American law outlines a series of protections for those accused of crimes but not yet convicted. (Like the 4th-6th amendments)
Does your country have any unique/novel protections of the rights of potentially innocent people accused but yet to be convicted?
If not are there any protections you think should be in place?
Movies are works of fiction not law. In America if you choose to temporarily waive your right to silence and speak to police you may at any point reassert that right.
I couldn’t blame cinematographers for attempting to tell a story. But they are artists not lawyers.
You may talk to police that way in America but any good lawyer will tell you not to because the strength of the fact that your silence can’t be used against you often will offend out weigh any defense you might argue.
When guilt must be proven absence of evidence is the defendant’s friend.
And if you watch enough arraignments, it is just so painful to watch a defendant completely spill the beans even over a judge and lawyer telling them to shut up. So many people really don’t seem to understand that they can’t simply fast talk their way out of charges once the process starts, and everything they say is going to be recorded.
You are saying this with so many words… do you really need to speak it out loud, like “I assert my right…”? I mean, can’t you simply tell a thing or not tell it, at any time?
You have to actually say that you are asserting your right (in the US) to stop interrogations.
There was a case recentlyish (you can search for details if you’re interested, I can only recall the broad strokes) where an accused said “I want a lawyer, dawg” and this was interpreted as “I want a lawyer dog”, as in a dog who is a lawyer, and this was not found to be an assertion of the right to remain silent. The whole thing was eye rollingly stupid, but when in America…
Hehe :)
Here: nearly unthinkable. Nobody needs to inform the police in explicit words about their rights, because rights have to be respected whether you tell some magic spell or not, and the police knows people’s rights, because it is their job, so nobody needs to explain them. These police would get their asses full of trouble for such a prank.
The “lawyer dog” case did not hinge on that.
The suspect,Warren Demesme, did not unequivocally demand a lawyer. He said: “If y’all, this is how I feel, if y’all think I did it, I know that I didn’t do it so why don’t you just give me a lawyer dog cause this is not whats up.”
The finding was that he asked a question rather than making a statement. The “dog” was completely irrelevant in the decision, but you know Internet pop news sites are going to be Internet pop news sites.
You can still think the outcome was expecting too much precision by a suspect and disagree with it, but let’s at least be accurate in criticism/discussion instead of perpetuating meme tier inaccuracy.
You can indeed stay silent. However, if you want the police to stop asking you questions, you have to affirmatively say you are asserting your right. If you just clam up, the cops can keep asking and asking you things. Similar to getting a lawyer- you have the right to a lawyer, but when you are in police custody you aren’t going to get one until you ask for it during the questioning.
Great question. In theory/practice you can just shut up from square one. But asserting your rights by doing so in clear unambiguous terms for is advisable. Judges understand someone saying “I wish to invoke my right against self incrimination as protected in the 5th amendment” better than the do pure silence.