True versus False: A False Dilemma

I encounter negative perceptions of criminal defense lawyers frequently. Of course, I am resigned to accept them, and I suffer no illusion that I will bring about any sea change in this regard. However, I will observe that one of the root causes of these negative perceptions is the belief that we criminal defense lawyers, as a matter of necessity, encourage our clients to lie to the court, or that we lie to the court on their behalf. This is a tragic misunderstanding of a criminal defense lawyer's vital role. The minority of criminal defense lawyers that commit these abominations should be disbarred, and they sometimes are. Setting the ethical considerations aside for a moment, lying to the court is not "the" solution to the problem. This belief, again, reflects a major misunderstanding.

A recent article in the LA Times exposed a troubling thing about traffic court which is that people who are not represented by lawyers tend to self-incriminate (either by telling the truth or by saying things which make themselves appear guilty regardless of the truth of the matter) under a mistaken belief that they are actually helping themselves. A common way they do so is by pleading "guilty with an explanation". And, what might not be so well understood is that the court has far less interest in the "explanation" part than it does in the "guilty" part. The famous Far Side cartoon depicting the difference between dogs and cats where the dog hears "fido, blah blah blah" and the cat hears just "blah blah blah blah" illustrates the point here. Analogously, the judge hears "guilty, blah blah blah". Occasionally an "explanation" is so compelling and, more importantly, so believable, that it might differentiate itself from the pack of likely explanations. Judges hear it all and they hear it all day long. The "explanations" don't vary that much. And what's really telling is that the compelling and believable "explanation" that worked for the last guy who got his fine substantially reduced, or his case thrown out, is often repeated with little editing by the next several folks.

Many plead guilty with an explanation with the consciousness that saying they are "guilty" amounts to self-incrimination. Others seem to behave as though they are talking to a friend, and if they present a sympathetic story, their loving and forgiving "friend" in the black robe is going to let it go this time. After all, to err is human, to forgive is divine. And aren't people in robes, by the way, supposed to be divine.

It is understood that the Catholic faith puts emphasis on the cleansing aspect of a confession. It is, in a moral sense, important to restore what you have stolen from justice by "taking responsibility". I am down with that. However, the big fallacy is that the government (in the form of a courthouse) affords the only opportunity to do so. You can, and probably do, feel badly about what you have done wrong. If you don't, you are probably a sociopath, or are indulging yourself in some kind of denial, at least. There are numerous ways you can "pay it back". You can feel bad, which is a form of self-imposed punishment; but maybe not altogether satisfying to society nor those whom you have harmed. You can say "sorry" directly to the person(s) you have injured and offer to pay for or otherwise correct the problem you have caused for them (if it is feasible to do so). You can confess to a member of your clergy, your therapist, your lawyer, etc. You can devote your time and money to good causes. You can swear to yourself to never do anything of the kind again and follow through. Clearly, there are numerous ways to accept responsibility for wrongdoing that have nothing to do with a court of law. To say otherwise is to assume that the population consists of mere children who need to be spanked by the government before they will understand that what they did was wrong. To say otherwise is to assume that if you do suffer punishment for your wrongdoing in court that you have made it all okay. Of course both of these assumptions are faulty. The government is not the sole arbiter of morality, and the fact is, the government is incompetent to restore justice in many cases where a wrong has been committed in spite of its laudable, and necessary, effort to do so.

I do not call for the dissolution of the government, nor the judiciary, but I would call upon my fellow human beings to have a more balanced view of what is really going on in court. The defendants in court are neither all "crooks" that deserve stiff punishments, nor are they all "saints" who are going to be recognized as such and given a pass this time by a judge with an impeccable intuition. Most of the defendants are every day people who have made one or more bad choices. The court does not behave as their friend. In our adversarial system a court of law is a place where litigants who let their guard down are routinely taken advantage of by the other side. A corrollary to this concept is the right every criminal defendant enjoys: the right against self-incrimination; or simply put, that the prosecution must be able to prove you guilty. You are under no obligation to prove yourself guilty, and it is generally unwise to do so. If there is any proof problem whatsoever, you are advised to plead "not guilty" and to remain silent unless and until it becomes very obvious that you are going to be found guilty anyway, or that there is something to gain by self-incriminating (e.g., a favorable plea bargain).

A letter to the editor in today's Times criticized the above-linked article because it seemed to suggest, to the letter writer, that defendants should lie to the court. After all, lying is THE alternative to telling the truth, isn't it? I hope, by now, you can see that that is a false dilemma. Pleading not guilty is not lying. Remaining silent is not lying. Causing the prosecution to do their job, which is to prove you guilty, is not lying. Get it?

They Didn't Read Me My Rights!

Nary a day goes by when I don't hear this phrase at least once. Thanks to Hollywood, nearly everyone believes, or at least wants to believe, that the sine qua non of lawful and ethical police conduct is where they initiate any arrest with the famous preamble, "you have the right to remain silent yada yada..." It should flow from the police officers' lips as fluidly as those who are paid to say, "welcome to McDonald's, may I take your order please", shouldn't it? The answer is "no". Yes, I am a criminal defense lawyer, and the answer is still "no". Sorry. This deeply ingrained belief, held by nearly everyone, is a powerful example of how the mass media misleads the public. So, was the Miranda Rule contrived by Paramount pictures? No. It was actually written into law by the United States Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, in the landmark decision Miranda v. Arizona in 1966. It is one of the most, if not the most, significant Supreme Court actions to deter police misconduct. It was designed to do one thing and one thing only. It was designed to prevent the police from forcing people against their will (regardless of their guilt) from confessing to crime. However, it has not, as was intended, put an end to coercive interrogations by the police. But it may have deterred a great number of them. It has brought about some unintended changes and not all of them are positive ones.

Yes, innocent people sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit and guilty people are often led by the police to worsen their circumstances in a way which violates the spirit of the constitution. So, by dampening the polices' temptation to spend hours upon hours grinding someone down through a coercive interrogation, fewer innocents will confess, and fewer guilty people will be forced, against the spirit of the constitution, to be witnesses against themselves. Like many well-intended efforts, the Miranda v. Arizona ruling did not achieve all that it set out to achieve. In my view, its most positive contribution is that it made a few important constitutional rights reciteable, if not precisely understood, by practically every member of our society. It did not put an end to coercive conduct by law enforcement; not by any stretch of the imagination. This is due to the fact that police still feel quite justified in using their inherent power to intimidate, and otherwise manipulate, people into confessing to their crimes, and are not going to let some phony baloney technical rule (written by lawyers, no less!) get in the way of solving a crime. Yes, they do, on occasion, read the advisement, as required by law, but not surprisingly, it has not put an end to confessions. People still confess. And what they don't necessarily appreciate while they are doing it, is that they are destroying every chance they might otherwise have in getting favorable treatment in court.

Confessing is seldom, if ever, going to help someone get a better deal in court. One operating fallacy is that you won't get credit for early acceptance of responsibility if you wait to talk to a lawyer first. That is simply false. The other operating fallacy is that you will make the police angry if you don't confess, and will therefore worsen the outcome. Firstly, if a police officer is angered by someone exercising their constitutional right to remain silent, they ought to strongly consider a change in professions, if not citizenship. The constitutionally guaranteed right against self-incrimination is as American and mom and apple pie! Secondly, your goal is not to make friends with the police officer. Rather, your goal is to avoid incriminating yourself. Let them be angry. That, in and of itself, probably helps you more than it hurts you. Let their emotions get the better of them. And keep your mouth shut. Do honor to our great constitution by not incriminating yourself!

It appears that the Miranda advisement, when read, is not understood as anything more than a familiar police ritual. While the police are saying,

"you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have a lawyer present while being questioned. If you cannot afford a lawyer, the court will appoint a lawyer to represent you...",

the listener is most likely thinking something along these lines,

"Crap! I'm really in trouble now. I guess they aren't going to let me go with a warning after all! They believe I did it! I'm screwed no matter what! What can a lawyer do to help!? How am I going to get out of here?! Maybe if I cooperate with them, and tell them what they want to hear, which is that I did it, they will appreciate that and maybe let me go home...or at least stop scaring me"

The most negative impacts of Miranda v. Arizona are as follows:

1. That police think that, by reading the Advisement, they are thereby rendering their arrest "by the book". It gives the police an easy (and cookbook recipe-like) way to legally sanitize the encounter without necessarily honoring the spirit of the constitution.

2. That arrestees believe that the police are supposed to read the Advisement every time they arrest someone and that they must do so early on in the encounter. Because the advisement, if it is read at all, is read late in the encounter, the arrestees form the opinion that they are being mistreated due to the fact that police aren't, according to their Hollywood-based understanding, following the one rule of police conduct of which they have become aware. Accordingly, the individuals develop a bad attitude toward the officers. This bad attitude can hurt the arrestees chances of getting a good deal in court, and also tends to validate negative views police carry toward the larger population. It widens the "us" (the police) versus "them" (the rest of society) gap which, I strongly believe, is the root cause of nearly every instance of police misconduct.

So, when do they have to read the Advisement, you ask? Only when you are in handcuffs or are otherwise confined and they happen to want (or need) you to confess to something.

More Sounding Off...

Jeramy Gordon of the Daily Sound decided to print as many of the 144 would-be secret photos as he could in today's issue. Gordon said his motive in printing the photographs is two fold, to prove to the public that there is nothing worth hiding, and to avoid fines that could potentially bankrupt the small paper. http://blogabarbara.blogspot.com/ Nothing worth hiding?! Uh, what was he fighting for, originally, if there is nothing worth hiding? If I'm not mistaken, he reprinted, very prominently, a photo of the accused teenager sitting under arrest in hand-cuffs (which is what he believed motivated Karen Atkins, Esq., to "attack" him in the first place) near the top of his rant about the First Amendment. Nevermind that parading a teenager in the public square in an inculpatory light is an affront to the presumption of privacy owing to minors accused of crime and an unnecessary taint of the jury pool. No, this is about getting even with Ms. Atkins and her client (and, less direclty, the Court). Is Mr. Gordon Santa Barbara's mini-McCaw?