Dear Client,

You are smarter than this. You have a decent head on your shoulders. I truly believe this. Seriously.

I don't say "decent" instead of "good" merely because you found yourself in a position where you needed an attorney. Some of my clients have done dumb things, to be sure, but certainly not all of them, and no one is as dumb as the dumbest thing he or she has ever done.

Nor, dear client, am I tempering my praise of your intelligence in this instance merely because you have come to me today with a new problem. You have heard through the grapevine, or from some police contact, that you are being accused of something completely divorced from the thing you are being accused of that led to my representation. This sort of thing happens. Perhaps I can fault you for putting yourself in a position to find yourself accused of something new, but that's a different issue for a different blog post.

No, dear client, what has me face-palming today is your unsupported belief that providing your version of events to law enforcement will make all of this go away immediately. Come on. You are smarter than this. Your thought process is why this works:

“Hello,” the message read, addressing the man by his first name. “This is Officer Smith. My address is as follows: 4310 SW Macadam Ave. Portland, OR 97239. Please feel free to call me with any questions that you have. I will need to heard [sic] from you soon.”

“Officer Smith” is Scott P. Smith, an agent with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The address on Macadam is the local ICE headquarters in Southwest Portland. The man he texted, who the Mercury has agreed not to name, is suspected by ICE to be living in the United states illegally and was recently charged with a misdemeanor in Multnomah County.

Smith soon got the man on the phone, attorneys say, and manipulated him into divulging his native country and immigration status. The agent was collecting evidence against him for a potential deportation proceeding.

It doesn't even matter whether your version of events clears you of all wrongdoing. If it does, the officer likely won't believe you and won't care. Perhaps you think that the officer will investigate your version of events, realize that you are completely innocent, and everything will be fine. You are as incorrect as the experts who worried that Miranda v. Arizona would eliminate all confessions. Both you and those experts falsely assumed that people are rational. People are not rational. And you are a person. Do you see where I am going with this?

You are smarter than this. I truly believe that you are. Talk to me before you talk to the police. And don't post all of the details about your specific situation like this person, who at least didn't go straight to the police department: