Supreme Court Changes Miranda Rights. Suspects Must Now Say They Want To Remain Silent
WASHINGTON (AP) - Want to invoke your right to remain silent? You'll have to speak up.
In a narrowly split decision, the Supreme Court's conservative majority expanded its limits on the famous Miranda rights for criminal suspects on Tuesday - over the dissent of new Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who said the ruling turned Americans' rights of protection from police abuse "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. Thoseresults, in my view, find no basis in Miranda or our subsequent casesand are inconsistent with the fair-trial principles on which thoseprecedents are grounded."
Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion, said a suspect who goes ahead and talks to police after being informed he doesn't have to has waived his right to remain silent. Elena Kagan, who has been nominated by President Barack Obama to join the court, sided with the police as U.S. solicitor general when the case came before the court. She would replace Justice John Paul Stevens, one of the dissenters.
A right to remain silent and a right to a lawyer are at the top of the warnings that police recite to suspects during arrests and interrogations. But Tuesday's majority said that suspects must break their silence and tell police they are going to remain quiet to stop an interrogation, just as they must tell police that they want a lawyer.
This decision means that police can keep shooting questions at a suspect who refuses to talk as long as they want in hopes that the person will crack and give them some information, said Richard Friedman, a University of Michigan law professor.
"It's a little bit less restraint that the officers have to show," Friedman said.
The ruling comes in a case in which 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
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 outbecause he said he had invoked his Miranda rights by being uncommunicative with the interrogating officers.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati agreed and threw out his confession and conviction. The high court reversed that decision.
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."
He was joined in the 5-4 opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
Prosecutors cheered the decision, saying it takes the guesswork out of when police have to stop questioning suspects. "Is it too much to ask for a criminal suspect to say he doesn't want to talk to police?" said Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association.
This is the third time this session that the Supreme Court has placed limits on Miranda rights, which come from a 1966 decision - it involved police questioning of Ernesto Miranda in a rape and kidnapping case in Phoenix - requiring officers to tell suspects they have the right to remain silent and to have a lawyer represent them, even if they can't afford one.
Earlier this term, the high court ruled that a suspect's request for a lawyer is good for only 14 days after the person is released from police custody - the first time the court has placed a time limit on a request for a lawyer - and that police do not have to explicitly tell suspects they have a right to a lawyer during an interrogation.
For Justice Sotomayor, deciding to make suspects speak to have the right to remain silent was a step too far. 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."
The case is Berghuis v. Thompkins, 08-1470.
Source: KVAL
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Comment
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Comment by BuckDat on June 3, 2010 at 11:23am -
Why cant Obama put in a damn Justice who leans far to the "left"? The Supreme Court makes me sick. Yes, Sotomayor is ok but why does this new nominee have to be so ambiguous?
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Comment by osixx on June 2, 2010 at 5:48pm -
ohhh
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Comment by robierobe on June 2, 2010 at 12:44pm -
its the police job to lock u up, not to cut u a deal... thats what lawyers are for, get one!!
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Comment by robierobe on June 2, 2010 at 12:43pm
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"Just slam ya fist on the table and say I want to remain silent until my lawyer is present and put ya head down and go to sleep! Me personally, I would tell them that I would like the opportunity to write my statement out and right those exact words. You got to be hella smart this days not to get caught up by the law."
i agree with that.... got in some s*** a while back with 2 other homies... 2 of us did exactly that and the 3rd got 7
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Comment by David H. on June 2, 2010 at 11:29am -
Just slam ya fist on the table and say I want to remain silent until my lawyer is present and put ya head down and go to sleep! Me personally, I would tell them that I would like the opportunity to write my statement out and right those exact words. You got to be hella smart this days not to get caught up by the law.
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Comment by 1THUG aka UNDER BUDGET!! on June 2, 2010 at 8:39am -
this is equivalent to changing tha "INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY"...even though we have tha same system as tha british which is that you are really "GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT"...out law says we are assumed innocent...now if tha supremisist court decided tha law should be stated in reverse as "GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT"...cops could DO WHATEVER THA FUGG THEY WANT TO YOU AND YOU CANT DO SHET ABOUT IT...tha way these laws are stated makes ALL tha difference...in terms of your rights after you been arrested or place in custody or in tha jurisdiction of any law officials.............iss all juss preparation for tha 2012 doons day events.........
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Comment by 1THUG aka UNDER BUDGET!! on June 2, 2010 at 8:33am
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tha difference is now you DONT HAVE THA RIGHT to remain SILENT...you have to speak! this opens tha door for MORE BRUTAL INTERROGATIONS and FORCED CONFESSIONS....if you DONT SAY YOU WAIVE TALKIN...COPS AND JUDGES CAN NOW ASSUME THAT YOU DONT WANT TO BE SILENT AND HAVE INFORMATION TO GIVE!
so NOW if you dont say shet...it means YOU WANT TO TALK! these neggaz on tha supremisist courts done CHANGED THA WHOLE GAME AROUND ON US!....
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Comment by Sir buttah on June 2, 2010 at 4:24am -
I don't think it makes much of a difference anyway if you don't say anything then you don't say anything. No matter if I have the right to remain silent don't have it or have to say I want it, if I don't open my mouth and say anything what's the difference
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Comment by 1THUG aka UNDER BUDGET!! on June 2, 2010 at 3:32am
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tha planet is under ATTACK!
tha doons day plan has ALREADDY BEEN INITIATED!!
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Comment by 1THUG aka UNDER BUDGET!! on June 2, 2010 at 3:30am
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this shet is goin down....tha shet is goin down...this 2012 aint NO JOKE!!...im tha cosa nostra-domis of diss shet!! tha illuminotty head azz neggaz is plannin some shet to destroy tha whole planet and round tha remainin neggaz up in concentration quarantines.........i got enough of errything to lass for 3 joints...you betta:
get cha potable water ready
get cha MREs ready
get cha cann goods ready
get cha ammo and artillery READY!
get cha duck tape preferably that silverish gray duck tape cos that shet be hella strong!
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