This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, March 26, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown.

In the abstract, it's easy to know what your rights are, but when you're in the middle of a situation with police, it's less clear.

And even when you do know your rights, you're apt to waive them when the men with guns come

knocking.

Baltimore Defense Attorney William Billy Murphy is the narrator of the new film,

Ten Rules for Dealing with Police.

We spoke following an event for the film on Wednesday.

We started by discussing a show on which Murphy appears

as himself, HBO's The Wire.

Well, interestingly enough, if you put aside Cosby, which was a little stylized, you know, overly middle class, that was the first all black show which depicted black people

as being intelligent no matter what their circumstance. That was one of the things

that I think actually made the show, made all the characters in the show sympathetic was because you actually understood the circumstances that they were dealing with and the realities of what they were actually into. And how rational their choices were.

And you know, rationality does not guarantee correctness, you know that.

But here were people acting rationally under these exceptional circumstances that had never before seen the light of True Day, you know?

Well, let me ask you more about the direct stuff related to the film.

I used to live in Kentucky, and one of the differences between Kentucky and Ohio is that in Ohio

when a police officer stops you and when he is done executing the purpose of that stop he is

supposed to make you feel free to leave that is the understanding that police

have that exists basically nowhere else in the United States.

And people forget that when they're dealing with cops, the questions that cops ask are questions

that they ask hundreds of times often in a week.

...