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Should you talk to the cops?

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Here is a really good lecture for everyone to see. A former defence attorney (James Duane) and a police officer (George Bruch) detail reasons not to talk to the police. While you may think you can talk your way out of anything, the police really want you to dig your own grave. Whether you deserve it (i.e. You’re a criminal) or not (i.e. You accidentally incriminate yourself due to a variety of reasons, even though you are innocent).

We are linking to the UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA FACULTY BLOG as the videos are American based (to include professor commentary). Former defence attorney Grant Brown, of Edmonton, details some of the differences but also a lot of the similarities.

Mr. Brown also mentions issues pertaining to procedural fairness, and constitutional rights:

 

The problem is very acute in cases of alleged intimate partner violence (IPV). As soon as one party makes an allegation to the police against the other party, the other party becomes a suspect and is well advised not to speak to the police, for all the reasons Professor Duane mentions. But this gives altogether too much power to the person who is the first to make an accusation; the other party cannot safely get their story heard. How can the police possibly get to the truth of what happened in a he-said-she-said situation when one party is effectively precluded from speaking? –Grant Brown

 

“[A]nd anyway, if 80% of these investigations come back as “unfounded,” then the better question is why the police don’t require the person making the allegation to undertake a polygraph test in the first instance, to determine if there is even any reason to interview the respondent. The answer, obviously, is that the police are ONLY interested in catching the accused; they are NOT interested in determining that the accuser is guilty of perjury, making a false statement to the police, or obstruction of justice.” –Grant Brown

 

Justice Trussler said that as long as my client was unwilling to speak to the police, and as long as she had no report to go on, he would not get any unsupervised access. I pointed out that this in effect negates my client’s constitutional rights, by holding his right to remain silent ransom to seeing his child” –Grant Brown