Michigan Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
In a recent article, I reiterated the best legal advice you can ever get: shut up and always exercise your right to remain silent. As a Michigan criminal attorney, my office gets plenty of calls from people who have been contacted by the police (often a police detective) and who have been asked to answer some questions. While I hope this article will be of use to those who have not yet talked to the police about their “situation,” the reality is that many of those who read it will have already done so.
Unfortunately, we are frequently called after the person has already spoken to the police and answered questions. Without fail, every single person who calls after speaking with the police says something like “I think I might have made things worse,” because they realize, although only after the fact, that they should have kept quiet. If you’re reading this after you’ve talked, don’t freak out. Most people do. Then my job becomes making the best of what we have to work with.
The problem isn’t that people don’t know that about their right to remain silent, it’s that they don’t know how to exercise it and keep quiet when they’re being questioned by the police. Somewhat ironically, if a person feels uncomfortable refusing to speak to the police, it’s kind of a reflection of having been raised “right.” For example, I was taught to respect the police. It’s really easy for me to sit here and tell the reader to refuse to answer questions, but I know it would be a much different situation if I had law enforcement bearing down on me with pointed questions about some situation. I’d probably need someone to remind me to keep quiet.
At a preliminary exam, the prosecutor will call some witnesses. This usually includes the arresting and/or investigating police officer, a victim, if there was one, and maybe a key eyewitness. Not everyone needs to testify at this phase of the case. Remember, this isn’t a trial, and the prosecutor doesn’t have to prove anything like guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but merely that there is a debatable question of fact that the defendant committed the charged crime. In that sense, “he-said, she-said” is more than good enough for a case to survive the probable cause test at this stage.
The one thing that most people know right out of the gate is that a felony is more serious than a misdemeanor. Few things in the law are absolute, but the idea that facing a misdemeanor is always “better” than facing a felony is one of them. Of course, the flip side is that facing a felony is always “worse,” and usually more expensive.
In general, suspended and revoked license charges provide one of the best examples of the admonition that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” Over the course of my career, I have, in many cases, had to explain subtle but important nuances of licensing law to both Judges and prosecutors. Because I am a full-time driver’s license restoration and DUI lawyer, I work with the laws and rules that affect driver’s licenses every single day. I deal with everything, from the most common issues to the most obscure. I’ve had to research license issues most lawyers, including Judges and prosecutors, would never know exist, and then figure out how to resolve them.
Let’s quickly separate and explain the 2 indecent exposure (IE) charges: For starters, there’s the plain old “indecent exposure,” meaning a person’s genitals were exposed. This is a misdemeanor charge, and it can be brought for any kind exposure of the genitals, whether outright “flashing,” or even if a guy gets caught urinating. Next, there is “aggravated indecent exposure,” where a person was observed fondling his or her genitals. “Fondling” does not necessarily mean (although it can include) actual masturbation. Thus, any rubbing of the genitals is enough. Aggravated indecent exposure is a felony, but a special kind of “light” (meaning lenient) felony, often called a “high court misdemeanor.” To be perfectly clear about it, although the term “high court misdemeanor” may sound better, it is still a felony.
You haven’t spent much time wondering if something else is the problem, have you? Did it ever cross your mind that you’re sitting in the back of a cop car because you eat too much pizza, or work out too often, or watch more TV than you should? The point I’m driving at is that once you get any kind of nagging feeling that something’s up with your drinking, it almost always is. The simple truth is that alcohol screws more lives up than you could ever imagine. I see it every single day. If you could do my job for any length of time, you would have a front row seat to watch people going out and getting in trouble again and again, all because of drinking.
We’ll begin by restating what is far more overlooked than obvious: you have an absolute right to remain silent. We’ll get into this more later, but the day before this article was written, I met with a client who hired me after he spoke to a police detective and was subsequently arrested and charged with a crime. Because he is a nice guy who has never been in trouble before, my client naively asked the detective if it was a good idea to be talking to him, and if he should get a lawyer first. The detective, for his part, answered the question rather diplomatically, and replied, “I can’t tell you what to do.” Of course, my client now understands that he should not have said a word.
For anyone with a case in Oakland, Macomb or Wayne County, a “local” lawyer is not limited merely to one whose office is in the same city or county where the charge has been brought. Although that definition is overly narrow, it’s worse to have no concept of “local” when it comes to hiring a lawyer. I am, often enough, contacted by people from distant counties who want to hire me, and while that’s flattering, I have to explain that I keep it “local” by limiting my criminal and DUI practice to the various district and circuit courts of Oakland, Macomb and Wayne Counties (this is in stark contrast to my driver’s license restoration practice, which is statewide). Because of the geographic limitations on where I travel for court, I have no experience with how things are done elsewhere. As good as some attorney may be, one of the worst thing a person can do is to pay for him or her to make a “special trip” to some court where he or she does not practice regularly.
There are actually 2 realities at work here: first, that a pretty regular (albeit small) segment of people will be charged with violating probation somewhere along the way, and second, that vast majority of probation violations arise because the person has, in fact, screwed up
The consumption of alcohol leads to a lot of problems for some folks. To be sure, most people never run into legal issues as a result of drinking. If they do its something like an MIP as a kid, or maybe a DUI as an adult, but they learn their lesson and never get into trouble again. Yet for all of those who either never get in trouble or who get past one unfortunate incident involving alcohol, there are plenty enough who seem to keep drinking despite the fact that they keep getting into trouble for it. This kind of self-defeating behavior is clear in repeat offense DUI cases, but it also is there, if not so obviously, in probation violation and ignition interlock violation cases where someone gets caught after having consumed alcohol when they shouldn’t have. As I noted in the previous installment, the problem with articles like this is that most people usually find them after the fact, when they’re already in trouble. Even if that’s the case here, I want to give the reader something to think about so that he or she can resolve to not make the same mistake again.