Being asked to come in and talk with detectives, deciding whether to answer questions when innocent, and knowing what to do the moment police want a statement all raise the same underlying question: what are your rights, and what happens once you start talking? These three situations come up constantly in South Carolina criminal investigations, and the answers below walk through each one.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Does It Mean When Detectives Want You to “Come In and Talk”?
It usually means you’re a suspect. It may mean that you’re going to be arrested and they just don’t want to tell you. So you come in and talk, they get you in an interrogation room. They could keep you in there. They might talk to you for an hour, they might talk to you for three hours. If you don’t demand to be released, they may talk to you for five hours. It depends on the nature of the crime, how serious it is.
They routinely hold people in these interrogation rooms all night when something’s happened, whether it’s a shooting or something like that has happened. So, when police say, “We want you to come in and talk,” many times they have an arrest warrant already and they just didn’t tell you.
Police training allows the police, and the law allows the police in South Carolina, but also throughout the country, to legally lie to you, to mislead you, to try to get you to say something incriminating. And so, when they want you to come in and talk, many times they already know they’re going to arrest you, and they just didn’t tell you.
That’s their last opportunity to make sure that they can lock down your statement, because once they get that statement from you that you’re basically swearing is true, or affirming that it’s true, then later, if you’re in court and there’s something about that statement that’s wrong, it’s hard to deviate from that statement. So if anything, they’re just locking you down as to what happened.
And in many investigations, especially homicides and things like that, you’ll see people who change their statement. And changing your statement, nothing looks worse in terms of guilt or innocence than changing your statement. It looks like now you’re waffling and that you’ll say anything, and now you’re untrustworthy. So even though you don’t admit the crime, you gave four different versions of it, so you just look very guilty.
Should You Talk to Police If You’re Innocent?
That’s a really good question, and there have been circumstances where the police ask questions and someone answers the questions. It’s almost impossible to answer that question in the abstract. Probably the better path in that situation is to contact a lawyer, try to find out what it’s about, discuss it with the lawyer, and show the lawyer that you’re completely innocent. Then the lawyer can say, “Okay, well, I think maybe we can provide this information.”
For instance, say someone is being investigated for a crime that happened at a place in South Carolina, and they call a lawyer and say, “Look, I was in Los Angeles. I’d been in Los Angeles for three days. I couldn’t possibly have been there. And these are the witnesses. Here’s my plane ticket. Here’s my hotel.” The lawyer can then say, “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to get all that information together.
I’m going to provide it to the police.” And if the police want to question the person anymore, the lawyer can decide whether that makes sense. It’s always better to have that layer between a person and the police, because once someone starts answering questions, even though they have the legal ability to stop at any time, it just feels too awkward. Most people feel like once they start talking, they can’t stop, and sometimes it just doesn’t go well for them.
If somebody’s innocent, that doesn’t mean they can’t be arrested. It can be very frightening, and it’s really terrifying when you are innocent and you’re being charged with something that you didn’t commit. So it’s never a mistake to have a good criminal defense lawyer on your side.
Police Want to Question You in South Carolina? Do This First
The best advice is to contact a lawyer, contact a criminal defense lawyer, because you want to find out what it’s about. If you ask the police yourself what the questioning is about, they really don’t want to tell you, because they don’t want you to have any ability to shape the answers.
If you know what they’re investigating, they think you may be able to shape the answers in a way they don’t want. They’re more likely to ask things like where you were yesterday, what you were doing, or whether you know a certain person.
The best thing to do is to get a lawyer. People talk to police all the time, and people answer questions. It’s not always fatal, but many times they end up in a far worse position. The other thing is that sometimes the police absolutely intend to arrest someone but don’t tell them that.
They don’t want the person to know they’re being arrested, because they want to get a statement first. So the last thing they do is say, “Hey, can you come in and talk to us?” They’re basically getting a statement from someone they already know they’re going to arrest, and that person doesn’t know it yet, so the police don’t have to tell them.
Facing questions from police in South Carolina is stressful, and the stakes only go up from there. Greg McCollum has roughly 30 years of experience and previously worked as a prosecutor, giving him insight into how these investigations unfold on both sides. That background can make a meaningful difference in deciding how, when, and whether to respond to a request to talk to police.
If you have questions about talking to police in South Carolina, call the Greg McCollum Complete Legal Defense Team at (843) 626-5480. Consultations are confidential.
