Don’t EVER talk to the police!
This is why you never talk to the police. You have the right to remain silent. Police in San Diego will always to try get you to talk. But it never helps. They will use your statements against you. When you are approached by a law enforcement officer, tell them you will only talk with a lawyer present. They are required to stop talking to you. The right to counsel as an incident to the protection of the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent does not apply to the giving of a statement that one will or will not submit to the test required by section 13353, Vehicle Code, in view of the conclusion that the making of such a statement is not a testimonial communication, and since the refusal to take the test has not been declared to be a crime or punishable as such. (See Finocchairo v. Kelly, 11 N.Y.2d 58 [181 N.E.2d 427, 428] cert. denied, 370 U.S. 912 [8 L.Ed.2d 405, 82 S.Ct. 1259]; Gottschalk v. Sueppel, 258 Iowa 1173 [140 N.W.2d 866, 870].) “[W]hile the police have the right to request citizens to answer voluntarily questions concerning unsolved crimes they have no right to compel them to answer.” (Davis v. Mississippi (1969) 394 U.S. 721, 727, fn. 6.) “The person approached, however, need not answer any questions put to him; indeed, he may decline to listen to the questions at all and may go on his way. He may not be detained even momentarily without reasonable, objective grounds for doing so; and his refusal to listen or answer does not, without more, furnish those grounds.” (Florida v. Royer (1983) 460 U.S. 491, 498-499.) This is a question that I see a lot of North County San Diego. As a lawyer, I hope all my clients exercise their right to remain silent with a Drunk Driving DUI arrest VC23153 or a Domestic Violence PC 243e1 case.
Bradley Corbett
Bradley Corbett is a criminal defense attorney in San Diego. He graduated from Brigham Young University in Provo Utah in 2004. Later he enrolled at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego where he participated in a prestigious internship program with the Los Angeles County Public Defender. Since then he has handled over 2,000 cases.