--- On Wed, 8/12/09, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com> wrote:
> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4097602514885833865
>
> top ten reasons why you should never talk to the police
> from law professor James Duane. (if law career falls
> through, dude could probably sell slicer dicer knives for a
> living.)
[WS:] Nice argument, but rather impractical, unless you can afford hiring a high power trial lawyer. Herr Professor forgot to add that possession is nine tenth of the law. For folks like most of us, who either cannot afford a high power lawyer or the price of hiring such a lawyer is not commensurate to the offense, the reality is such that getting a citation is tantamount to a guilty verdict unless the cop screw something up - the court proceeding etc, is but a formality. Such is the crappy nature of the US justice system. However, if you "get an attitude" and take the fifth, you are risking far more than a citation - you can be charged with other bullshit offenses like "resisting arrest" or worse yet, arrested and spend a night in jail.
So basically the choice is between playing it nice, talking politely to the cop and getting only a citation or being a smart alec and ending up with additional charges (which almost certainly will be rubber stamped by courts) and spending a night or two in jail.
What I found more interesting in this piece is that almost everyone can be a criminal by breaking one of the gazillion of laws that few people know they exist. That is why the US has the highest per capita prison population in the world and smart people (including our fearless moderator) still call it a 'democracy' with a straight face.
Wojtek