Fighting an AR 15-6 Investigation | Interview with Investigating Officer

Below is a portion of the transcript from the Military Justice Today Podcast episode on Army Regulation 15-6 investigations and includes a discussion between host Matt Starosciak and military defense attorney Josh Conklin about whether or not to retain an attorney before giving any statements.  To listen to the full episode, click here.

Matt:  Josh, I suspect you hear often ‘if I get a lawyer it’s going to make it seem like I’m guilty or I did something wrong.”

Josh:  Matt, that’s a great question and I think this goes to Rob’s point of ‘I can fix this myself.  I’m a smart guy I haven’t done anything wrong I’m innocent.’

Matt:  So my first question would be how would you respond to somebody who says that and then my second question is how many times do you see somebody go in and make a statement about one issue and they get charged with another issue or it opens the door to another issue.  Dan was in here not too long ago and he talked about how a text thread cost six or seven guys their careers in the military and the text thread wasn’t even part of the initial investigation.”

So can you take a stab at those two questions?

Josh:  Yea, I do hear it a lot that if I hire someone is this going to make me look bad and absolutely not.  You know, it makes you look smart.  It makes you look prepared.  It makes you look like you care about your career and you’re taking this seriously, right.

If you go in and you bumble the investigation interview and you say some stupid things or  you incriminate yourself somehow, that’s going to make you look bad, right?  Having a professional sitting by you communicating with the JAG office, communicating with the command, communicating with the investigating officer about things that they know intimately well, things that we as military defense lawyers do every single day, that’s going to make you look like a professional.  So it’s not going to hurt you.  I would say that you are putting yourself in the position to be successful if you bring an attorney on and the government’s going to know that.

Matt:  And the other issue of how often does somebody make a statement and it leads to something else that may be worse?

Josh:  Yea, more often than you would think, right?  We’ll talk about kind of the steps that we take when we’re helping someone through one of these investigations but you don’t know what you’re walking into in that interview and they may ask you some questions out of left field.  They’re going to talk to you last as the subject.  They’re going to talk to all these other witnesses and so whatever the investigation kicked off for they’re going to have other questions and they’re going to try to trap you in those other questions so you may be accused of one thing and walk out with five charges, absolutely.