Jim Keenan said:
...Otherwise, you should answer reasonable police questions. Suppose the police ask if there are any other intruders in the house, or if you know any reason someone might have chosen your house. If you answer questions like that with, ...I don't talk to no stinking cops", ...they just might think you are not the innocent homeowner you are pretending to be...
First, if circumstances are such that the police aren't required to give you a Miranda warning, anything you say can be used against you even if the warning hasn't been given. While in addition to the statements outlined by me in post 17, mentioning other intruders or attackers, if you know or believe them to be present, is probably a good idea, answering any questions is probably a bad idea.
If you are going to seek to justify your actions by claiming that you acted in self defense, you will need to tell your full story. The questions are: when; where; under what circumstances and with or without the assistance of legal counsel. The usual advice of use-of-force trainers and lawyers is:
[1] Immediately following a high stress, self defense event, you will not be fit to fully tell your story or accurately give an account of what happened. Your knowledge and recollection of the event are substantially impaired because of various perceptually distortions known to be commonly caused by extreme stress. And immediately after the event your ability to give a cogent and accurate account will also be impaired by various psychological and physiological post traumatic event effects. Among other things:
- Studies have demonstrated that during a high stress, violent encounter, physiological and psychological effects produce one or more perceptual distortions. As a result of such distortions, a person following the event may have no idea, or be mistaken, about the duration of the event, the distances at which things occurred, and/or other details of the event. A person might "remember" things that did not in fact happen, and/or forget things that did.
- Studies also show that following a self defense event many people are in a highly agitated emotional state. They sometimes harbor immediate feelings of guilt or remorse, even though under the circumstances such feelings are not really warranted or appropriate.
- I know from the experience of having prepared numerous people to testify or give a deposition that even under the best of circumstances, and especially without training in doing so, most people show poor control when responding to questions and giving a good, objective account of events. People are naturally prone to speculating or guessing rather than say "I don't know" or "I don't recall"; or making extemporaneous statements; or continuing to answer multiple iterations of the same or similar questions; or being unable to stop with a "yes" or "no"; or rambling. Such natural tendencies are exacerbated by a post traumatic event emotionally charged state.
- As a result of one's poor understanding and recollection of the high stress event because of common stress induced perceptual distortions, one's likely highly emotionally charged post traumatic event state and poor question answering skills, a person is very likely to make significant mistakes of fact when attempting to give a detailed account of a high stress event soon afterward.
- Such mistakes can be used by a prosecutor to challenge one's claim of justification and to later attack evidence submitted by the involved person to support a claim of self defense. Thus it hardly seems in the person's interest to make a detailed statement early on.
[2] But you do want to immediately establish that you were attacked; and it's also in your interest to point out possible witnesses and evidence. Therefore, the usual recommendation is to give a very bare bones statement as described in post #6. Beyond that, you should invoke your right to remain silent and wait to give a more detailed statement until you have talked with your lawyer. Do state that you will be cooperating, but that you just won't be saying anything further at that time.
[3] You may be arrested. If so, submit to arrest, make your phone call and let your lawyer handle things. But don't allow yourself to be pressured into saying too much too soon. An improvident statement or a mistake or contradiction could encourage the prosecutor to decide that your self defense claim is vulnerable to attack.
[4] If at these early stages the police think that it may be desirable for them to attempt to breakdown your self defense claim, you are particularly vulnerable at this point to being led through skillful questioning into mistakes and contradictions that can be used against you. Will the police be inclined to do something like that? Maybe or maybe not, you can not know. And you have too much at stake, your whole future, to take a chance.
kingmt said:
...Remember the only answer is I need to go to the hospital....
I'm sorry, but unless someone actually and honestly believes he in fact needs medical attention, I think this is an extraordinarily bad idea.
Unless it's true, you would be lying. but lying will always be used against you. It establishes doubt as to your credibility. Once you are caught in a lie, you are a liar. You may think you won't get caught, and maybe you won't. But that's a different question. And liars frequently get found out.
In addition, you have now called for an ambulance you really don't need. Depending on the availability of emergency medical services in your community, you have taken an ambulance out of service and perhaps delayed response to someone who really is gravely sick or injured and really needs one.
You're also now using space and resources in an ER -- space and resources you really don't need. You may be thereby delaying care to someone who really is sick or injured.
And are you going to file an insurance claim for emergency medical services, which you knew you really didn't need? That's insurance fraud and grand larceny.
So when all that is discovered, you now become a callous, lying monster wasting limited emergency medical resources so you can duck talking with police (when you merely have to invoke your right to remain silent) and delaying the availability of those services for people who may really need them. You also expect your medical insurance to pay for your little ruse, even though they have no responsibility to pay for unnecessary service used for the purpose of temporarily evading police questioning; and thus you are stealing from your medical insurance.
But nonetheless you will expect the police, the DA, the grand jury and possibly a trial jury to believe your claim that you were an innocent victim forced by the criminal act of another to use violence as a last resort to save your life?
Whatever else, don't lie (and don't run).
Teddyb said:
This is a college law professor and a 25 year police officer turned Defense Lawyer both giving a 20 minute intelligent dissertation and still the internet lawyers just can't be quite. You fellers all need to watch this from the experts, the real experts that is!...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik...
An interesting and good lecture. Very true, except that it's irrelevant to the situation we're discussing here. He is talking about a general police contact. We are talking about a situation in which ultimately your defense is going to be that you were justified in using violence to defend yourself. That changes things considerably.
Ordinarily, in a criminal prosecution the state must prove the elements of the criminal offense beyond a reasonable doubt. So if the crime charged, and for which the defendant is on trial, is, for example, manslaughter, the state must in general prove to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that (1) the defendant was there; (2) the defendant shot the decedent; and (3) the defendant intended to shoot the decedent. The burden of proof falls solely on the prosecution, so the defendant's strategy is to say nothing and put the prosecution to its proof; or attack the prosecutions evidence to create a reasonable doubt; or try to cast doubt on the state's claim that he was there (alibi defense), that he pulled the trigger (some other dude done it), or that he intended to shoot the decedent (the gun went off by accident).
But all of that is completely inapplicable when the defendant pleads self defense. If the defendant claims self defense, the prosecution doesn't have to prove, at all, that the defendant was there, that he shot the decedent or that he intended to shoot the decedent, because the defendant will have admitted each of those elements of the crime of manslaughter. If the defendant is claiming self defense he necessarily must admit that he (1) was there; (2) shot the decedent; and (3) intended to shoot the decedent.
The defendant's defense is he was legally justified. The allocation of the burden of proof and/or the burden of persuasion between the prosecution and defense in a self defense case varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. But the defendant will at least have to put forward evidence establishing a
prima facie case of justification according to the standard applicable to the use of lethal force in self defense in the jurisdiction.
As the investigation of your successful self defense begins, you need to establish yourself immediately as the victim, the good guy; but you are not in any condition to give an accurate and detailed account of the event. Hence the limited statements recommended in post 17.
just kidding Teddy couldn't resist
