Potential Traps to Avoid as an Unrepresented Criminal Defendant Dealing With a Prosecutor

If you are unable to pay for a lawyer and you are up against a prosecutor for serious criminal charges, it’s going to be tough. Prosecutors can use any tactic to get you to say things you shouldn’t. Misinterpretation of what you say could lead to your prison sentence. Avoiding several prosecutorial traps without a lawyer’s help is your only saving grace.

Work Out Responses to Questions Ahead of Time

It’s hard to know what the prosecutor will ask. However, imagine just about any possible question as it relates to your case, even if it’s a complete tangent. Prepare answers to all of these questions in advance so you know exactly what to say. Pauses, no matter how short, could be misinterpreted as guilt. Your answers should be quick, truthful, and carefully planned out.

Pay Attention to the Phrasing of Questions

How a prosecutor phrases a question may be intentional (i.e., intentional to set you up for an answer you don’t mean). An example would be, “Did you or did you not…? So, you can’t say that you did not…? Multiple negatives in a sentence make the sentence less clear, resulting in a confused answer from you. The purpose is to trip you up into “revealing” something about you or your case that isn’t actually revealing if it really isn’t true. In these instances, you can ask the judge and the court to request that the prosecutor clarify and/or simplify the question for understanding.

Understand Pleading the 5th

You absolutely can plead the Fifth at any time. Just make sure that when you choose to do so, it isn’t at a crucial moment where pleading the Fifth could be misinterpreted as a lack of cooperation. A jury could decide your guilt based on your unwillingness to answer specific questions asked by the prosecutor. A better approach is to plead the Fifth to most or all questions unless they relate to facts about your person.