How should you behave when you are pulled over by the police? What are your rights, and if you receive a ticket what can you expect? Professor Michael L. Coyne tells you everything you need to know on this episode of The Massachusetts School of Law’s A Point of Law.

Educational Video from The Massachusetts School of Law.

The following is a rough transcript of the above video “What are your legal rights when pulled over by the police?”. It was downloaded via YouTube machine transcriptions.

frequently clients and students and others
ask me what are my rights when I’m stopped by the
police
well first of all what you should do
is do three simple things
use your common sense common courtesy and
stay calm
all of which are often in short supply when
we’re pulled over an inconvenienced
but pulled to the side of the road
whether it’s day or night you really should
keep your hands on the steering wheel and
the vehicle illuminated
when we reach over as we often times do to
get a registration or other things out of
the glove box the police officers see a furtive
movement and become concerned for their own
safety
so until the police officer comes to the
vehicle keep your hands on the steering wheel
and make sure the car is sufficiently illuminated
you have an obligation when stopped by police
to identify yourself
perhaps the police officer is only pulling
you over to
remind you or notify you of a safety
issue maybe you have a defective light or
something
more than likely you’re right there’s some other issue
involved but you do have whether it’s justified
or not you do have an obligation to identify
yourself and cooperate with the police
if the police officer chooses to go further
then at that point you may receive a warning
or ticket and in some unusual situations you
could even be arrested
but if you receive a warning
then there’s no need to do anything further
unless you choose to make a %uh a bigger
issue of out of it
if you receive a ticket
you can either pay the fine or you can request
a hearing
but unfortunately that hearing is not going
to be the type you see on TV with the lawyer
and the jury and everything else
generally for a citation you have no right to
have a lawyer appointed for you and you have
no right to have a jury hear those issues
the fact of the matter is it can be a relatively
simple procedure
be prepared to discuss with the judge in a
collegial fashion your problem