Semantics… “Give Me A Lawyer……Dawg”. Not A “Lawyer Dog”

[I]f y’all, this is how I feel, if y’all think I did it, I know that I didn’t do it so why don’t you just give me a lawyer dog cause this is not what’s up.

 

New York Magazine reports

In what must represent a new low for American jurisprudence, even in the fun-loving and sometimes unserious precincts of the Great State of Loosiana, a concurring opinion from the Supreme Court of the Pelican State held that a suspect being questioned by police had not successfully invoked his Sixth Amendment right to an attorney when he said, according to police records:

[I]f y’all, this is how I feel, if y’all think I did it, I know that I didn’t do it so why don’t you just give me a lawyer dog cause this is not what’s up.

This statement was deemed inadequate by Justice Scott Crichton on the grounds that “the defendant’s ambiguous and equivocal reference to a ‘lawyer dog’ does not constitute an invocation of counsel that warrants termination of the interview.”

Maybe it’s because I am a graduate of the University of Georgia (Bulldogs) School of Law, but I don’t find “lawyer dog” ambiguous at all.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/10/judge-thinks-suspect-was-asking-for-a-lawyer-dog.html