No one should ever answer questions during an involuntary encounter with law enforcement without legal counsel. Why?

1. There are so many laws that criminalize so much nonwrongful conduct that you can never be confident you are not the subject of a criminal investigation. /1

2. Unlike their European counterparts, American police and prosecutors have chosen to make deceit a routine part of their investigative toolbox, which means you can never trust anything a police officer or federal agent says to you—or in some cases a prosecutor. /2

The decision to embrace deceit as not merely a legitimate, but indeed a routine investigative/prosecutorial tool was a momentous—and I think ultimately disastrous—choice. But it’s one American law enforcement has plainly made, and there is no alternative but to act accordingly.