When I review evidentiary hearing transcripts for appeals, I cringe when officers opine about what they saw defendants do. Officers are always 100% sure about what was going on, whether their opinions match the facts or not. A lot of the time, an officer’s opinion about what a defendant did can make a defense motion fail. Any movement by a defendant is a “furtive gesture” suggesting he was hiding something. If the defendant says his pants were falling down and he had to pull them up, the cop will say the defendant was trying to hide something in his pants. “There was no good reason for Mr. So-and-So to be pulling up his pants.” The trial court will almost always agree with the officer and find … Read entire article »