"Just Say NOTHING"
By Dave Kopel
 What if you're arrested for something that shouldn't be a crime! For instance, suppose a burglar
breaks into your home, attacks your children, and you shoot him. Should you talk to the police! In a word, "No." Shut up, call the best lawyer you can find, and then continue to shut up. If you talk to the police, you will only make things worse for yourself.   Sociologist Richard Leo has written several articles which detail the deliberately deceptive techniques that police use to extract a confession.   First of all, since 1966 the United States Supreme
Court has required that persons under arrest be given
the Miranda warnings, so they will know that they
have a right to remain silent, and the right to a
lawyer. So how do police convince a suspect
to talk even after the Miranda warning!
  Professor Leo explains that "police
routinely deliver the Miranda warnings in a
perfunctory tone of voice and ritualistic behavioral
manner, effectively conveying that these warnings are little more than
a bureaucratic triviality." Of course, the
Miranda warnings are not trivial; your
liberty may hinge on heeding those warnings.
  No matter how strong the other evidence against you, a
confession will make things much worse. A
confession often makes a major difference in the district attorney's willing-
ness to prosecute the case, and his willingness to
accept a plea bargain. If your confession gets before
a jury, your prospects of acquittal are virtually nil.
 If you are foolish enough to reject the Miranda
warnings, simply put, the police interrogators will
attempt to deceive you into confessing. As a result of
increased judicial supervision of the police, deception, rather
than coercion ("the third degree") has
become the norm for interrogation.
 First of all, you will be kept in a physical environ-
ment designed to make you want to waive your rights
and talk. You'll most likely be kept in isolation, in a
small, soundproof area. By isolating you, the interrogator attempts to
instill feelings of anxiety, restlessness,
and self-doubt on your part. Left alone for long periods, you may
think you are being ignored, and will
therefore be happy to see the interrogator return.
 Ideally, from the interrogator's viewpoint, you
will begin to develop "Stockholm syndrome, in
which persons held captive under total control begin
to identify with and empathize with their captors.

This can occur after as few as ten minutes of isolation in captivity.
 While increasing your dependence, the interrogator works to
build your trust by pretending that
he cares about you, that he wants to hear your story,
and that he understands how difficult it may be for
you to talk. The interrogator works to become your
only source of social reinforcement.
 There is no law against outright lies or other
deceptions on the part of the police during an interrogation.
Almost certainly, you will be told that the
prosecutor and the judge will be more lenient if you
confess. This is a complete lie. The district attorney
will be more lenient if you don't confess and he
can't make a strong case against you, and therefore
has to settle for a plea bargain. Nothing the police
             promise in the interrogation room is binding on
             the police, much less on  the district attorney.
            There are five "techniques of neutralization" which the
                    interrogator may use in order to make you feel
             that the crime really wasn't so bad, and that
             it is therefore all right to confess. Of course
             the interrogator's pretense that he doesn't
             think the crime was serious will last only
             as long as necessary to obtain the confession.
                  The first technique is called "denial of responsibility," allowing the
    subject to blame someone else for the
offense. For example, "it was really the burglar's
fault for breaking in; he's the one to blame for get
ting shot." (This is true, but it's you, after all, that
the police are interrogating.)
 Another technique is the "denial of injury" For
example, "The burglar wasn't really hurt; he walked
out of the hospital two hours ago." Maybe true,
maybe not. In truth, the burglar could be in intensive
care, and the interrogator could be laying the ground
work for a murder case against you.
 In the "denial of the victim" technique, the interrogator will suggest
that the victim deserved what he got.
 "Condemnation of the condemners" is always
popular. For instance, "the real problem is all those
anti-gun nuts who let the criminals go loose, but
don't want guys like you to defend themselves." True
enough, but when the policeman saying this is hold-
ing you prisoner, take his sincere expressions with a
large grain of salt.
  Finally, there's the "appeal to higher loyalties."

 Such as, "What you did is a common sense
thing. Regardless of some legal technicality, the
most important thing is for you to protect your fami-
ly. Your family comes first, right!" True again, but the
man saying this wants you to confess to violating the
legal technicality, so you can be prosecuted for it.
 A close cousin to the denial strategies are "normalizing" techniques, in
which the interrogator claims to understand that
the crime was not typical behavior for the subject:
"I can see that you're not
a violent person. You're
not a criminal. You're a
tax-paying, home-owning,
regular kind of guy. What
happened tonight was
really unusual for you, wasn't it!"
 You have nothing to gain, and everything to lose
by talking. You are not going to outsmart the interrogator. Even if
you don't end up producing a full
confession, you may reveal details which will help
to build a case against you.
 Most violent criminals are too stupid to read, and
too lazy to pursue a time-consuming, high-precision
hobby like handloading. So I'm not worried that a violent criminal
might read this column, and avoid confessing to a serious crime.
Too often in America, good
citizens are arrested for victimless "crimes," including
unjustifiable (and unconstitutional) gun regulations.
The routine use of deception in order to trick good citizens into
confessions is something that deserves more
careful scrutiny than it has thus far received.
 In the long run, routine deception by the police
tears at our social fabric, and undermines the law
enforcement system. The more the police lie, the
more skeptical juries are going to be, even when
police are telling the truth.   Moreover, there are
about 6,000 false convictions for felonies every
year in the United States.
(Huff et al, "Guilty Until Proven Innocent," Crime
& Delinquency, vol. 32, pages 518-44,1986).
False confessions are one of the major reasons for
the conviction of innocent persons.
 Sources: Richard Le, "Police Interrogation and Social
Control," Social and Legal Studies, vol. 3, pages 93-120
(1994); "From Coercion to Deception: The Changing Nature
of Police Interrogation in America, " Crime, Law and Social
Change, vol. 1 8, pages 35-39 (1992); lerome Skolnick and
Richard Lee, "The Ethics of Deceptive Interrogation," Crimi-
nallustice Ethics, vol. II, pages 3-12 (1992).
 Dave Kopel is Research Director at the Independence
Institute, http://i2i.org. His most recent book is "No More
Wacos: What's Wrong with Federal Law Enforcement and
How to Fix It"

-----this article first appeared in The Blue Press