Famous Quotes & Sayings

James Duane Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 20 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by James Duane.

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Famous Quotes By James Duane

James Duane Quotes 1562571

You cannot blame them for using such methods - after all, we all agree that guilty people (at least the dangerous ones) ought to be caught and put behind bars - but the problem is that these methods of calculated deception are too effective. They do not merely work on the guilty. At least some of these methods, it turns out, have proven to be just as effective in getting innocent people to make incriminating statements, and sometimes even outright confessions. Do — James Duane

James Duane Quotes 1694902

Anybody who understands what goes on during a police interrogation asks for a lawyer and shuts up, — James Duane

James Duane Quotes 2094364

Do you know where you were on Thursday evening at about eight o'clock last week, and who you were with, and what you were doing? Are you absolutely certain beyond any shadow of a doubt? Would you bet your life on it? If there is any possibility - no matter how slim or remote - that you could possibly be mistaken about such a thing, you are the kind of person who should never agree to talk to the police under just about any circumstances for as long as you live. And that includes practically everybody. — James Duane

James Duane Quotes 1276571

Another federal law makes it a felony for any person "knowingly to deliver or cause to be delivered for transmission through the mails or interstate commerce by telegraph, telephone, wireless, or other means of communication false or misleading or knowingly inaccurate reports concerning crop or market information or conditions that affect or tend to affect the price of any commodity in interstate commerce."21 For this "crime," you can be fined up to one million dollars and imprisoned for up to ten years. If you are ever prosecuted for a violation of this law, the way it is written, all the government needs to do to put you behind bars is to prove that you sent anybody a single — James Duane

James Duane Quotes 812113

That was the same case in which the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously concluded that, if they adhered to the insane interpretation of this terrible statute that was being defended by the Department of Justice, you could be prosecuted for using a few drops of vinegar to poison your child's goldfish. — James Duane

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there are many ignorant sentimentalists who believe that our government is deserving of our loyal cooperation and support, and that every good patriot with an innocent conscience should be glad to answer any questions from government agents. That is hogwash. — James Duane

James Duane Quotes 1983411

How do you request a lawyer? There is no need to be rude, naturally. And most people instinctively recognize that fact. The police officer does not deserve your disrespect, because he or she is only doing his or her job in a criminal justice system that is terribly out of control. Unfortunately, far too many individuals in the real world go in the opposite direction, and for some reason think that they need to be overly polite to the police. They seem to instinctively fear that they might come across sounding a little rude or disrespectful if they make their request sound too confident or unequivocal. — James Duane

James Duane Quotes 2228386

And after Salinas, as we have seen, that means that you cannot simply remain mute in the face of police questioning, but rather must say something to invoke your legal right to refuse to answer their questions. Second, — James Duane

James Duane Quotes 280490

In every one of these cases, the police ignored the suspect's tentative and mealymouthed expressions of interest in a lawyer, persisted in their questioning, and successfully managed to get him to make some damaging statements (not necessarily a confession) that could be used to help convict him, and the courts concluded that such statements were admissible against the suspect because he had not made a clear and unequivocal request for a lawyer. — James Duane

James Duane Quotes 2131549

and that perhaps the circumstantial evidence against him or her is fairly powerful after all. But — James Duane

James Duane Quotes 1869862

The Supreme Court justices are able to decide fewer than 1 percent of all the appeals — James Duane

James Duane Quotes 1659560

Perhaps it was true a century ago - I deeply regret that it is no longer true - but the United States criminal justice system long ago lost any legitimate claim to the loyal cooperation of American citizens. You cannot write tens of thousands of criminal statutes, including many touching upon conduct that is neither immoral nor dangerous, write those laws as broadly as you can imagine, scatter them throughout the thousands of pages of the United States Code - and then expect decent law-abiding, unsuspecting citizens to cooperate with an investigation into whether they may have violated some law they have never even heard about. The next time some police officer or government agent asks you whether you would be willing to answer a few questions about where you have been and what you have been doing, you must respectfully but very firmly decline. — James Duane

James Duane Quotes 1028505

If a police officer encounters you in one of those moments, he or she has every right to ask you two simple questions. Memorize these two questions so you will not be tempted to answer any others:

Who are you?
What are you doing right here, right now?

If you are ever approached by a police officer with those two questions, and your God-given common sense tells you that the officer is being reasonable in asking for an explanation, don't be a jerk. — James Duane

James Duane Quotes 813788

Instead mention your Sixth Amendment right to a lawyer, and tell the police that you want a lawyer. — James Duane

James Duane Quotes 776105

Nobody of sound mind can dispute that there is something fundamentally wrong, and intrinsically corrupt, about a legal system that encourages police officers and prosecutors to do everything in their power to persuade you and your children (no matter how young or old) to "do the right thing" and talk - when they tell their own children the exact opposite. I — James Duane

James Duane Quotes 762927

Those are the only two things you should tell the police officer in that context, and they are both in the present tense. (You might as well cooperate with such a request, by the way, because the Fifth Amendment does not normally give you the right to refuse to tell the police your name anyway. That is it. But if the police officer tries to strike up a conversation with you about the past, and where you were thirty minutes earlier, and who you were with, and where you had dinner, and with whom - you will not answer those questions. You will not be rude, but you will always firmly decline, with all due respect, to answer those questions. — James Duane

James Duane Quotes 665722

If you are asked any question by a police officer or a government agent and you realize that it is not in your best interest to answer, you should not mention the Fifth Amendment privilege or tell the police that you wish to exercise your right to avoid incriminating yourself. In this day and age, there is too great a danger that the police and the prosecutor might later persuade the judge to use that statement against you as evidence of your guilt. And if they do, to make matters much worse, you have no guarantee that the FBI agent in your case will not slightly misremember your exact words. — James Duane

James Duane Quotes 433495

bit of inaccurate information that somehow concerned crop or commodity market information or conditions. It does not matter whether you sent that message by telephone or mail or telegraph. It does not matter who you sent that letter to. It does not matter whether the information was actually false, or merely misleading. It does not matter whether your note actually had any effect on market prices anywhere, or even whether you intended for it to have that effect. The way this law was written by the morons in Congress, you are guilty of a felony if you send a postcard to your grandmother in a nursing home, trying to make her feel better by lying about how nice the weather has been in Florida, or how low the gas prices have been. And you will not find this law in Title 18 either; this one is buried in the bowels of Title 7 (sec. 13), which lists the laws supposedly regulating "Agriculture." Even — James Duane

James Duane Quotes 425427

I am not a member of a racial minority, and I am well aware of the reality that far too many individuals of color are harassed by officers for no good reason, so it is easier for me to give the above advice than for others who have been subject to such harassment. After all, I have never been stopped by a police officer who thought I was riding a bike that looked like it might be too expensive for somebody of my race. And I cannot imagine how frustrating such prejudicial suspicion must be. But you cannot make your situation any better by refusing to cooperate with the officer, no matter how unreasonable you may think the police officer is being, or by refusing to disclose two simple things: (1) your name, and (2) whether you have some lawful reason for your curious presence or conduct at that moment at some place where the officer already knows you are, because he or she is standing right there with you. Those — James Duane

James Duane Quotes 329233

As we can see from all these cases, a promise from the police to give you "help" is the most useless and worthless promise you will ever receive from anyone in your life, and the courts will laugh and look the other way when the police walk away from that promise without giving you the slightest help in any way. — James Duane