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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| SCOTUS Makes Major Change To 'Miranda' Rights |
| 2010-06-01 |
| The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that suspects must explicitly tell police they want to be silent to invoke Miranda protections during criminal interrogations, a decision one dissenting justice said turns defendants' rights "upside down." A right to remain silent and a right to a lawyer are the first of the Miranda rights warnings, which police recite to suspects during arrests and interrogations. But the justices said in a 5-4 decision that suspects must tell police they are going to remain silent to stop an interrogation, just as they must tell police that they want a lawyer. The ruling comes in a case where a suspect, Van Chester Thompkins, remained mostly silent for a three-hour police interrogation before implicating himself in a Jan. 10, 2000, murder in Southfield, Mich. He appealed his conviction, saying that he invoked his Miranda right to remain silent by remaining silent. But Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing the decision for the court's conservatives, said that wasn't enough. "Thompkins did not say that he wanted to remain silent or that he did not want to talk to police," Kennedy said. "Had he made either of these simple, unambiguous statements, he would have invoked his 'right to cut off questioning.' Here he did neither, so he did not invoke his right to remain silent." Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court's newest member, wrote a strongly worded dissent for the court's liberals, saying the majority's decision "turns Miranda upside down." "Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent — which counterintuitively, requires them to speak," she said. "At the same time, suspects will be legally presumed to have waived their rights even if they have given no clear expression of their intent to do so. Those results, in my view, find no basis in Miranda or our subsequent cases and are inconsistent with the fair-trial principles on which those precedents are grounded." Van Chester Thompkins was arrested for murder in 2001 and interrogated by police for three hours. At the beginning, Thompkins was read his Miranda rights and said he understood. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose |
| #8 "We have the miranda card that police are required to read because people don't understand their rights." But is it in at 27 languages? |
| Posted by: JohnQCitizen 2010-06-01 17:31 |
| #7 Miranda rights have no effect on confessions or convictions. They would long since have been abolished for being meaningless, except that no one is willing to take the PR hit for abolishing everybody's "rights." The Fifth Amendment, not the rapist Ernesto Miranda, gives you a right against self-incrimination, notwithstanding what forty years of TV crime dramas have told you. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2010-06-01 17:25 |
| #6 We have the miranda card that police are required to read because people don't understand their rights. |
| Posted by: flash91 2010-06-01 16:51 |
| #5 The best statement to the police I’ve heard so far is “Please direct all statements and questions to my attorney.” This works in several ways. First of all, if you just invoke your right to remain silent, and your right to speak with an attorney, the police have learned that they can still coerce you by making statements to you that are not questions. If you just ask for an attorney, they will ask you what your attorney’s name is, knowing that most people do not have a criminal attorney on retainer. Most people don’t think to immediately also request a phone call to either arrange an attorney, or to talk to a family member who will get an attorney for them. And police will not volunteer that phone call for a long time, likely until right before you are arraigned, unless you demand it. This puts you at a disadvantage, because while you may choose to not speak to the police, you must speak to the judge, unless you have an attorney with you. And not having an attorney means that you lose the initial court gambit. Likewise, federal judges in recent years have muddled Miranda by letting the police detain you without arrest, getting information from you that they use to find other information, and then arresting you and reading you your rights. It is "information freely given", which leads to incriminating evidence, which is admissible. Other sticky situations are that “must show identification” laws vary tremendously between States, and that the SCOTUS has severely weakened protections against police search. Add to that PATRIOT Act provisions against terrorism, that are almost exclusively used for non-terrorist situations, and the civil rights of an arrested person are very, very limited. This all leads back to the original statement: “Please direct all questions and statements to my attorney.” Once you have made this statement, you have handed off your rights, as it were, to your attorney, as an officer of the court. For the police to do anything else to you directly amounts to their interfering in the court process. And this is a new kettle of fish. Attorneys and judges are very protective of their ‘turf’, and get irritated when police mess with their process. So you are no longer the main issue. The bottom line is that Miranda was always passive, because citizens are not lawyers, and are dealing with people who know how to manipulate the law. Requiring the arrested to actively demand their rights is a stretch, because people fear the police, and fear retribution if they speak up. This is why "dumb insolence" was previously never a crime in the US, because as long as you obeyed police orders, except to speak, your rights would be protected. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-06-01 15:53 |
| #4 Yeah, but once you state you wish to remain silent then keep blabbering is justifiable stupidity. Cause, meet effect. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2010-06-01 15:30 |
| #3 Otherwise, your dumb ass just might implicate yourself. Posted by DarthVader That is undoubtedly Sotomayor's entire point. Anything said by the perp after the declaration of 'wishing to remain silent' will be inadmisable. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2010-06-01 15:08 |
| #2 I thought this was always the case. At least it makes fucking sense. Once you acknowledge you know your rights, you are supposed to shut the fuck and ask for a lawyer. Otherwise, your dumb ass just might implicate yourself. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2010-06-01 15:04 |
| #1 Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court's newest member, wrote a strongly worded dissent for the court's liberals, saying the majority's decision "turns Miranda upside down." Expect this to be the first of many bleatings from the Wise Latina. Nevermind that most will be all in favor of upending standing laws *spit* |
| Posted by: Frank G 2010-06-01 14:36 |