If you have been arrested, one thing you definitely don’t want to do right away is confess. A confession severely limits your options for how you can help yourself later. However, in some cases, it is possible to challenge the basis of a confession and have it ruled invalid. A New Hampshire criminal defense attorney may be able to help you.

One common tactic is to challenge a confession’s voluntariness. Before a jury hears about a confession, a trial judge has to rule that it was made voluntarily, and will hold a hearing to determine if that is the case. Your New Hampshire criminal defense attorney might make a motion alleging that the confession was involuntary. The specific allegation will depend on the nature of the claim. If the basis for suppression is a violation of your Miranda rights, your attorney might file a motion alleging that upon your arrest, the police omitted the warnings when asking you questions. A more detailed claim might spell out the circumstances that amount to coercion. In some cases, the court will insist that allegations come from affidavit by a person with personal knowledge of the case, such as the defendant.

It is best to have the hearing on the admissibility of the confession before the trial begins for a few reasons: the decision on the confession may dictate whether the case goes to trial, is pled out, or dismissed; a criminal attorney will need to know whether the jury will hear the confession in order to ask relevant questions during jury selection; and the court will save the jury delay and inconvenient by not holding the hearing mid-trial.

The jury will not be present for the hearing, as the trial will be irreparably harmed by allowing the jury to hear the confession and subsequently disregarding it.

It is better to win a claim of involuntary confession rather than prevail on a Miranda violation because a coerced confession cannot be used for any purpose at trial. Even if you lose the involuntariness challenge before the judge, you may be entitled to introduce testimony about how the police obtained the confession and the environment around you, in order to argue that it should not be credited and may have been given falsely.

If you have questions about confessing to a crime, contact knowledgeable New Hampshire criminal defense attorney Sven Wiberg for a free initial consultation.