"Are You A Cop?"
Any attorney who does criminal defense work for a significant amount of time will undoubtedly participate in a client interview during which the following exchange occurs:
Client: "so, then I started to get nervous and so I asked the person "are you a cop?"
Attorney: "and what did they say?"
Client: "they said no."
Attorney: "but of course it was a cop..."
Client: "yeah, but I thought they had to tell you if they were a cop..."
Attorney: "they don't."
A lot of criminal defendants are under the mistaken assumption that a law enforcement official cannot lie to them, even when working undercover, and has to admit that he or she is a cop when asked. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The fact of the matter is that law enforcement officials can and do lie to criminal suspects about pretty much anything during the course of an investigation in order to gather more evidence against the suspect or to get the suspect to further incriminate themselves. This is especially true for undercover investigations, where law enforcement officials pretend to be drug addicts, twelve year-old girls, gang members, or anything else they need to be in order to identify and arrest criminal suspects.
Criminal defendants in Tennessee or anywhere else should never be lured into believing that an undercover law enforcement official will tell you the truth when asked about their identity. Likewise, it is also a mistake to assume that once a law enforcement official has gathered some evidence against you that the best thing to do is cooperate and tell them everything you know so that they will go easy on you. They will not, and you will likely have destroyed some avenues for your criminal defense, especially those related to searches and seizures, that your defense attorney could have utilized. If you find yourself in a situation where you are tempted to ask "are you a cop?" do not. In fact, do not say anything to anyone but your criminal defense attorney, who you should contact immediately.
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