Reply to S/O - why ask for an attorney before speaking to police?

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[quote=Anonymous]I represent people who have been convicted of crimes they did not commit and learned most of what I know about interrogations from a former homicide detective.  Do not ever let police interrogate you, particularly if you are innocent.

For starters, police do not interrogate you if they do not already think you are guilty.  The goal of the interrogation therefore is not to investigate; it is to obtain a confession.  However, confessing to a crime is not exactly in the suspect's best interest, so interrogation tactics are designed to mitigate that problem by convincing the suspect that confessing is the rational thing to do and the only way out of their situation.  Police are trained to shut down denials as a matter of course, are allowed to lie about evidence (the good interrogators don't because it is ineffective), and spend hours on an interrogation (using different officers so they can get rest while you sweat).  And most interrogations are not recorded (DC is an exception), so there's no record of what happened.

This had proven pretty effective at getting guilty people to confess, but it also means that that even if you are innocent, you may find yourself confessing to something you didn't do because you think it is the only way out.  Once you confess, it is pretty much over.  In short, talking to police is a bad idea.[/quote]

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