James Duane’s amazing but true stories of innocent people exonerated after decades of wrongful imprisonment (which could have been avoided if they had just insisted on their fundamental right to avoid self-incrimination) are riveting reminders of the high price we pay, as individuals and as a society, when we fail to assert our constitutional rights.” —Laurence H. Tribe, Harvard Law School
“In this quick and wonderful read, one of America’s most eloquent writers on legal subjects makes clear why you should never, ever answer police questions about your past conduct, however virtuous and civic-minded you may be. You Have the Right to Remain Innocent describes a stream of miscarriages of justice that occurred only because innocent suspects cooperated with deceptive officers preying on their ignorance and good intentions. The book makes its case with verve and passion, and even if you are a tough-on-crime conservative or a police chief, it is likely to persuade you.” —Albert W. Alschuler, University of Chicago Law School
“James Duane is an experienced criminal defense lawyer and a tough-minded legal scholar. This is not just a book of advice; it is a passionate and disturbing critique of the rules governing police interrogations in the United States. It repays careful reading.” —David Alan Sklansky, Stanford University Law School
“The stories in You Have the Right to Remain Innocent will help you remember why you should not talk to the police, and exactly how to assert your rights. This book could save you—or your children—years of imprisonment for a crime committed by someone else. Read it and then make sure your kids read it too.” —Randy E. Barnett, Georgetown University Law School
“If you'd like to read short sentences that can save you from serving long sentences, get this book and do what it says!” —Judge Alex Kozinski, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
“As James Duane argues convincingly in his book, the judicial hypocrisy that permits police deception is outrageous and dangerous. You Have the Right to Remain Innocent is funny, sad, and full of information that all citizens need for their protection.” —Charles R. Nesson, Harvard Law School
“Well-informed, scary, sobering, and sure to tick off police officers and prosecutors even as it contributes to keeping innocent people out of jail.” —Kirkus Reviews
2016-08-15
Building on his much-viewed YouTube video “Don’t Talk to the Police,” former criminal defense attorney and legal scholar Duane (Regent Univ. School of Law) offers a cogent, concise argument for keeping silent.Why is it, asks the author, that public officials who are being questioned so often invoke their constitutional right not to self-incriminate? Because they know the law. More to the point, he suggests, they know the many ways in which all-too-human investigators can misinterpret and twist words—and that the system is fundamentally corrupt to begin with. Though the last bit may be cynical, Duane means it without hyperbole: on any given day, an American adult breaks three laws without even knowing that he or she has done so, very often as a result of unforeseen consequences of good intentions. “That is why,” Duane writes, “you cannot listen to your conscience when faced by a police officer and think, I have nothing to hide.” If the law is corrupt, then so are law enforcement officers, not necessarily out of evil intent but because they have quotas to fulfill, performance evaluations to meet, and so on—and because, increasingly, there’s an us-against-the-world mentality governing the precinct house. So what to do? Duane counsels common sense, noting that there are reasons and situations that call for cooperating with the police. If, however, there’s the remotest chance that suspicion will fall on you, he adds, then it’s a good idea to think Fifth (and Sixth) Amendment and to remember that, thanks to Antonin Scalia’s influence on the Supreme Court, it’s no longer possible to believe that “only guilty people would ever knowingly refuse to talk to the police,” even if the police and the courts seem to think so. Well-informed, scary, sobering, and sure to tick off police officers and prosecutors even as it contributes to keeping innocent people out of jail.
