WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that suspects must tell police explicitly that 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.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is a major step towards sanity regarding the prior overbearing applications of
Miranda v Arizona. It was previously incumbent upon law enforcement officers — and those of you in law enforcement know of whence I speak and write — to almost beg suspects NOT to talk to them.
The historic tri-pronged approach used to customarily apply in re Miranda admonishment:
1. Custodial
2. Interrogation
3. By a peace officer
Any one leg lacking does not require admonishment. . .
However, there have been so many exceptions and niche/boutique and abundantly convoluted and conflicting opinions issued following the original Miranda ruling, that departments became collectively gun-shy and applied Miranda in ridiculous ways — which resulted in clear and obvious suspects being released and, worse, not only treated with stellar deference (look at OJ Simpson: questioned for perhaps 2.35 seconds by fearful LAPD detectives!) but not even questioned at all!
This new SCOTUS ruling essentially says: Look, you DON’T have to tell people to shut up!
The very disappointing aspect of the decison: it was a 5 – 4 ruling.
Not shockingly, the newest justice, Mexican female Sonia Sotomayor — who has said “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life” — wrote, in dissent for the court’s Leftists, that the new ruling “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.”
My gosh. I concur with her! If you wish to remain silent you should SAY SO. No response should logically = keep on questioning!
If you are that stupid, after all these years, then there should be consequences. If you are literally mentally defective, then that will out at arraignment. Capacity is another issue entirely.
Cops should not have to “tippy-toe” around common sense!
Today, oddly enough, logic ruled the day.
But wait! Won’t this also affect terrorists as well? Why yes, it will.
That is, of course, until Mr Obama can further stack SCOTUS. And stack he will.
BZ
Interesting… VERY interesting… 🙂
Jennifer: my apologies. I’ve read two of your books. You are SO far beyond these guys as to be laughable. My point was to compare them to one or two drops of testosterone. Quite frankly, your stuff ROCKS!
BZ
BZ, don’t FEED their egos man… Ignore em, delete em and move on man… You’re letting them know that they are getting your goat…
Get a WP.org platform and ban em, you’ll never see em again…
Good points.
Whoa. someone got a bit of a spankin’.
gotta get back to my romance reading now, but thanks for keeping things lively.
So BZ, do you think we will have another court deeming that the cops must tell the accused that he/she can avoid interrogation by stating it to police?
I guess not, as you have said “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.”
That fairly firm, as these things go. BZ, I don’t think we will have votes of a major majority on these important issues.
Can of this be retro-active?
Thanks to TV and Cop shows most Americans know their “Miranda rights” better than the rest of the Constitution. Most crooks know them by heart.
I wonder if we can get some TV shows to quote the 2nd and 10th Amendments.
So much for the first comment; deleted. TF is right.
Otherwise, it will be interesting to see how LE agencies will react to this ruling. Whether they will take it to heart or not trust it and keep things in re Miranda the very same way it is applied now.
BZ
I think this is great but I also think it’s an eye opener. Sotomayor is the future of the court and the next pick of “The WON” will tip the balance so far liberpuke that it will take 30 years to UNFK it.
I remember explicity when the “miranda” rights were put forth to be explicity followed when we stopped some perp, or arrested a “deviate”.
I followed it during my 35 years as a LEO.
Almost all perps want to brag about their exploits, and “I always had a portable recorder working 100% to get their exploits first hand”.
Our Federal Magistrate loved this, as it made his job very easy.
99% of perps want to brag about their conquests, and I recorded it all.
So, Miranda, go fuck yourself and the horse you rode in on.
My work was sound, and I can look back on it from retirement, that I did a superlative job of incarcerating as many of the scumbags that I encountered!
BTW, I stand corrected: Sotomayor is not Mexican; she is Puerto Rican.
BZ
mrchuck: with regard to your recording statements — you were clearly quite ahead of your time.
I was able to pull this off a few times in my patrol vehicle; I’d leave a recorder running on my seat particularly when I had multiple suspects in my car behind the cage. I’d listen, later, whilst they tried to get their stories straight.
From this: there is NO “reasonable expectation of privacy” around or near a peace officer.
Further, in detectives, I can’t tell you how many Beheler Admonishments I proffered.
BZ
BZ