What Are Ways People Incriminate Themselves During Or After Arrest?

What Are Some Ways By Which People Unintentionally Incriminate Themselves Or Hurt Their Case?

In a DUI case, if the suspect is out of the car when the police arrive, the state must prove driving or actual physical control within two hours of the chemical test. A lot of times, the person is standing by his car and they ask, “Is that your car? Were you driving?” If someone answers yes, because of that, the driver has essentially convicted himself of DUI if his blood alcohol level is over 0.08. There are other defenses. The police didn’t see you drive, or they can’t put you behind the wheel, or they can’t prove driving within 2 hours of the chemical test. If they first made contact with the driver while parked, or the police don’t know how long ago this person parked the car so they can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that his blood alcohol level was over 0.08 within two hours of driving. If you drink after you have stopped driving, that is not illegal. If you are over the limit but you did not drink until after you stopped driving, that’s a defense to DUI. But this defense that must be pleaded specifically. If you are going to testify that you did not start drinking until after you stop driving. You need to inform the prosecutor of this fact, or you will be precluded from using it.

Talking To The Police

Many times, the police may ask something like, “Didn’t you and Mary stab this person?” If someone were to answer, “No. Mary and I were there but I didn’t stab this person. Mary did “under the theory of aiding and abetting or under conspiracy theory, you could be convicted. If you didn’t say anything at all, the police would have to develop other information. People tend to talk too much. They think, “If I just say this, they will let me go,” but it usually doesn’t happen that way.

Police are trained to obtain incriminating statements and to intimidate people. Their job is to get a conviction. Once they have a suspect, for the most part, they determine that this is the person that committed the crime and they focus their investigation on that one person.

Sometimes, it may have been someone else but the police were so focused on you as a suspect that they do not consider any other suspects. The police question someone, but if that person didn’t invoke their right to remain silent or ask for a lawyer, they will keep asking questions and doing whatever they can to get a conviction.

Sometimes, people also will make false confessions, “Yes, I did it. Just let me out of here.” This is a huge problem. Or they may think, “I’ll just tell the police what happened but I am not going to tell them that  I did anything wrong.” Sometimes just putting yourself at the scene is enough. That’s how you can incriminate yourself.