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If you are the shooter, after going through the standard drill mentioned several times above, it is quite likely that once you talk to a lawyer who accepts you as a client he will just tell you to nicely tell the LEOs that you have a lawyer, who he is, and then keep your mouth shut and let him take care of it with law enforcement by himself until he decides otherwise. He may, but may not, advise you to explicitly "take the 5th" if further questioned by LEOs. The fact that you have, at that time, a lawyer, in and of itself, should restrain LEOs from interrogating you, since they would know for sure that if you incriminated yourself following further interrogation they most likely would not be able to use your "admissions" at trial.

By then you have taken two significant steps to restrain that interrogation -- you have advised them that you wish to remain silent, and secondly, that you have a lawyer. The second of those two steps is a strong reinforcement, which would go a long way, probably far enough, in rebutting any effort by an LEO to say that you changed your mind about the 5th and decided to talk. And you may take it from me that persons have talked themselves right into prison after they took the 5th.

Even your lawyer at that moment would know that under the circumstances you were probably confused and couldn't remember for sure what happened if you ever had any idea at all what happened, and he would much prefer for things, and you, to calm down, with time for him to have a nice long private chat with you, even though that chat might have to take place in jail.

As I have said before, though, "different ships, different long splices," and I certainly cannot speak for all lawyers, nor is this legal advice. You need to get that advice from your own lawyer, which I, of course, am not. I offer this simply as speculation about what will be happening when, or if, you succeed in retaining a lawyer using your mobile phone. Try to take it easy and do not panic. Knowing that you have a lawyer working on your behalf should assist you a bunch in calming down.

Jim

VMI77 wrote:

karder wrote:

jmra wrote:The only way I would consider leaving the scene of a crime is if my safety dictated it or my last name was Kennedy.

That is funny!

I am not a lawyer and don't know much about lawyering so always keep that in mind. Still it seems that if you have to shoot someone, staying on the scene and waiting for the police would be the right thing to do. I can see the wisdom in not giving a statement of any sort without legal representation, but it seems to me that leaving the scene would only muck things up. Maybe if the shooting is questionable, mucking things up is a good tactic, but if you did everything right and it was unavoidable, why cloud the circumstances by leaving?

There is a guy in my industry that I am professionally acquainted with who is not exactly an upstanding citizen and is always mixed up in something he shouldn't be. He is a slim ball in other words who used to be a very heavy drinker and always speeding home from the bars after last call. I only casually know the guy and was told the story by a co-worker I know well who worked closely with him. I was told this incident happened in Florida.
Almost two decades ago this guy hit and killed a pedestrian while driving drunk, and fled the scene. When he got home he called his attorney and told him what happened as there were a lot of witnesses and he figured the cops would track him down fast. His attorney told him to start drinking at the house and that he would call the police. The police showed up and arrested him. Later his attorney argued that this guy was not driving drunk and that he left the scene because he got scared and had a PTSD (or whatever they called it 20 years ago) type experience which cause him to panic and flee home a couple of blocks away. Once he got home, he started drinking to calm his nerves and that is why he had alcohol in his system. There were a lot of other issues (the guy he ran over was homeless and also drunk) but at the end of the day, he ended up with probation and did no jail time. It was very shady and dishonest and sadly, this guy didn't seem to learn a darn thing from the experience except to keep a lawyer on speed dial.

Seems to me that attorney broke the law. Sounds to me like conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Jim