Posted on 11/03/2017 8:13:07 AM PDT by Blue House Sue
When a friend says, “I’ll hit you up later dog,” he is stating that he will call again sometime. He is not calling the person a “later dog.”
But that’s not how the courts in Louisiana see it. And when a suspect in an interrogation told detectives to “just give me a lawyer dog,” the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that the suspect was, in fact, asking for a “lawyer dog,” and not invoking his constitutional right to counsel. It’s not clear how many lawyer dogs there are in Louisiana, and whether any would have been available to represent the human suspect in this case, other than to give the standard admonition in such circumstances to simply stop talking.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The pertinent part being
“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).
Cut to 1972.
“Give me a lawyer, man”
This is fake news. The article is purposely written to falsely portray what happened with the interview to make the cops and courts look bad.
If you read the actual details, the suspect did not make a legitimate request for an attorney, and in fact waived his right to counsel.
If he had said “Give me a lawyer dawg” he would be fine.
Especially if he had reiterated the request and/or stopped talking
But he said “if this then lawyer”
That is not a request for a lawyer.
The suspect’s actual quote is way down in the article. It seems pretty clear. He wanted a lawyer.
“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.”
Seriously, no one should be applauding this. These rights exist for a reason, and one of them is that the judicial system would trample people if it could.
Well, I guess this case is headed for the Supreme Court, which is a waste of everyone’s time and money.
In an interrogation if a guy uses the lawyer word you get him a lawyer. End of discussion.
I am pretty sure that even Barbara Billingsley could have translated for the actor. She even knew jive. But then, she died in ‘10.
Fixed it for you.
The failure of the judicial system to expel the creative sophists in their midst is why this country is swirling the drain.
Huge mistake, picked the wrong animal. Should have used “shark”, “pig”, “leach”, “baboon”, etc... then they would have understood.
Fun fact- the first choice for the role was Harriet Nelson but she turned it down. Billingsley nailed it.
Hahaha!!
Now if only, when a suspect says, “I didn’t do nothin’”, they’d interpret that double negative correctly and call it a confession.
“Maybe the cops and judge should not violate peoples rights.”
Maybe criminals should learn to respect the police, and communicate with them with proper English. (Jive isn’t English.) This might be an impetus for the low-life idiots to re-think how they interact with TPTB.
How about using the correct language when asking, is that so frigging hard?
Serves himself right since he brought the problem onto himself.
Asking an officer for something so important, and then saying :dog: . Give me a break, and maybe next time he will take this life lesson, and learn from it.
Or ... the courts could just choose to not deny him the right to counsel based on a flimsy and stupid semantic argument. Then he wouldn't need a lawyer to advise him on how to request a lawyer. Seems like that makes more sense to me.
He said the words “give me a lawyer.” At that point any professional LEO will say “okay.” and stop the interrogation, anyone that says otherwise deserves boot on their neck.
Police are trained in AAVE.
They knew EXACTLY what he meant.
Maybe they knew, but the fact is that he cannot talk correct English whilst asking for something so important like a lawyer is plain stupid. In fact the man is a complete idiot, and deserves what he got.Now perhaps he will take this life lesson and learn from it, but I don’t it.
Correct English?
What’s that? British English? American English? New York English? Southern English? Boston English? North Dakotan English?
All police are trained in AAVE(which means they know exactly what he meant) and took advantage of him.
It is not okay for the police and system to take advantage of people that have lower than room temperature intelligence or are disabled in any way. But they do it, every single day. This is just another example. It will get worse, and worse. Get ready for “thought crimes”, because they are coming.
oh cry me a river, he brought this on himself and you want to defend this criminal scumbag. Get a grip with your social justice crap
This kind of legal abuse is why minorities and poor people feel (may be rightly so) that they are being treated unfairly, and subject to racism.
What kind of stupid ruling is this?
Of course he was asking for a lawyer.
This ruling should be vacated and the court should apologize to the guy that was arrested
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