Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin
It doesn't. A good defense lawyer would have had a fighting chance based on what we know.
|
As for cooperating with the police, in general:
There are people (disproportionately racial and ethnic minority men) who learned the hard way that cooperating with the police is usually not optional. Many of these people are of lower socioeconomic status and cannot afford a "good" defense attorney which is why public defenders are so swamped.
I know Black men who had no criminal record but were beaten by the police because they did not cooperate with police questioning and the police made assumptions. This includes Black men in lower income neighborhoods who contacted the police on behalf of "neighborhood watch" and were accused by the police of being the "real criminals". These Black men thought "I won't cooperate, I am a law abiding citizen and I have a good attorney". Fail. I can tell you that although these Black men are well-educated law abiding citizens they now stay the hell away from the police. They were always told that their trust for the police was more along the lines of the trust that white people tend to have for the police. Now these Black men understand what people meant.
There are also people in the legal and criminal justice systems who admit that they completely understand why people cooperate with the police. The majority of people (especially men) in lower income and racial and ethnic minority communities are taught all of their lives to cooperate with the police.