How to Remain Silent - Lehto's Law Ep. 5.91

hello welcome once again to Latos law I'm Steve lay tell so you wanna talk about how to be silent how to remain silent it's a topic that comes up from time to time because we often talk about interaction with the police I've talked about driver's licenses and driving infractions and what did the roadside to get pulled over by a police officer there's a lot of debate about what you should say to a police officer or if in fact you should simply remain silent and a lot of people have told me that you know hey Steve the Fifth Amendment says I can refuse to speak to a police officer if I want to and yeah you can but we'll talk about the nuances of that but especially because there's actually one area of this at a lot of more confused by and that is the idea that if you simply remain silent you have not actually invoked your right against self-incrimination the way you might think you have because of the Supreme Court case so the main thing we're talking about though in this context is what happens when you are pulled over by a police officer what you need to do or what you don't need to do and we'll get to that after we discuss the current state of the law with respect the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and this comes to us from a Supreme Court case that was handed down in 2010 so this is actually old law by Supreme Court standards but a case out of Michigan believe they're not made at the SCOTUS and I might be mispronouncing the one party's name but it's Burgas versus Tompkins and Tompkins was a criminal defendant in a case charged with and convicted of murder so we're going to talk about this On January 10th 2000 a suit occurred outside a mall in Southfield Michigan among the victims was Samuel Morris who died from multiple gunshot wounds Tompkins was a suspect and fled about a year later he's found in Ohio and arrested there Ohio is the state next to Michigan if you head south if you want to flee you might want to go farther but that's just me to Southfield police officers traveled to Ohio to interrogate Tompkins and the interrogation began around 1:30 p.m. one day and lasted about three hours the interrogation was conducted in a room that's eight feet by 10 feet and Tompkins sat in a chair that resembled a school desk that is it had an arm that you could us you know lean on her right onto and at the beginning of the entire one of the officers presented Tompkins with a form that contained the Miranda rights on it it stated notification of constitutional rights and statements one you have the right to remain silent to anything you say can will be used against you in a court of law three you have the right to a lawyer talk to a lawyer before answering any questions and you have the right to have a lawyer present with you while you are answering any questions for if you cannot afford to hire a lawyer one will be appointed to represent you before any questioning if you wish one and five it's the biggie you had the right to decide at any time before or during questioning to use your right to remain silent and your right to talk with a lawyer while you're being questioned okay so the detective asked Tompkins to read that last one outloud which he did and then the officers then read the other four Miranda warnings out loud and asked Tompkins to sign the form to demonstrate that he understood his rights Tompkins declined to sign the form okay officers began an interrogation at one point excuse me at no point during interrogation did Tompkins say that he wanted to remain silent or that he did not want to talk with the police or that he wanted an attorney Tompkins was largely silent during the interrogation which lasted about three hours but he did give some verbal responses such as yeah no or I don't know on occasion he communicated by nodding his head and at one point he mentioned that he did not want a peppermint which was offered to him and at another point he mentioned that the chair he was sitting on was hard now this last two pieces of information is the kind of stuff you need to pay attention to because you'll notice that you'd never think a guy offering you a peppermint would be discussed by the US Supreme Court but it is being discussed by the US Supreme Court because among other things it shows that the man's not being silent if you have the right to remain silent you don't say I don't want a peppermint nor do you say boy this chair I'm sitting on is hard these pretzels are making me thirsty okay if you want to be silent and I've mentioned it before silence is zero you don't say anything about two hours and 45 minutes into the interrogation hell Gert asked Tompkins Eldred sir detective do you believe in God Tomkins made eye contact with Haggard and said yes as his eyes welled up with tears held her asked do you pray to God Tompkins said yes hell grit then asked do you pray to God to forgive you for shooting that boy down to which Tompkins answered yes and looked away Tompkins refused to make a written confession an interrogation ended about 15 minutes later but of course saying that he did shoot the man indicates that he's admitting he did it so he's charged with first-degree murder and put on trial and found guilty and I'm guilty uh guilty on all counts sentenced to life in prison without parole that's what you get Michigan there's no death sentence here you get life in prison without parole so here's the thing the man was told you have the right to remain silent and he sat there and didn't say okay I want to remain silent he's also told you have the right to have an attorney present with you drink questioning he didn't ask for an attorney he just sat there so they started asking questions and occasionally he gives him answers and many people pointed to this case and said well yeah but the guy you know he's being grilled for 2 hours and 45 minutes of course he's gonna give answers because they're wearing him down but the point is at the very beginning when they read him his rights and said you're the right to remain silent he could have said I choose to invoke that right and then shut up and they couldn't interrogate him beyond that because that's what that right means but he never said that he just simply sat there and to make his situation even worse he said things one of the things I'd like to point out to you is that if you have the right to remain silent and you want to invoke it you can actually say I invoke my right to remain silent or you can actually remain silent if you want to that's the hard way of doing it but if you want to you can say and just look at him for three hours I suspect after about an hour hour and a half we'll give up but you know at that points a staring contest but the point is that that he was answering their questions and so the argument is if he didn't want them to think that he was willing to speak to them he should have said something and what he should have said is I'd like to invoke my right to not speak to you and then they would stop so the Supreme Court in this case Thompkins points out that the Miranda Corp you've heard of the Miranda warnings as we talked about earlier the Miranda court formulated the warning and his suspect in custody must be advised as follows he must be warned prior to any questioning that he has the right to remain silent that anything he says can be used against him in a court of law that he's the right to the presence of an attorney and then if he cannot afford an attorney one will be appointed for him prior to any questioning if he so desires so the suspect is in custody that's what they must be told so Thompkins after being convicted decided to file an appeal and the appeal went through the whole system all the way up to the Supreme Court and his first argument was that he had invoked his privilege to remain silent by not saying anything for a sufficient period of time so the interrogation should have ceased before he confessed the Supreme Court doesn't buy it and I don't either because this argument as they say is unpersuasive in the context of invoking the Miranda right to counsel the court held that a suspect must do so unambiguously I want an attorney okay if an accused makes a statement concerning the right to counsel that is ambiguous or equivocal or makes no statement that police are not required to end the interrogation assuming the personalized one they want one they should ask so they ceccolini nning that you're right against self-incrimination is the same as your right to an attorney you want one asked you want to invoke your right against self-incrimination say so say so so Thompkins did not say that he wants to remain silent or they did not want to talk with the police had he made either of these simple unambiguous statements he would have invoked his right to cut off questioning okay so here he did neither so he did not invoke his right to remain silent now the Supreme Court points out the Thompkins made two slightly different it's on this and it's it's such fine hair splitting that but you know this stuff happens at the Supreme Court level we next consider whether Thompkins waived his right to remain silent which is different than failing to invoke it I guess even absent the accused invocation of the right to remain silent the accused statement during a custodial interrogation is inadmissible at trial unless the prosecution can establish that the accused in fact knowingly and voluntarily waived it and so the main purpose of miranda is to ensure that an accused is advised of and understands the right to remain silent and the right to counsel so he knows those things and doesn't invoke them the question is does he also waive them and an implicit waiver of the right to remain silent is sufficient to admit a suspect statements into evidence and so they're basically saying look if you look at these circumstances it's obvious the guy knew what rights he had he chose not to invoke them if the state establishes that a Miranda warning was given and the accused made an uncoerced statement this showing standing alone is insufficient to demonstrate a valid waiver the prosecution must make additional showing that the accused understood these rights where the prosecution shows that a Miranda warning was given and it was understood by the accused an accused uncoerced statement establishes an implied waiver of the right to remain silent so as a general proposition the law can presume that an individual who with a full understanding of his or her rights act in a manner inconsistent with their exercise has made a deliberate choice to relinquish the protection those rights afford and so they go on and on about how it's very very obvious that the guy was answering questions as trivial as they might have been and he was not seeking to enforce you know his right to remain silent he never raised it he never said it and at the very beginning when you read these things out loud you'd think well you just read that to us he you must know you've got these rights so he waived it and continued talking to them the obvious simple solution here is if you wanted to remain silent do one of two things one you could have said I wish to remain silent therefore I'm invoking my rights I'm done here and stop or he could have gone with Steve led to a nuclear option which is where you literally when they ask you do you want to remain silent remain silent now the problem is if you do it that way they might sit there and grill you for four or five six seven eight hours they want to and you just sit there like I said it becomes a staring contest where you stare and you look at them I would advise you just to invoke your rights in the first place but common sense or logic would simply dictate that what I'm talking about also where I joke about it earlier is if you want to invoke your right to remain silent especially at the roadside yelling at the police officer about your right to remain silent and repeating it over and over and over again kind of defeats the purpose because you ain't remaining silent so let's get back to the stop at the roadside and here's the big question you're driving down the road one day and a lights go on behind you you pull over police officer pulls up behind you in a police car walks up in full dress you know it's a police officer there's no question about that and you crack your window this far because you've been watching some really stupid videos in YouTube and the police officer leans over and goes I'd like to see your driver's license and registration please and proof of insurance and at least that's what they asked for in Michigan and I've seen people who say no no I don't have to give you anything my Fifth Amendment rights oh well the first question of course is are you in custody are you in custody and most states would say that you're actually not in custody at that point because it's simply a UH at that point a traffic stop and a traffic stop can be conducted to investigate something and they say wow what if what if I ask my free to go am I free to go doesn't it mean I'm under arrest no just means it means you're being detained while police officers investigating something but be that as it may let's talk about what the rights of the police are because the police officers have some reason for pulling people over and they've got the right to do that so the idea that every time you're pulled over by a police officer is a violation under color of law as nonsense okay so I'm gonna give you the examples from Michigan and let you know that these laws have parallels in all 50 states all 50 states require you to have a dry his license if you're operating a motor vehicle on a public roadway so in Michigan when you're driving down the road police officer pulls you over just to let you know that the absolute first thing that a police officer has a right to ask you is do you have a driver's license on you okay because there's a law that says you have to MC l 257 311 possession of operator's license the licensee shall have his or her operator's license in his or her immediate possession at all times of operating motor vehicle and shall display the same upon demand of any police officer so a police officer pulls you over and you're driving a motor vehicle on the public roadways and says I want to see your driver's license the law says you have to display it to them now you might say Steve that's tricky doesn't seem to hand it to me yet display it to them so theoretically theoretically you could hold the driver's license up and say there you go see and if the officer can clearly see that the front makes the driver's license look valid and you show them the back to indicates no changes on the back a police officer would have a hard time charging you with that because the law says you must display it doesn't seem to hand it over however you should be no you should be you should you should be told that there have been instances in Michigan where a person refused to put the driver's license in the hands of the police officer and the police officer said I can't see that I literally can't see what you're showing me either your windows are tinted or the driver's license been mangled or something I would like to have it in my hand and the person said no and the police officer then arrested the person for failure to display because what they were doing was not allowing them to see what they needed to see to confirm that you weren't breaking this law so mcl 257 311 says you must have a driver's license and you must display it on demand by a police officer doesn't say they have to display it on demand with probable cause it just says they have to display it so what you should know is that not having a license on you if in fact you don't have one is a misdemeanor okay it's an actual crime we're not talking civil infractions it's a crime any person not exempt from licensing under this act who shall operate a motor vehicle upon the highways of this state and who was unable to show that he or she has been issued a license shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than 90 days or by a fine of not less than five fifty dollars and not more than 100 or both and then it goes up on a second conviction so driving without a license is actually a misdemeanor so a police officer pulls you over it says display your license and you sit there and decide I'm gonna vote my Fifth Amendment rights like I said the question is whether you have the right to do that or not I don't know because I've seen arguments on that both ways the ironic thing is if you have a driver's license and displaying it isn't actually testifying against yourself which is what the Fifth Amendment actually talks about our self-incrimination but the point is that if you want to do that obviously not gonna pull a gun out to shoot you to take your license from you the point is that if they ask you for the driver's license you show it to them if you don't show it to them well guess what you're just you're now guilty of misdemeanor I should let you know that the law actually says that if you pulled over for this and you cannot display the license or you refuse to pay that the display the license the law says that you can then take your driver's license into the courthouse as long as you do it before the appearance date and if you can show that you actually had one use didn't have it on you at that time but you actually had one they will waive the bulk of the other of the charges against you okay in fact they might waive the whole thing if it's if you can prove you had a valid license at the time so the point is that if you want to play the game go right ahead police officer walks up knocks in the window driver's license registration you sit there not gonna talk to this it's a Fifth Amendment right and the police testicles well I wouldn't I need to see your driver's license you sit there and he's okay walks back to the car writes you up for failure to display driver's license walks over slides it in your window says see you in court now you can if you want you can go to court and show your driver's license but why are you gonna show it to them later when you could just short it the cop the roadside so it just seems kind of silly to me but hey you can live your life the way you want to that's what you believe but other things are gonna ask you for it the roadside again are things they're allowed to ask of you so the other thing they're allowed to ask for is registration and insurance now I've had people say Steve when a police officer pulls it behind me he can read my license plate why can the police officer not simply run my license plate and see whether or not it's a valid license plate that matches that car I don't know I don't care there's a law that says doesn't matter a registration certificate show at all time to be carried in the vehicle to which it refers or shall be carried by or electronically accessible to the person driving or in control the vehicle who shall display a paper copy or the electronic copy upon demand of a police officer everything else I just told you still applies and likewise insurance the owner of a motor vehicle operate supremacy operation of the motor vehicle upon the highways of the state of the operator of the motor vehicle itself shall produce under subsection 2 upon the request of a police officer evidence that the motor vehicle is insured so again if a police officer pulls you over and asks you for those things if you want you to sit there quietly not answer the questions and get a raft of tickets and some of those are waivable and some of them are not and even the ones that are waivable might have costs associated with them so what is it gaining you by not handing that stuff over if you have it and you say well I'm doing this on principle well you know go right ahead but it's a waste of everyone's time including yours but like I said you want to waste your time that way knock yourself out but how do you remain silent number one actually remain silent but number two invoke your right to remain silent if you've been Mirandized and they don't actually solve many of your problems you could run into down the road questions or comments is always shoot him away otherwise talk clicker bye-bye you

Channel: Steve Lehto

Views: 159,069

Rating: 4.9022222 out of 5

Keywords: lemon law, michigan lemon law, lemon law attorney, lemon law lawyer, 5th amendment, fifth amendment, constitution, right to remain silent, auditors

Id: -cQDsrdzmNE

Length: 19min 27sec (1167 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 19 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/SleezyD510]

I have not really seen many videos that include what he brings up; people being pulled over and refusing to provide their DL. i believe that type of resistance he is talking about is way more prevalent with checkpoint stops. i would have likes to have seen him use that as the context for this discussion on providing DL.

i think he made a good point about about the 15 min mark about displaying the DL at the window instead of giving it to the cop. if the cops say they cant see it clearly and you still refuse to put it in their hand, you likely getting charged.

[u/waldocalrissian]

One minor nit to pick: A police officer does not have a right to pull you over and demand ID. They have the authority, granted to them by the jurisdiction that employs them, to do that.

Badges don't grant extra rights.