One habit I developed while working as a criminal trial attorney was learning not to start with the most obvious fac(s)t in front of me. The surrounding circumstances of an arrest is always important. An alleged confession can appear damaging. Physical evidence could seem to point to an obvious conclusion. By the time a police investigation is concluded, most would think the facts have been decided and the case is ready for trial.
In my experience, that is often not where the story begins. I have found myself returning to a much simpler question: What happened before there was police involvement?
That question has stayed with me throughout my work as an attorney and later as an educator in criminal justice. Critical thinking is not an attempt to produce a conviction or find a defense through a different interpretation of the facts. Sometimes additional context confirms exactly what the prosecution or defense initially thought. The point is that events within the criminal justice system happen in a sequence, and what occurs at one moment can be difficult to evaluate without understanding the decisions and circumstances that led to it.
An Arrest Is Usually Part of a Longer Sequence
Attorneys tend to focus on arrests because they are often viewed as the beginning of the case.. Someone is stopped, detained, and eventually arrested and taken into custody. From the outside, that is naturally where the case begins. In reality, arrests are often made after extensive investigation that has already involved numerous decisions, observations, conversations, and evidence.
When evaluating an arrest, I need to understand what law precipitated the event. Where did the information come from? What did officers observe? What happened during the investigation? What circumstances led them to make the ultimate decision to arrest? Every single detail is important and must be scrutinized in order to provide context for what happened later.
I came to appreciate this more deeply through both actual experience and advanced study in criminal law. I worked as an Assistant Ocean County Prosecutor and later gained experience in criminal defense. Those roles provided different perspectives, but both reinforced the importance of understanding events in order sometimes starting with the outcome and working backward to figure out what happened and why.
There is a natural temptation to assume that because we know how something ended, everything that happened beforehand must have been pointing toward that result. I have never found real cases to be quite that orderly. Decisions are made with the information available at the time, not with the benefit of knowing what will happen next. Monday morning quarterbacking does not work when evaluating and preparing a criminal case for trial.
Every Piece of Evidence Has a History
The same concept applies to evidence. When investigators recover something they believe could be relevant , the immediate question is often what does it prove. Before reaching that question, however, it is important to understand how, where, and why the piece of evidence was found.
I need to know where it was found, who found it, why that location was being searched, and what happened to the item after it was recovered. The “chain of custody” is critical to evidence being admitted at trial. Depending on the circumstances, questions about collection, preservation, documentation, and testing all become important. Evidence does not simply appear in a courtroom. A process brings it there with many hands being involved.
Examining that history is crucial to its admission into evidence at trial. In many situations, looking closely at the process may confirm that the evidence deserves exactly the weight initially given to it. In other situations, the history often reveals legal questions that demand legal research. The important point is that we do not know what we are dealing with until we have critically examined the entire process from the perspective of both the prosecution and defense.
My interest in forensic law has made me particularly aware of these issues. Scientific evidence can appear definitive because we tend to associate science with certainty. Juries often expect some type of forensic testimony, called the CSI Effect. However, even a technically sound scientific finding has to be understood in context. What was collected? Who collected it? Where was it found and when? How many people handled it? Where was it tested and by whom? Were comparisons made? What can the scientific method used reasonably establish, and can the conclusion be testified to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty by an expert ? Those are just some of the questions criminal procedure requires to be answered.
Statements Need Context Too
Statements provide another example of why asking “what happened before” matters. A sentence written in a report or repeated in a courtroom can appear remarkably clear. Everyone can hear the same words, but that does not mean everyone understands the circumstances in which they were spoken.
When evaluating a statement, the surrounding interaction matters. What happened before the questioning began? What if anything had previously been discussed? What question produced the response? Was the person in custody? Was this an interrogation or a voluntary interview? Were Miranda Warnings given. Did the interview become an interrogation? How long had the person been questioned? Where did the statement occur? Was the person discussing first hand knowledge or was it a recital of something someone else said? Depending on these circumstances and possibly others, a critical statement or confession may never be heard by the jury.
A statement is not always what it appears to be. Sometimes a statement means exactly what was said. Sometimes the same statement may be interpreted as completely opposite. My issue is with assuming that we know what the statement means or whether it will be admissible before examining the circumstances. Criminal procedure requires attorneys to look at both the words and the process surrounding how and why they were spoken.
This is one reason procedural rules can sometimes seem frustrating to people outside the legal system. If a statement appears obvious, it can be difficult for an outsider to understand why attorneys spend so much time in legal research and argument before the matter even goes to trial. The answer is that the United States justice system must consider not only the statement itself, but the process through which it was obtained.
There Is a Limit to How Much Context Is Useful
There is also a tradeoff that deserves acknowledgment. You can always ask another question about something that happened earlier. At some point, context can stop being useful and become a distraction.
An attorney cannot examine every event in a person’s life simply because one of those events might somehow relate to a later interaction. The difficult part is determining which earlier facts actually matter. How far back should we look? Which details change our understanding of the event we are examining? Which details may be interesting but ultimately irrelevant?
There is not a simple formula for making those decisions. Experience helps, but experience creates its own risks. Once attorneys have seen similar factual scenarios, we may become too quick to assume that the next one follows the same pattern. We have to understand these new connections without relying on past experience.
Sometimes understanding “what happened before” changes the entire analysis. At other times, it confirms that the original interpretation was correct. Both outcomes are useful because the purpose of asking the questions should be to understand the facts more accurately, not to reach a predetermined conclusion.
Students Must Be Taught To Think Critically
When I moved into criminal justice education, I thought about how to teach students what I have learned with my unique and extensive experience. Students understandably want answers. They want to know whether a search was lawful, whether evidence can be admissible, whether a particular procedure was followed correctly, or what conclusion to draw from a set of facts. Those are all excellent questions, but I think there is a danger in becoming too focused on reaching the answer quickly and with tunnel vision based on past experience.
As I prepare to join Quincy University as an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice in January 2027, one thing I want students to become comfortable doing is to think critically when something initially appears obvious. If they are shown an arrest, I want them to ask about the investigation that preceded it. If they are shown evidence, I want them to consider how it was obtained and handled. If they are given a statement, I want them to understand the interaction that produced it. If they are evaluating a courtroom argument, I want them to recognize the facts and procedural decisions that made that argument possible.
The goal is not to teach students to distrust everything they see. It is to teach them that careful analysis requires a critical thought process by examining events in a two-fold manner. Students must learn to come to what they believe is the proper conclusion then turn it around and try to reach an opposite conclusion. I use my experience as a prosecutor and criminal defense attorney. Both are working with the same set of facts, and the same law, but attempting to persuade a judge or jury of opposite conclusions.
Understanding What Came Before Helps Us To Understand What Comes Next
After years of studying, practicing, and teaching criminal law and criminal procedure, I have learned to never become comfortable evaluating facts in a vacuum. That is the critical thinking and problem solving skills I will teach at QU.
Criminal justice deals with human events, and human events develop over time. Investigations build on earlier information. One decision creates the circumstances for another. Evidence moves through a process before it reaches a courtroom. Statements occur within conversations. Legal arguments depend on facts and procedural decisions that may have happened months or even years earlier with case law constantly evolving.
Asking “What happened before?” will not automatically tell us which conclusion is correct. It does something more fundamental. It forces us to understand the sequence before deciding what one moment within that sequence actually means.
In criminal justice, I have found that this is where careful analysis begins.