"If y'all, 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."
That was Warren Demesme talking to the police after he
voluntarily agreed to be interviewed over accusations he sexually assaulted a
minor. In an opinion concurring
with the Louisiana Supreme Court's decision to deny the man a writ of
certiorari, Justice Scott Chricton insists that Demesme only "ambiguously
referenced a lawyer," reported Reason.
Chricton notes that under current legal precedent in
Louisiana, if a suspect makes an "ambiguous or equivocal" reference
to a lawyer—one where a "reasonable" cop could conclude that that the
suspect only "might" be invoking his right to an attorney—police can
continue their interrogation. "Maybe I need a lawyer," for example,
is considered too ambiguous.
Even setting aside that this errs on the side of law
enforcement rather than on the side of the accused, there is nothing in
Demesme's statement that is ambiguous, assuming the officers involved
understood Demesme's vernacular. (And they had to have understood—if they
didn't, why would they have been assigned to the questioning?)
Chricton's argument relies specifically on the ambiguity of
what a "lawyer dog" might mean. And this alleged ambiguity is
attributable entirely to the lack of a comma between "lawyer" and
"dog" in the transcript. As such, the ambiguity is not the suspect's
but the court's. And it requires willful ignorance to maintain it.
The court ruled 6-1 to deny the writ. Only Associate
Justice Jefferson Hughes voted against the denial. He has not filed a dissent
yet.
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1 comment:
Though you technically have a right to a lawyer, based on the court's interpretation of the transcript, they did not do anything wrong in my opinion--due to the fact that they can interpret the transcript no matter how ambiguous the matter may be
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