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Comment by ineedasername | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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