If You Are Stopped And Then Placed In Handcuffs Or Detained In Any Way Inside A Police Car, Shut Up.
Video Transcribed: He’s going to find the drugs baby, and you don’t know nothing about nothing. Tahlequah Criminal Attorney Ryan Cannonie speaks on about audio visual capabilities in the back of police cruisers, and how that could impact you in any Tahlequah criminal cases you might be facing.
As a prosecutor for seven years, one of the things that I found extremely helpful when I was prosecuting for the state was the fact that many vehicles, especially state troopers, have audio and visual capabilities in their car, meaning that they can record any audio or visual activities going on inside their police car front and back seat.
Now where this relates to you if you find yourself in this situation, is that under Oklahoma case law, you have no expectation of privacy in a cop car, which means that anything said to you or said from you can be used against you in court.
Now this doesn’t just include statements that you’re making that may or may not be against your own interest, but also statements that any co-defendant or other party might be making in the back of the car with you trying to rope you into the charges that may or may not be coming down the line.
One of the tactics law enforcement use is when they are searching a vehicle, doing inventory, doing any of the tasks they have to do with a traffic stop, they will put the occupants of the car in handcuffs and then put them in police cruisers, usually together.
That is by design so that people in there, if it’s you, will start talking and a lot of times, people don’t even realize they’re back there. I’ve prosecuted drug trafficking cases whereas the trooper was going through the car, the person in the car was giving a play by play of what not to search and what to search. Those type of statements will come out in court and can be used against you.
The example at the very beginning of this video of “Baby, he’s going to find the drugs,” is directly from one of those stops, where that gentleman had the unfortunate luck of not only being arrested for distribution of a controlled, dangerous substance, but the young lady he was with and talking to at that time had been left in the front car longer than him and had received a call from his other girlfriend while that was all going on.
So he lost not only his Liberty and freedom that day, but at least one of his girlfriends. And so that video was played in court multiple times. His attorney had to fight it, tried to keep it from being introduced. So if you do find yourself in this situation and unfortunately haven’t watched this video before you were in the back of a police cruiser, please give us a call. We can help.
