Alright. It lawyer talk.

Q. A.

And A. Taking on listener questions.

What does that mean?

That means that somebody took the time to go lawyer talk.

Q. A.com.

Enter a question.

Send it my way and wait patiently for the response.

And it is Cathy's turn today.

Kathy has sent a question and I'll just read it out loud.

Fighting words I have heard in rare cases, if the insults are nasty enough, a judge

may throw the whole assault case out and then she goes on.

I see people hang themselves when talking to the police.

I've seen police suggest if you don't talk

to them, they're going to throw you in jail.

How do you deal with the police? So we really got two questions.

They're separate. I think she meant to ask two questions.

That's all right. We'll take them both on.

So fighting words, I got to tell you, the

first thing I thought about was Yosemite Sam, them's fighting words.

Here we go.

Yeah, that's fighting words. Yeah.

So there's Yosemite Sam fighting words.

Let's talk a little bit about fighting words.

I think it's probably more relevant now

than ever before because we have Will Smith, who apparently heard some fighting

words up on the big stage and went and whacked Chris Rock with a slap.

So fighting words,

you don't get to hit somebody because they said something that offended you.

That's just flat out how it is.

So Will Smith had absolutely zero right to hit Chris Rock, insult his wife.

He may have he could have said anything.

And you don't get to whack somebody just because you've been insulted.

It just doesn't work that way.

Now, like everything in law, there's

always an all depends or I guess an exception.

And it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to walk away.

But you might be accused of, say, murder.

Here's the classic law school example.

You get accused of murder because somebody insulted you.

You went and killed them and say that the

words were so offensive that they were sufficient to arouse hot blood, and any

reasonable person would respond accordingly.

Well, you may get your murder lesson to something like manslaughter.

It's far more complicated than that.

And I'm not going to go into the nuance

and every state is going to have a different version of this.

But we call it in law school, the hot blood defense.

So you walk in and somebody's having sex with your spouse and you kill them.

Well, that's hot blood. And you might get a manslaughter

conviction instead of a purposeful murder conviction because you just acted under

sudden fit of rage and you really couldn't control your actions that way.

At least that's the theory.

That's where really the fighting words are.

And then you get to the other.

And this is going to dovetail the question I take on later.

But go back to Will Smith.

He heard something that offended his honor, so to speak.

And you get this situation

of the old fashioned duel where people agree to fight as a result of something

somebody said, well, that's a consensual fight.

Look at it more like a boxing match.

It doesn't necessarily make it legal.

You're not allowed to go kill each other

and shoot each other in a duel or something like that.

You can't really consent to murder, not even of yourself.

So at least in most States, but you end up

in a scenario where you can't use as a justification to

assault somebody, that they insulted you or your family or

in this situation with Will Smith, his wife.

I don't care how offensive it was.

You can't do it now.

That's also to say, really, that it's not.

I guess there's the other side of this and

whether it's free speech or not, and this is the old fighting words exception to the

First Amendment, and that's a whole other topic.

Maybe I'll take it on some day, maybe I'll

get an expert in here on First Amendment law.

But generally speaking, there's been a fighting words exception to the First

Amendment where you can actually be prosecuted for saying certain things.

But I tell you what, it's rare and it's

limited and courts typically don't find it.

Most of the time you have a right of

freedom of speech and the old saying you can't scream fire in a crowded theater.

Well, that's true most of the time anyway.

Let's go to second or part two of the

question here, and I'll just read it again.

Kathy goes on, I see people hang themselves when talking to the police.

I've seen people or police suggest if you

don't talk to them, they're going to throw you in jail.

How do I deal with the police?

Well, I think the hang yourself is a euphemism.

In other words, they do themselves harm as far as their defense goes.

And this is abundantly true.

People often think that they can talk to the police.

They think that they are going to talk their way out of it.

They're going to explain their side of it, and all is going to be good.

And then the police will say, well, if you

don't talk to us, I'll be stuck with the other side.

I'll be stuck only with what I know now, and I'll probably have to take you to jail

so that's their incentive to get you to talk.

How do I deal with this? I tell people, don't talk to the police.

If you're ever in doubt, don't talk to the police.

And you should almost always be in doubt, don't talk to the police.

I mean, did I mention here I meant to say don't talk to the police.

Yeah. Even if you're innocent.

I meant to say don't talk to the police.

Look, you get the point here is that

rarely are you going to talk your way out of it, or maybe better put, rarely are you

going to know when you're going to be able to talk your way out of it, even when

police are saying, look, trust me, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

I just want to hear what you have to say.

And then I'll let you go and you believe them to your soul.

If they change their mind, you can't force it.

You're not going to be able to say, well, wait, Mr.

Officer, you told me that you weren't going well, too late.

You've already talked.

It's a confession, and it doesn't have to be a flat out confession.

One of the best examples I use is this is that sometimes people forget that in order

to prove a crime, the state or the prosecutor has to prove certain elements.

And the elements might go like this, saying assault, knowing the cause or

attempt to cause serious physical harm to another in Franklin County, that is venue.

And maybe it's not so clear where it happened.

Maybe it's not so clear that it was in Franklin County.

And then when you're talking to the police, everybody knows that you committed

the assault and everybody knows that you deny committing the assault.

Or you say it was self defense or you make up some defense to the police.

But in the course of doing that, you admit that it was in Franklin County and they

couldn't have otherwise proven that element.

You would have walked away.

But then you got too cute for yourself.

You got too smart and thought you could outwid everybody, and you ended up talking

yourself into a charge and ultimately possibly a conviction.

Now you could say, well, these are just technicalities.

Yeah, you bet they're technicalities.

But it's not like that pesky Constitution gets in the way.

You have a 6th Amendment right to a trial.

You have a right to make the state prove

beyond reasonable doubt each and every element of the charged offenses.

That hardly seems technical to me.

That seems very substantive.

This is the Bill of Rights, folks.

It matters in the Fifth Amendment is a right to remain silent, exercise it.

How do I deal with the police?

I deal with the police as courteously and professionally as I can.

And by that I mean when

say, I've been pulled over by the police, I'll be very polite with the police.

But if they start to question me, I will

politely say, no, I'd rather not make any statements.

Most of the time in a speeding ticket case or something like that.

I don't really care. I mean, that's a little bit different.

But if you're really accused of a crime,

you politely say, I don't want to make any statements until I have my lawyer present.

Use my awful, dirty, rotten, scoundrel name.

Say that Palmer guy.

Lawyer Talk Q-A-I should never talk, so I'm going to blame him.

Don't get mad at lawyer talk. Q.

A. It not me.

So the point is here, do whatever you have to do to be polite, to be courteous, to be

respectful, but do not provide a statement to the police.

You do not have to and you should not.

And if you're ever in doubt, you should have no doubt, because the

doubt itself is enough to doubt whether you should answer questions.

So maybe, as I tell a lot of folks, you

would never sign up for a test, that you didn't know the answers to, the questions

that you hadn't studied for, that you didn't understand the topic.

You would just say no.

I'll choose not to participate until I get more information.

It's the same with making statements to the police.

And so how do I deal with the police?

Respectfully, politely, courteously professionally.

But also, I'm very firm about this.

I often tell the police on behalf of my clients.

Look, I'm advising them not to talk. This is my advice.

This is what I always advise.

People do not talk.

And then I asked them for information.

And the more they don't tell me

information, the less I want to tell them information about my clients.

So, look, they're not going to be offended.

At least the good police won't be offended.

They know the game. They know what they're trying to do, and

they know that we know what they're trying to do.

And that's okay.

It's just how the system works.

I hear all the time.

Well, they're going to think I'm guilty if I don't make a statement.

Well, guess what? They're knocking at your door.

They pulled you over. They're questioning you.

They already think you're guilty.

You're not going to change it by talking.

And even if you could, you don't know that

you could, and therefore, it's better not to.

I hope, Cathy, that answers your questions.

Thank you again for listening.

I appreciate all the support. Thanks for writing the question.

If there's any follow up, feel free,

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