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Comment by angry_octet | Hacker News Reader

The key thing she ought to have done was not answer the door, or given any sign she was there. She should have rung an experienced criminal attorney immediately, and moved to an undisclosed location that wasn't a hotel, with a new cell phone, and let her lawyer negotiate with the police to discover what their laziness has led them to believe.

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Is that how it works in the US?

When the police come and want to arrest you for triple manslaughter you just don’t open the door, and they shrug and you can let a third party “negotiate” with them for you?

A search warrant is not the same as an arrest warrant. If you have a lawyer they can negotiate your surrender into custody at an appropriate time for a prompt appearance before a judge for a bail hearing (e.g. Tuesday morning, not Friday afternoon). Having an attorney beforehand short circuits a lot of delay while you try to find one and arrange for a bail surety.

Her lawyer did in fact negotiate her surrender into custody after the arrest warrant was issued, and there was a bail hearing, but the judge ruled against her, which is why she was held with no bond.

She (correctly) never spoke to the police, other than an initial denial when they seized her car, and was never Mirandized or interrogated. By the time they knocked on her door (reportedly at 3AM), her car had already been seized since she lived in an apartment complex with an outdoor parking lot. But she wasn’t arrested until months later.

In the US you should not interact with police at all for any reason unless you are forced to. They have essencially immunity from any liabilty and can legally lie and deceive people, while civilians can be punished for even an accidental lie. They also have a profit motive to arrest people and require no legal knowledge.

US cops can and do regularly get fet cleared for abuses because "I didn't know I wasn't suppose to violate their rights!" Meanwhile for civilians "ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law."

it could have been a so called no knock warrant where police just ram your house door and enter your house. but what I don't understand is that it took from the impounding of the car to the incarceration of her seven months I would have assumed that she lawyered up to get the car back and deny the allegations

What I gather from hearing her lawyer talk about it is that the prosecution’s case seemed (and was) weak, so the lawyer counseled her to wait a few months to see if the case would be dropped. Then when nothing happened, they filed a writ of replevin to get her car back. Immediately afterward the arrest warrant was issued and she had to surrender herself to the police.

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