Thanks to movies and television shows like "Law and Order," you probably know that if police want to interrogate you, you have theright to remain silent and to get an attorney.
The protections arose out of the landmark1966 U.S. Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona.
If someone invokes these rights, police are supposed to stop questioning them immediately. If law enforcement gets information from someone without telling them they have these rights, known asa Miranda warning,or after they've invoked them, their defense attorney can then argue that the evidence is inadmissible in court.
But the reality is more complicated than you might think.
If you don't use the right words, police can continue questioning you and a court might later agree that you failed to invoke your rights, legal experts told USA TODAY. And judges are being increasingly specific about what those magic words are, according to Janet Ainsworth, professor emerita at Seattle University law school.
"The promise of Miranda – that we'll give you information about your rights and they'll be respected – as a practical matter, turns out to be pretty much unavailable," Ainsworth said. "In fact, I used to tell my students, if you're ever in this situation there's only two answers: 'I want a lawyer' or 'I want a lawyer, damn it.' Anything else is going to be a problem."
Invoking your rights is harder than you think
Ainsworth, who studies the intersection of law, language and culture, has doneresearchon cases in which people tried to invoke their Miranda rights. She said she found the attempts were deemed too ambiguous or too equivocal in "an overwhelming majority of cases."
Ainsworth rattled off many examples of what could doom someone's attempt to get a lawyer: asking a question, ("can I call my lawyer?"), hedging the request ("I guess you better get me a lawyer"), and using the word "if" ("I'm going to have to have a lawyer if you guys are saying I did this"). In one famous case from 2017, the LouisianaSupreme Courtruled that whena suspect said "why don't you just give me a lawyer, dawg"to detectives during an interrogation, he was not being specific enough to actually invoke his constitutional right to an attorney.
"In fact, preceding or following an invocation with any words at all, generally meant the invocation would be invalidated on review," Ainsworth said.
Ainsworth said people who try to exert their right to remain silent by telling police they don't want to talk often can encounter a similar fate.
"Being more emphatic or more thorough doesn't help either," she said. "Here's another case: 'I don't want to talk about any of this. No more, man. I'm through. That's it. End of discussion.' And the court said by repeating his intention not to talk, that's not an invocation of the right to remain silent."
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All the examples in the case law may make judges think they have to interpret future cases in this extremely literal way, Ainsworth said, making it virtually impossible for people to exercise their rights. She said she's been trying to educate judges about the issue and encourage them to make less rigid interpretations.
Some have seemed receptive, she said. But she said most ordinary people, and even some lawyers, still don't know exactly what they must say to invoke their rights.
"Everything that they know probably goes out the window when you're in the back of a police station in hour four of an interrogation," she said.
But there have been some cases where people successfully claimed they were attempting to invoke their Miranda rights, according to Yasmin Cader, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU represented Ernesto Arturo Miranda inthe original 1966 Supreme Court case.
"The Supreme Court has found that language such as 'I do want an attorney before it goes much further,' that's sufficient," she said. "'I want an attorney before making a deal,' that's sufficient."
'You have to say the magic words':What the Supreme Court ruling on Miranda rights means for you
There has been some success in lower courts, too, Cader said. In 2015,the Supreme Court of Kansasordered a new trial for a man convicted of murder because police had continued to interrogate him after he invoked his Miranda rights by saying, "This is – I guess where, I, I'm going to take my rights ..." A lower court should have kept anything the defendant said after that out of trial, the state's supreme court said.
A person in police custody must unequivocally and unambiguously invoke their rights to successfully exert their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, Cader said.
"The safest way to go is to be as clear as possible that I do not want to talk to you and I want an attorney before I say anything else," said Cader.
Contributing:Tami Abdollah
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:How do I use my Miranda rights? It can be shockingly easy to mess up.
