Absolutely not. That's the response I have given to two different clients this week who had been asked by law enforcement to give statements in their cases. It is rare that I will ever advise a client to give a statement, regardless of whether it is written or spoken, to a cop or a prosecutor.
Doing so is rarely helpful, and can be very harmful to a case. This advice is hard for some clients to understand. These clients want to believe that giving a self-serving statement to the police will somehow clear their names or, at the very least, get them a more lenient deal. It often works like that on TV, but rarely in real life. It boils down to this: if the State has a good case against you, it doesn't need your statement.
The State only wants your statement to make it's job easier, and nothing you say will make the case go away. No matter what king of innocent-sounding statements you give, law enforcement will simply assume that you are lying in order to save your own skin. If the State has a shaky case against you, it wants you to give a statement in the hopes that you will accidentally fill in the holes in its case. At the very least, the State is hoping to get a sneak peek at what your defense will possibly be so that it can better prepare against you. And remember, what you put down in writing or say in a recording is frozen. Once you say the statement, it's almost impossible to take back later. You will have tied the hands of your defense lawyer.
He is now stuck with what you told law enforcement. He cannot raise any other defense. Should you give a statement to law enforcement? Absolutely not. --David