Police, Interrogation, and Trickery

Officers found marijuana our client’s car. And one-thousand dollars cash. And scales.

He has a medical-marijuana card, so he’s permitted to possess marijuana. The scales he says is a matter of personal caution. The money? Ten one-hundred dollar bills. He got them from his girlfriend’s brother; it was part of the brother’s tax refund. It was supposed to go toward a car for his girlfriend.

Of course, the officers want to prove possession-for-sales.

So they interrogated him.

Now, the smart thing to say when the officer starts to interrogate is: "Thank you for the opportunity to talk, officer, but I choose not to do so at this time." Because officers always tell you that they want to get your side of the story. But what they really want to do is build a case against you.

That’s why, in the taped interrogation, when our client started to say something that helped him, the officer cut him off and directed the discussion elsewhere. That’s why the officer repeatedly tried to bully our client to confess to possession-for-sales.

Officers always have a bag of interrogation tricks. They make a person feel hopeless, so he confesses. They make a person feel remorseful, so he confesses. (It is easy to feel remorseful when you’re in handcuffs, even if you haven’t done anything wrong.) They make a person think he’s helping himself when he really is hurting himself. ("Now, it wasn’t your idea to steal the rims, was it?") They just lie. ("We took DNA off the steering wheel, and it came back to you. How do you explain that?") They make a person feel desperate, to make him confess. ("You know, you’re going to get the death penalty for this. But if you confess, we’ll tell the judge you cooperated.") Or they combine these tactics.

And as up-ended as most people feel when handcuffed and in custody, they usually can’t think straight. So they are easy to lead into a confession or an admission. They stumble into the officers’ traps. That’s why false confessions and false admissions are common.

Under the circumstances, our client did relatively well. He steadfastly denied possession-for-sales – as much as he could before the officer cut him off.

But he admitted some sales in times past. I’m sure he did this against his better judgment, to mollify the aggressive officer. Officers can be very, very intimidating when you’re under arrest. It’s natural to want to get on their good side. Officers know that arrestees want to get on their good side, and they exploit this fact. They communicate that they want and expect an admission or a confession. And often, that’s what they get.

In admitting past sales, our client didn't help himself, so we have our work cut out for us. But it’s far from hopeless.