| If you're in a room being questioned by police, they already want to arrest you. If they're still talking to you and have not charged you yet, there's a good chance they don't feel they have a slam dunk case, and they need to extract more information to get a conviction and not get reamed out by the prosecutor. Just ask for a lawyer. Don't worry about having to sit there in awkward silence for hours if it comes to that. There's no law that says if you can't find a lawyer in X amount of time after asking, you don't get one. You don't have to schedule a time for a lawyer to come in to get you. Once you ask for a lawyer (which should effectively terminate the questioning, or at least it should), one of three things may happen: (1) you will be arrested and charged. You gave them no new evidence to use against you, so you're in the best possible position. (2) you will be "detained" for some amount of time while they go about sketchy, quasi-legal moves to gather more evidence against you (applying for search warrants for saliva/blood sample, your vehicle, home, etc. and they want to keep an eye on you until these are approved and executed). Depending on how their fishing expedition goes, either #1 or #3 will follow. (3) they will release you. Regardless of what happens, DO NOT TALK TO THEM. The one thing that no one ever mentions is that the police usually don't follow the rules, and the courts usually don't penalize them for it. The only way to protect yourself is to shut up. Don't even make small talk. It's a chess game and there's no move you can make where you don't lose. Do and say nothing. |