Post by Optimus on Oct 31, 2017 19:56:36 GMT -5
On Friday, the Louisiana Supreme Court declined to hear an important appeal involving the constitutional right to counsel. The case involves a man who’d voluntarily agreed to speak with the police. When Warren Demesme realized that the cops suspected him of child rape, he told them, per the trial court transcript, “I know that I didn’t do it, so why don’t you just give me a lawyer dog ‘cause this is not what’s up.” The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that when a suspect asks for an attorney, the interrogation must end and a lawyer must be provided. But the police disregarded Demesme’s request, and the trial court ruled that the statements he subsequently made can be used to convict him.
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Justice Scott Crichton penned a brief opinion concurring in the court’s decision not to hear the case. He wrote, apparently in absolute seriousness, that “the defendant’s ambiguous and equivocal reference to a ‘lawyer dog’ does not constitute an invocation of counsel that warrants termination of the interview.”
Reason’s Ed Krayewski explains that, of course, this assertion is utterly absurd. Demesme was not referring to a dog with a license to practice law, since no such dog exists outside of memes. Rather, as Krayewski writes, Demesme was plainly speaking in vernacular; his statement would be more accurately transcribed as “why don’t you just give me a lawyer, dawg.” The ambiguity rests in the court transcript, not the suspect’s actual words. Yet Crichton chose to construe Demesme’s statement as requesting Lawyer Dog, Esq., rather than interpreting his words by their plain meaning, transcript ambiguity notwithstanding.
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Justice Scott Crichton penned a brief opinion concurring in the court’s decision not to hear the case. He wrote, apparently in absolute seriousness, that “the defendant’s ambiguous and equivocal reference to a ‘lawyer dog’ does not constitute an invocation of counsel that warrants termination of the interview.”
Reason’s Ed Krayewski explains that, of course, this assertion is utterly absurd. Demesme was not referring to a dog with a license to practice law, since no such dog exists outside of memes. Rather, as Krayewski writes, Demesme was plainly speaking in vernacular; his statement would be more accurately transcribed as “why don’t you just give me a lawyer, dawg.” The ambiguity rests in the court transcript, not the suspect’s actual words. Yet Crichton chose to construe Demesme’s statement as requesting Lawyer Dog, Esq., rather than interpreting his words by their plain meaning, transcript ambiguity notwithstanding.
Only in Louisiana (okay, let's admit that this could easily have happened in AL, FL, or TX) would a judge rule, with a straight face, that "lawyer, dog" was actually "Lawyer Dog," implying that a defendant was really asking for "Scooby Doo: Canine Attorney."
Christ, how stupid can people get? Pretty bad when the judge is dumber than the criminal.
www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/10/31/suspect_asks_for_a_lawyer_dawg_judge_says_he_asked_for_a_lawyer_dog.html
EDITED TO ADD:
When I first read this article (and a few others about it), I didn't know the race of the defendant because none of them mentioned it (which is actually good, I feel, because leaving race out of stories like this avoids perpetuating racial stereotypes). "Dawg/dog" is slang that's used pretty universally, no matter the race, so just him saying it doesn't really indicate his racial/ethnic background.
But...this being Louisiana, and it being such an absurd outcome, made me curious, so I did some more searching and eventually found that the defendant is black.
Which now makes me suspect that the actions of the cops and judge might've been racially motivated. That doesn't at all speak to his innocence, but this "grammar nazi wordplay" of theirs sure smells like some racist bullshit.
Ironically, Crichton’s musing probably makes this case more vulnerable to U.S. Supreme Court review and reversal. The justice unintentionally illustrated a real problem: Courts can manipulate the “reasonable police officer” standard to conform to their own syntactic preferences, transforming a straightforward if informal request for a lawyer into argle-bargle. Police officers can then follow their lead, willfully misinterpreting anything but the most polished and proper demand for a lawyer.
