Navigating the Legal System when Faced with False Accusations

Prelude

​

Before we begin – we want to make several items clear:

1. We are not attorneys. If you want legal advice on the laws in your state, you need to contact an attorney who is licensed to practice law in your state.

2. If someone has falsely accused you of a crime, do not contact them under any circumstance. This could be construed as witness tampering or witness intimidation.

3. Save any and all evidence. Pictures, text messages, physical evidence, any, and everything that could be used to support your case.

​

Navigating the Legal System

​

To navigate the legal system and avoid being charged or convicted with a crime you did not commit, you will need to know how to deal with law enforcement. This comes in two general bodies:

​

1. The Police

2. The District Attorney’s Office

​

The first thing you need to understand about both institutions is that they do not enforce the law, they enforce politics. They also carry inherent biases of gender, race, and sexual orientation, amongst others.

​

Many various advocacy groups pressure the police and district attorneys’ offices to take certain types of issues very seriously. Their thought process goes something like “well, if the person didn’t actually do anything then they have nothing to be afraid of at trial”. There are two things wrong with this thought process: 1) it assumes that police and district attorneys act in a responsible, unbiased, and ethical manner and 2) it puts the burden on you to come up with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to clear your name for a crime you didn’t commit. This amount of money would bankrupt most people in the United States.

​

The Police

The Police are typically the first line of enforcing the law. They are tasked with arresting citizens who have (allegedly) broken the law and recommending charges to the district attorney’s office.

​

The first thing you need to know about the police: the police are not your friends, and they are not trying to figure out what the truth is. When investigating an alleged crime, they are looking for someone to charge and hand over to the district attorney’s office.

​

The police department, believe it or not, is an organization highly controlled by politics. Depending on what state you live in, your law enforcement could be controlled by:

​

1. Sherriff, which is elected by voters (a politician by definition, and cares about their re-electability above all else) or

2. A Police Chief, which is appointed by an elected local government official and can be removed from office at any point on a whim of a politician.

​

In either case, police are indeed heavily influenced by local politics.

​

If the police ever approach you, do not say one word to them. Exercise your Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and do all the speaking through an attorney. If the police had any evidence against you, you would already be under arrest. When the police ask to speak with you, they are trying to gather information potentially to use against you. It does not matter what you say to the police, once you start speaking, they will write whatever they want in a police report (although, body cameras are becoming more prevalent with law enforcement which is lessening their ability to do this). It does not matter if you never actually said what a police officer wrote in a report, the officer said you did and there is really no way to disprove it.

​

Let’s walk through a few hypothetical examples of someone having a well-intentioned conversation with a police officer.

​

Example One

You own a house. Someone was murdered on your front lawn while you were sleeping. In the morning, someone walking by your house discovers the body and calls the police. You are woken up by the police knocking on your door and they ask to speak with you. The detective asks if you were home last night. You answer “yes” because you want to assist law enforcement, you are being truthful, and you have nothing to hide.

​

You just placed yourself at the scene of the crime. Maybe the police found a pair of bloody gloves on the property that happen to fit your hands. This evidence alone could be enough to indict you, and you could be facing the possibility of trial for a crime you did not commit.

​

Example Two

You are a young man in your 20’s. You meet a girl when you are spending a night out on the town. She asks you to come back to her place and you spend the night together. You exchange numbers and both express a desire to see each other again. That week you are busy at work and do not reach out to her for several days. She begins to feel hurt and thinks “I will show him!”. She goes to the police department claiming she was raped. The police show up at your house the next day to ask some questions. You admit to having sex with her but assure them it was consensual. Well, you just admitted you went to her house and had sex with her. That can now be used against you at trial.

​

In this example, it is also important to note that in many states in the U.S., a woman’s word by itself constitutes probable cause for most assault, domestic assault, and sexual assault crimes. However, your statement to the police just did half of the District Attorney’s work for them. It will be used against you.

​

In any case, once the police have found someone to charge, your case is then passed to the District Attorney’s office.

​

The District Attorney’s Office

Once charges have been issued against you (whether by the police, an indictment, or a citizen complaint filed in a courthouse) you are now faced with navigating the court system and dealing with the District Attorney’s Office.

Structure of the District Attorney’s Office

​

The District Attorney (DA) itself is an elected official, a politician. The DA does not appear in court or handle any real legal work. The DA will select a First Assistant District Attorney who oversees most case work and enforces the political will of the DA, although rarely appears in court. Reporting to the First Assistant District Attorney will be groups of Supervisory District Attorneys, who may handle large cases and have the power to make decisions regarding individual cases. Supervisory District Attorneys may be in charge of all the cases that pass through a specific courthouse or may be in charge of a specific unit (for example: a domestic violence unit, gang violence unit, or a homicide unit). Under Supervisory District Attorneys are Assistant District Attorneys, who are the lowest rung on the ladder and typically appear in court, although they have no real power to make executive decisions related to cases. When your attorney is negotiating a case, they are really negotiating with the Supervisory District Attorney, not an assistant district attorney.

Next Steps

Once your case is in the legal system, it is up to the DA’s office to determine to what degree they want to pursue the case. They may drop the charges, seek a deal, or take the case to trial. If your case is politically advantageous to the DA’s office, they will likely seek a full conviction at trial, regardless of how strong or weak the evidence is.

The main thing you need to understand about the DA’s office: they do not exist to figure out what the truth is; they exist to get a conviction. Many district attorneys will knowingly lie, fabricate evidence, purposely hide exculpatory evidence (evidence that proves your innocence), and otherwise break the rules to win. District Attorneys are even known to brag about how high their conviction rates are and do not care if they throw an innocent person in prison and destroy their lives.

At this point you may be asking “That can’t be right – District Attorneys can’t just lie. Look at the American  Bar Association’s Rule 3.3 (Candor Towards the Tribunal) or Rule 3.4 (Fairness to Opposing Counsel)! They would lose their license to practice law, be sued, or be thrown in prison!.”

Yes, in an ideal world, that is how things would work. Unfortunately, lawyers are in charge of the Bar Association (a non-governmental organization) which is tasked with issuing and revoking licenses to practice law and taking disciplinary action against other attorneys. Attorneys will always protect other attorneys (they even refer to the bar association as a “fraternity” and will refer to other attorneys as “my brother” or “my sister” in court). Think of this as if investment bankers were in charge of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Do you think many market manipulators, insider traders, and other financial fraudsters would ever be prosecuted? Of course not. Lawyers, no matter how egregious their transgressions are, almost never face disciplinary action. This is especially true with judges.

Just like with the police, never speak to the DA’s office. You need to hire a competent lawyer immediately and let him or her do all of the talking for you.

Pretext Calls

Something else we would like to generally discuss is something called a “pretext call”.

A pretext call is a form of wiretapping (recording you without informing you) done by the police either with or without a warrant. In many states, this requires a warrant; in some states it does not. In a pretext call, the police will often have an alleged victim call you and start to coax information out of you. Without you knowing it, you are handing over information and giving testimony. While we are absolutely not trying to protect an actual perpetrator of a crime, you would not want to do this for the same reasons described above regarding dealing with the police and/or District Attorney’s office.

Many times, you will not even know you have been accused of anything at this point. Be wary of conversations where someone is seemingly trying to get you to recant details of an interaction with them.

If you have been wrongfully charged with a crime or are facing false allegations, please reach out to AFFA to see if we can recommend an attorney in your area to assist with your legal defense.

We get no referral fees for any attorney we recommend.