Little-Acorn
06-01-2010, 11:39 AM
This caught me by surprise. And my first gut reaction was, "This is a bad decision." But then, thinking about it, I realized it is in fact completely constitutional, and is in fact the first GOOD decision we have had on this matter in a while.
As I have pointed out elsewhere, the so-called "Miranda rights" are a vital part of our justice system, and I fully support them. But the requirement that police turn into schoolteachers and inform a suspect of what those rights are, appears nowhere in the Constitution. The mandate that a cop must "read the suspect his rights", was created out of thin air by a scofflaw, activist Supreme Court in 1966 that had a bad habit of legislating from the bench.
Now this decision, that cops don't have to stop questioning a suspect if the suspect never asks them to stop, falls on MY side of the overall argument. All the guy had to say was "I don't want to talk", and the cops would have backed off immediately. And that fact had even been explained to him (unnecessarily IMHO, but there it is) before the questioning began.
In fact, a major part of the reason for these (unneeded) "Miranda warnings", is so that if the guy did say something implicating himself later, it would NOT be thrown out on grounds that he didn't know he could have remained silent. Once he is explicitly told he has the right to remain silent, and he agrees that he understands that right, anything he says after that can and will be used against him in a court of law. (In fact, isn't that also part of the warnings the guy was given before the questioning too?)
I guess he thought the cops were kidding about the can-be-used-against-you part.
They weren't. And neither, at long last, is the Supreme Court.
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http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/06/01/supreme-court-suspects-say-want-remain-silent/?test=latestnews
Supreme Court: Suspects Must Say They Want to Remain Silent
Published June 01, 2010
Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- 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.
The officers in the room said Thompkins said little during the interrogation, occasionally answering "yes," "no," "I don't know," nodding his head and making eye contact as his responses. But when one of the officers asked him if he prayed for forgiveness for "shooting that boy down," Thompkins said, "Yes."
He was convicted, but on appeal he wanted that statement thrown out because he said he invoked his Miranda rights by being uncommunicative with the interrogating officers.
The Cincinnati-based appeals court agreed and threw out his confession and conviction. The high court reversed that decision.
The case is Berghuis v. Thompkins, 08-1470.
As I have pointed out elsewhere, the so-called "Miranda rights" are a vital part of our justice system, and I fully support them. But the requirement that police turn into schoolteachers and inform a suspect of what those rights are, appears nowhere in the Constitution. The mandate that a cop must "read the suspect his rights", was created out of thin air by a scofflaw, activist Supreme Court in 1966 that had a bad habit of legislating from the bench.
Now this decision, that cops don't have to stop questioning a suspect if the suspect never asks them to stop, falls on MY side of the overall argument. All the guy had to say was "I don't want to talk", and the cops would have backed off immediately. And that fact had even been explained to him (unnecessarily IMHO, but there it is) before the questioning began.
In fact, a major part of the reason for these (unneeded) "Miranda warnings", is so that if the guy did say something implicating himself later, it would NOT be thrown out on grounds that he didn't know he could have remained silent. Once he is explicitly told he has the right to remain silent, and he agrees that he understands that right, anything he says after that can and will be used against him in a court of law. (In fact, isn't that also part of the warnings the guy was given before the questioning too?)
I guess he thought the cops were kidding about the can-be-used-against-you part.
They weren't. And neither, at long last, is the Supreme Court.
-----------------------------------------
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/06/01/supreme-court-suspects-say-want-remain-silent/?test=latestnews
Supreme Court: Suspects Must Say They Want to Remain Silent
Published June 01, 2010
Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- 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.
The officers in the room said Thompkins said little during the interrogation, occasionally answering "yes," "no," "I don't know," nodding his head and making eye contact as his responses. But when one of the officers asked him if he prayed for forgiveness for "shooting that boy down," Thompkins said, "Yes."
He was convicted, but on appeal he wanted that statement thrown out because he said he invoked his Miranda rights by being uncommunicative with the interrogating officers.
The Cincinnati-based appeals court agreed and threw out his confession and conviction. The high court reversed that decision.
The case is Berghuis v. Thompkins, 08-1470.