What are you focusing on when you first sit down with a suspect?
The detective has informed you of your rights. He wants you to be protected, he says. Because, he says, there's nothing that concerns him more than giving you every possible assistance in this very confusing and stressful moment in your life.
The detective wants you to know, and we've been doing this a lot longer than you have, so you can take our word for it. Your rights to counsel aren't all they're cracked up to be.
Once you actually up and call for that lawyer, son, there ain't a damn thing we can do for you. No, sir, your good friends in the Homicide Unit are gonna have to lock you all alone in this room. And the next authority figure to scan your case will be a no-nonsense prosecutor from the Violent Crimes Unit, with the official title "Assistant State's Attorney for the City of Baltimore."
And God help you then, because a ruthless blood-sucker like that'll have an O'Donnell Heights motorhead like yourself halfway to the gas chamber before you get three words out.
Your best bet is to speak up. Speak up now.
More from this episode
All quotes from this episode →More Homicide: Life on the Street quotes · These quotes come from Wikiquote's Homicide: Life on the Street pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.