Saturday, March 30, 2013

A Budding Lawyer Deals with a Salt Lake City Copper

J.J. Luna writes:
I recently heard of an anecdote from a fellow lawyer in Salt Lake. It seems that in his law school days, he was full of himself, and wore long hair and generally looked like a hippy; which does not play well in Salt Lake. One night after class he was pulled over by the police for no apparent reason. The officer kept pressing for consent to search the car. 
The budding lawyer, well aware there was no probable cause, offered a trade. The officer could search his car if he was allowed to search the officer's car. After an expletive laced tirade, the officer left. Although not recommended, it does show that knowing your rights counts for a lot.
 
Best advice:  Stand your ground and repeatedly state "You do not have permission to search the car." Repeat until blue in the face, with emphasis on the word not. That should work until the DHS takeover, at which point all bets are off.
(ht Joe Kozlowski)

3 comments:

  1. My father is a criminal defense attorney and a retired city cop, and he tells me the same thing. His reason is to at least make the cop come up with some pc excuse that they will have to defend in court - your lawyer can attack this excuse.

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  2. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but even if "you have nothing to hide" I would be suspicious that a cop might have a throw down weapon or a baggie of cocaine that he could plant while searching your car.

    Why would they do this? Who knows? Maybe they are under pressure to solve some other crime and have no suspects. Along comes you driving a car similar to the one involved in some other crime and presto: You're doing 10-15 for no reason at all.

    Lysander

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  3. This happened to me before. I was convicted of a felony a few years back and I did my time and got out and was back at work and living my life and staying out of trouble. I got pulled over and they looked up my record and he said I need to search your car. I told him he couldn't do that which he couldn't and we had a heated discussion. I had to get the lawyer involved that I used in my court case years ago. He was able to help me out and he literally is the best Utah felony lawyer in the state of Utah.

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