up being charged, going to trial, maybe even convicted, or talked into pleading guilty for a lesser sentence.

In the UK you have the right to remain silent, but "it may harm your defence if you fail to mention, when questioned, something you later come to rely on in court" (or something like that is what the police tell anyone they arrest).

So you sorta do sorta don't.

> The police "screwed" him by following the exact letter of the law

Ironically, it's impossible for the police to screw you by following the exact letter of the law. The exact letter of the law says the request for a lawyer has to be one that a reasonable layman would assume is a request for a lawyer. Therefore, relying on a legality to disqualify the request is a paradox.

Im happy to discuss the rights of suspects in various western societies. In Australia you have to answer your identity (name, address, date and place of birth) and otherwise can remain silent and nothing can be assumed from your silence. In Canada, any questions answered before you are told you can get a lawyer are considered inadmissible and the notification of your rights includes an option to call a free legal aid lawyer right then before the interrogation starts. The UK is complex, but range from a 100% right to remain silent (except for identifying themselves like in Australia) in Scotland to a more complex set of exceptions to the rights in England and Wales that needs a solicitor to explain.

> it's almost impossible to fairly convict a savvy criminal in the US without physical evidence or multiple witnesses.

That is not true. I don't even think police or prosecutors think that.

> The US system is such a mess that the police and suspects basically conspire to avoid it (plea bargaining)

Also not true. The plea bargaining system is not something that suspects "conspire" to use, it is foisted upon them and sometimes causes innocent people to plead guilty.

> In most of the world, police interrogations aren't optional...

Nor are they in the US. It's true that the police often stop questioning someone once they ask for a lawyer, but that's not because the questioning is "optional", it's because they know the lawyer will tell the suspect to shut up.

Your whole post is wildly miscalibrated. Calling legal representation a "get out of jail free" card is absurd. I don't know where you learned about the American legal system, but boy, I hope you never get arrested in the US for a crime you didn't commit, because it would not go well for you.

This, unfortunately, correct (In the US). A request for a lawyer must be completely unambiguous. If there is any ambiguity, and you then continue talking to the police, a court has a decent chance of ruling against you on the issue of whether or not you requested a lawyer. Speculating that you should get a lawyer, asking the police if a lawyer is necessary, asking if you can have a lawyer... those are not sufficient to guarantee that your rights are protected. There should be no question about what you want. It needs to be assertive, declarative.

There's no single magic phrase, but something like "I am invoking my right to legal counsel and will not answer any further questions". And then don't answer anything. Don't even ask anything related to the legal issue at hand.

So, the above comment is not necessarily stating their own opinion on how things should work. It is describing how things actually work in practice. Zero ambiguity.

Why is it unfortunate?

Is it unfortunate that some people will get away with crimes, because they know to ask for a lawyer (unambiguously)? The "lawyer dog" suspect was found guilty of a serious crime (based on his interview with police), and I think he should have been convicted, and that it's good that he didn't get off on a technicality (at least in this specific case).

Or is it unfortunate that some people will be wrongfully convicted, because they didn't have a lawyer and said something which ended up making them (falsely) look guilty?

I suspect people will think it's a combination of the two - both false convictions exist, and some criminals get off because they know the system. But making it easier to get a lawyer will only fix one of these.

There has to be some balance. If the police can only convict based on physical evidence (and not suspect interviews) then a lot of crimes will be impossible to prosecute.

> and that it's good that he didn't get off on a technicality

This phrasing is like identity theft, it puts the burden on the wrong party. Had he not been convicted, it would be because the state failed to successfully prosecute him by not giving him a fair trial.

A system where evidence obtained illegally is admissible in court creates a perverse incentive for police to collect evidence illegally and suffer the suffer the consequences of that in order to get a conviction. You have to take away the value to eliminate the incentive. Imagine a world where where theft was punishable by 2 years in jail but you got to keep whatever money you stole.

> it's good that he didn't get off on a technicality (at least in this specific case).

Assuming it was good in this case, and that the confession wasn't forced or some such, it's definitely not good in "big picture" terms.

Making evidence acquired outside of what is laws inadmissible keeps law enforcement honest since there will be nothing to gain by breaking the rules, and it ensures that evidence is not tampered with and that people's rights are protected.

Yes, these things sometimes let guilty people go free, but that's better than locking up innocent people. It sucks, but that's the reality of it.

Unfortunate because people are innocent until proven guilty, so we cannot (US, constitutionally) and should not be making determinations about how easy it should be to assert a constitutional right to legal counsel.

Constitutional rights should be very easy to exercise and very difficult to limit. And in these scenarios, regarding the possibility that criminals might find an easier time getting legal help, you must consider part of the founding philosophy of the US legal system, a portion borrowed from England's William Blackstone: it is better that 10 guilty persons escape, than that 1 innocent suffer.

Or, as codified by precedent from the US Supreme Court some time later in 1895, "it is better to let the crime of a guilty person go unpunished than to condemn the innocent".

To make it harder to get a lawyer because the person might be guilty... or having police or prosecutors make their own individual determinations on that difficulty based on their own subjective belief in the suspect's probability of guilt... Those are antithetical to the principals that founded the US legal system, and antithetical to the rule of law superceding the rule of men.

So there does not need to be a balance, at least not beyond the constitution and corresponding precedent-based legal doctrine. The entire point is that it should be very difficult to strip away a person's freedom. The job of police is not supposed to be easy. If a suspect that has not been found guilty wants the benefit of legal counsel then they are entitled to it. The job of police should not be made easier at the cost of losing fundamental rights.

If the rules are arcane and specific, then the system will just reward the most competent criminals at the expense of the unprepared and the falsely accused.

Making innocent people's lives harder just to catch the least prepared criminals doesn't sound like much of a trade-off.

It's a bit more subtle than that. The real issue here is that the ambiguity of this statement depends a lot of the cultural context. There are plenty of communities in the US where that statement reads as an absolutely unambiguous request for a lawyer.

It's obviously not a conditional "If you think I'm guilty, then I want a lawyer" (as the parent is attempting to parse it). But a statement of "You really think I did this? I didn't so I want a lawyer".

The issue is that in communities like HN and most important where the judge and police come from, this can seem more ambiguous. The real issue is, is this misreading of ambiguity in bad faith or not.

> The issue is that in communities like HN and most important where the judge and police come from, this can seem more ambiguous.

No, the issue is that the police will dishonestly feign misunderstanding of any potential ambiguity out of institutional interest, and that (especially elected) trial judges are, for the most part, inclined to do the same out of personal political interest.

Genuine, good-faith cultural misunderstanding is an insignificant issue; it may sometimes be present, but it's not anywhere close to the dominant issue.

I agree on the subtlety. Personally I think that expressing the most miniscule thought about having a lawyer should trigger that process. In practice, the judiciary system has ruled that requests for legal counsel must be unambiguous in the wording used. At a very minimum there should be something like a Miranda warning that does not allow police to continue without-- at each stage the word "lawyer" is said-- asking "are you asserting your 6th amendment right to legals counsel? Please answer with a Yes/No." That's off the top of my head though, maybe there's a better way

So you have the right to request a lawyer, but you can’t say “can I get a lawyer?” (cue “may I go to the bathroom” from English class), you have to make it so unambiguous it’s not entirely clear what exactly is the phrase you have to say. Thus a seemingly-rigid law being bent beyond reasonable interpretation.

>but you can’t say “can I get a lawyer?” [...] Thus a seemingly-rigid law being bent beyond reasonable interpretation.

Is this from another court case, or your own personal speculation? Saying "can I get a laywer" (as in, just that, not as part of a long winded sentence) is a much clearer statement of intent than what the "lawyer dawg" guy said. For that reason I think the courts would count that as "requesting a lawyer", even if your 5th grade english teacher disagrees.

Come on. That's a willful misinterpretation, for one thing, and for the other, the judge specifically said that it was not clear what a "lawyer-dog" was. You are trying to come up with a more rational explanation post hoc when the judge himself gave the stupid one.

https://www.lasc.org/opinions/2017/17KK0954.sjc.addconc.pdf

> 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, 451 U.S. 477, 101 S.Ct. 1880, 68 L.Ed.2d 378 (1981).

The link is dead for me, were you able to read it?

But this seems this is more of the ruling, note that the judge points out 'prefacing that statement with "if y' all, this is how I feel, if y' all think I did it'

> I agree with the Court's decision to deny the defendant's writ application and write separately to spotlight the very important constitutional issue regarding the invocation of counsel during a law enforcement interview. The defendant voluntarily agreed to be interviewed twice regarding his alleged sexual misconduct with minors. At both interviews detectives advised the defendant of his Miranda rights and the defendant stated he understood and waived those rights. Nonetheless, the defendant argues he invoked his right to counsel. 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, 451 U.S. 477, 101 S.Ct. 1880, 68 L.Ed.2d 378 (1981).

I was indeed able to read that -- poorly edited, since the "prefacing" part ends up referencing the entire statement -- opinion in its entirety from the link I shared. I think it beggars belief that a "reasonable police officer" could have found the statement in any way ambiguous. At best, if we take your reading of the opinion, putting the phrase "lawyer dog" in quotes like it's a single lexical item is a completely unnecessary jab at the defendant's mannerisms that doesn't inspire confidence in the judge's impartiality.

Enthusiastic agreement. The ruling is a plain affront to reason; Anyone supporting it is doing so in bad faith. He didn't say "lawyer dog", he said "give me a lawyer, dog", where "dog" is one of the many colloquial vocatives used in American English like "sir" "dude" "man" "yo".

Naturally, everyone involved in this case was aware of this. They just decided to enjoy abusing their power by feigning misunderstanding, because it worked to their advantage, because they wanted to, and most importantly, because they knew they could get away with it. Truth is less important that power.

If the defendant hadn't spoken English, they would have been obliged to provide a translator. It is obvious that linguistic barriers don't cede ones constitutional rights. This is somehow even worse, however, than not providing a translator. It is a bad-faith abuse of the inherent diversity of English to deny someone their rights.

Link works for me

SUPREME COURT OF LOUISIANA No. 2017-KK-0954 STATE OF LOUISIANA VERSUS WARREN DEMESM

I honestly don’t understand how you can read that and not interpret it as a clear request for a lawyer. It takes mental gymnastics to assume that he did not, in fact, want a lawyer.

No, it takes "subroutines."

I don't really think so, I think it's completely unambiguous that "if you think I did it" means "if you actually go through with arresting me."

Like it's nuts that the court system rewards deliberate misunderstandings of someone's intent.

Oh sure, and the phrase "Why don't you get me a lawyer" is not a request, but a question, the answer to which the police isn't obligated to provide.

Sorry, I'm not buying it.

The only relevant part is that the words "get me a lawyer" were said, and these words mean - hear me for a second here - that the person in question requested a lawyer.

If somebody under questioning, in a situation where people often request and have rights to lawyers, mentions a lawyer, what's the correct action?

A) consider whether the person might be requesting a lawyer and help them exercise their constitutional right.

B) find some way, any way, to interpret their request as something else. Apparently the police thought he wanted a "lawyer dog"? Come off it.

Rights are only real if people can exercise them. This court decision decimated the right to a defense in every meaningful sense.

Willful misinterpretation is precisely what any self-preserving legalistic person or system will do. In a situation like this, they'll choose B, because if they don't, they are choosing to lose in the face of an inconvenient truth.

You could run that through a group of kindergartners and 30/30 would tell you he requested a lawyer. It’s only a person with a special kind of learned stupidity, or malice that can claim that they are not sure if it was a request for a lawyer.

Reminds me of the “what is a photocopier” dialogue: https://youtu.be/PZbqAMEwtOE

That's because this person is not expert in law and the police exploited that. The intent was obvious.

and the courts choose to be party to this, and there is no consequence.

The point is, if someone being accused of or investigated for a crime and they say ".*Lawyer.*", in the United States this should automatically trigger the police to stop talking to the suspect until the attorney is present.

>this should automatically trigger

I agree, should. But ruling precedent by judges has said otherwise, that the request for a lawyer must be clear and unambiguous. It should not be a question, speculation about the need for a lawyer, "I think I need to..".

Yes, this is unfortunate. Especially considering the way the US very broadly interprets rights under other amendments, yet so very narrowly in the case of the 6th amendment.

which is the (great great?) grand parents point ... laws not being reasonably applied.

I'd go a step further and make it explicitly opt-out. How confident is the average person on exactly what point they are entitled to a lawyer?

It essentially is in a couple of states now.

So we should discriminate against the people who don't know to say "lawyer"?

Why not just give every suspect a lawyer immediately. And since any sane suspect will listen to their lawyer (who will advise them to plead the 5th), why not ban police from interviewing suspects altogether, and simply give a list of questions to their lawyer to discuss.

Exactly! we should! By giving everyone a lawyer immediately we focus on establishing truth.

Only reason we don't is that its obviously too expensive and impractical. This is why we initially try without, and involve a lawyer when "it gets serious".

So consider this: Why should the suspect be punished for this reality?

I find the phrase you quoted as unambiguously asking for a lawyer, and it takes motivated reading (or an inability to imagine other speech patterns) to arrive at any other answer.

And, for fun, in serval US circuits the suspect would have been asking for a lawyer.

Adding qualifiers is usually a linguistic filler, not attempting to add more information. Other phrasings also considered not to ask for a lawyer by the courts under the same standard are: "I think I need a lawyer", "is there a lawyer I can speak with" and "where's my lawyer". Do you really think those weren't clearly asking for a lawyer, and really were expressing unacted on thought, question about the general availability of lawyers or asking the cops to report on the location of his attorney as a completely isolated question?

If you really want to be this facetious and go into sentence structures, bear with me:

The "if" clause does not apply to the request to get a lawyer.

>If y’all, this is how I feel, if y’all think I did it, I know that I didn’t do it

He knows he didn't do it if they all think they he'd done it.

This is followed by a request do get a lawyer.

Are we done now?

A native English speaker would understand the sentence - in the same way that saying, "give me a lawyer Stan" can be easily understood. The person in that sentence isn't asking for a "lawyer Stan" but is naming the other person in the conversation as "Stan" or in this case as "dawg".

For a police officer, who regularly deals with this sort of slang, to misunderstand this - that only happens when they want to intentionally violate the rights of the accused.

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