It’s the state’s responsibility/problem to bring you a lawyer if you can’t afford one before the police question you. If the cops are so sure you committed a crime then they’ll charge you and get a public defender assigned so they can interrogate you with a lawyer present. If they don’t have enough evidence they’ll try to bully you into talking without a lawyer present and trick you into confessing. This is one of 403 reasons why it’s important to ask for a lawyer then shut the fuck up until your lawyer arrives.
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Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 2 weeks agoWhat if you don’t have a lawyer? I know the state can set one up for you, but I also know those lawyers are overworked. They take on something like 12,000 cases per year, and get on average 4 minutes to prepare your case.
Could I just call my mom and be like “FIND A LAWYER RIGHT NOW PLEASE!”?
Boinkage@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
unmagical@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
You can use your phone call for whomever, just know it’s not private and you best hope whomever you call will actually help you.
The distinction I was making is that the response to “can you get me a lawyer?” could just be the cops walking out of the room and coming back several hours later and seeing if you’ve changed your mind. The same thing for “I’ll wait till my lawyer is here.”
RagingNerdoholic@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Isn’t your “phone call” a Hollywood trope? It’s not like you get to gamble on the highest stakes call of your life (oops, line’s busy or you misdialed or whatever) and it’s some legal gotcha the cops can pull on a suspect.
FindME@lemmy.myserv.one 2 weeks ago
I’ve been in enough jails to say with some certainty: it depends. Like unmagical posted, some places you will absolutely get a phone call at some point. In others, it’s pretty much an ‘executive privilege.’
The truth lies in the squishy, wet world of humanity, not the written word of the law. In one jail I know of, they’d give you three chances to make a free phone call (the other party has to accept, because they can’t let an abuser call the abusee without some warning of who it is), and if they weren’t busy, you would be able to keep trying for a couple of hours. Another place, you might get the phone call, but it could be 18+ hours after you were brought in and you had already seen the judge, been given a personal recognizance bond, and would be delaying your exit from said jail if you made the call. Jailers sometimes like to put the thumb screws to you in any way they can.
Most of the time, inmates will have access to a phone 24/7. Even in solitary, a phone was available. It looked like a pay phone strapped to a dolly that got wheeled right up to the door of the cell and the phone would stick through the little food slot you could look out of. Those phones require money on their account, and it works in a similar manner to the old collect calls. Those phone calls can be as expensive as a dollar a minute. A law was passed in the US around the end of Obama’s term or the beginning of Trump’s that was supposed to set a limit on how much those calls could cost, but I don’t remember what came of it.
peopleproblems@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I don’t know what you were doing to end up in enough jails to know that, but I suspect that if there’s additional knowledge here, it’s that we should probably not do whatever that was
unmagical@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
At least in Florida, according to this, you are entitled to complete at least one phone call.
MutilationWave@lemmy.world 1 week ago
It’s too bad that cops are and COs think they are above the law. They WILL steal all your money, they MAY beat you up, and you MAY get a phone call if you behave like you’re their little bitch. They like that.