Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights?
slate.com
slate.com
Discussing the similar case of Faisal Shahzad, who attempted to bomb Times Square, Orin Kerr, a law professor who is an expert on the 4th Amendment wrote:
"Importantly, though, it would not have violated Shahzad’s constitutional rights to not read him his Miranda rights. A lot of people assume that the police are required to read a suspect his rights when he is arrested. That is, they assume that one of a person’s rights is the right to be read their rights. It often happens that way on Law & Order, but that’s not what the law actually requires. Under Chavez v. Martinez, 538 U.S. 760 (2003), it is lawful for the police to not read a suspect his Miranda rights, interrogate him, and then obtain a statement that would be inadmissible in court. Chavez holds that a person’s constitutional rights are violated only if the prosecution tries to have the statement admitted in court. See id. at 772-73. Indeed, the prosecution is even allowed to admit any physical evidence discovered as a fruit of the statement obtained in violation of Miranda — only the actual statement is excluded. See United States v. Patane, 542 U.S. 630 (2004). So while it may sound weird, it turns out that obtaining a statement outside Miranda but not admitting it in court is lawful."
Oops, link: http://www.volokh.com/2010/05/05/shahzad-and-miranda-rights/
The Bush administration systematically created a legal netherworld for people they captured on suspicion of terrorism -- people usually referred to as "enemy combatants". They weren't arrested per se, so they weren't entitled to a trial, lawyers, or even the basic rights we associate with a criminal trial such as protection against self-incrimination (i.e. the right to remain silent). On the other hand, the administration argued they weren't prisoners of war either, so the Geneva Convention didn't apply to them.
By defining enemy combatants in this negative way -- in terms of what they are not -- the Bush administration pushed enemy combatant status into a grey area where no pre-existing legal rules seemed to apply. That's how they argued that torture was legal: they said that laws prohibiting torture only applied to prisoners of war or people charged with crimes, and that because enemy combatants weren't either of those things, they could legally be tortured.
If they had read this guy his Miranda rights, the Obama administration would have made it clear that they would treat his future as a police matter and that they were rejecting the enemy combatant framework in this case. They failed to do that, and I think it's a wasted opportunity.
(By the way, when justifying drone strikes and the courtroom procedures at Guantanamo Bay, the Obama administration has continued the enemy combatant framework that Bush's lawyers established.)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition#Torture
Completely agree with this. Unfortunately most people are too stupid to realize that in order to protect your constitutionals rights you must also protect the rights of people you do not like, i.e. hate spouting religious extremists, of any religion. Even the rights of killers like the Boston bombers must be protected if we want ours to be protected.
I do not know if you were simply clarifying the parent post or actually referring to the Boston bomber, but the fact of the matter is, you become a "convicted felon" when you've found guilty in the court of law.
you must also protect the rights of people you do not like. Even the rights of killers ... must be protected if we want ours to be protected.
On the contrary, they did not "create" it. They did, however, "invoke" it.
Things start to get murkier in 2002, after the FBI bobbled the interrogation of Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th 9/11 hijacker—the one who didn’t get on the plane—former FBI special agent Coleen Rowley wrote a memo pleading that "if prevention rather than prosecution is to be our new main goal, (an objective I totally agree with), we need more guidance on when we can apply the Quarles 'public safety' exception to Miranda's 5th Amendment requirements."
That would be the Justice department "creating" the use of the exception as a result of a screwup. Clearly they expected to screw up again, and wanted an out.
Then the Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was apprehended in December 2009, before he could blow up a plane bound for Detroit. The FBI invoked the public safety exception...
So they used the out. Once government gives itself a right, either party is loath to relinquish it.
Also, I keep thinking about how events like this (e.g. 9/11) engender sympathy and support from other nations. America can build on that goodwill--rather than dishonoring, abusing, or squandering it--and regain a fraction of international moral stature by ensuring Tsarnaev is treated as legally and morally fair as possible. This is a longer term, strategic goal (i.e. politically, socially difficult) that has been undermined and overlooked for too long.
By reading him his miranda rights? He is going to be put to death. The US doesn't need to engender sympathy it needs a credible peer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_Commo...
Unfortunately, too many people conceive of the 4th and 5th amendment protections entirely as roadblocks to hinder police for the sake of hindering the police, instead of the targeted checks on police behavior that they are. In doing so they read important parts of the amendments (e.g. "unreasonable" or precisely what a protection applies to, or precisely what sorts of activity a protection prohibits) completely out of the text of the Constitution.
We're starting from the position that, absent a public safety concern, the defendant's right to know his rights is greater than the law enforcement interest in not encouraging the defendant to exercise them, and if the cops don't read the Miranda rights then the statements aren't admissible.
Now throw in a public safety issue -- the cops have to interrogate this guy or some people could get hurt. Why does that change the result? If the public safety issue is more important than reading the defendant his rights, then it's also more important than allowing the police to use the defendant's statements in court, since we've already decided as between those things which is more important. So the consistent outcome should be for the cops to interrogate the defendant and resolve the public safety issue, but for them not to be able to use any of those statements in court.
Is there some non-obvious reason for it to not work that way?
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/supreme-court/2010/06/supre...
"The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a criminal suspect must explicitly invoke the right to remain silent during a police interrogation, a decision that dissenting liberal justices said turns the protections of a Miranda warning “upside down.”"
Bear in mind that for his trial (if he doesn't plead guilty) they'll have victim witness testimony from a person who says he saw the suspect perform a bag drop shortly before the bag exploded and blew his legs off; abundant photographic evidence, with probably more to come; whatever forensic evidence they found at the brothers' shared home; and all sorts of other information gathered in the days before he was found and captured. There'll be camera footage from the 7-11 that they held up, testimony from the person they carjacked (to whom they apparently admitted that they were the bombers), forensic evidence from the car, vast amounts of ballistics evidence...I could go on and on.
There is no way that his conviction is going to be pendant on what he says before being mirandized, and the public safety exception is about as justified here as it could ever possibly be - far more so than that in Quarles. That was a guy who allegedly had had a gun and was wearing an empty holster when caught. True, abandoned guns can be dangerous. A bumper variety pack of bombs, which it appears this suspect had and employed on multiple occasions in the last few days, presents a substantially greater risk to public safety.
Assuming that they have arrested the correct person
If I was sure they had arrested the right guy and that he was guilty of all those things, I wouldn't have put the 'assuming...' in there at all, but just stated what came after as fact.
If the man the police have arrested is indeed
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the man implicated in the
bombings...They didn't hold up the 7-11.
http://www.wbur.org/2013/04/15/live-blog-multiple-explosions...
| a way to just skirt civil liberties when
| it seems relevant
Also, as @anigbrowl says, this isn't going to be a case where the majority of evidence comes from the suspect's Miranda-less statements.
Edit: I will admit that this could hurt the suspect's eventual defense. Even if the statements aren't necessary to the prosecution's case, making them admissible in court could limit explanations put forth by the defendant.
Although creative writers love to put law enforcement characters on the horns of dilemmas like this because it makes for great drama, in real life the PIE does not get invoked that often because law enforcement doesn't want to risk blowing a case on it. Here, we're not balancing the public interest against all the rights of the suspect, but against his right to given notice of his legal situation. He could still clam up, ask for a lawyer, have one provided for him if he can't hire one etc., but the difference is that they're entitled under the PIE to ask him for information about outstanding risk factors (and only that) instead of giving him an advisory.
I'm guessing a bit here, but I have a hunch that if he said 'look, I set off those bombs on Monday, I feel terrible...' the interrogating officer would actually respond by saying 'we can discuss that later, now I just want to know about whether there are other bombs or weapons,' both because that's the actual priority and to avoid later legal challenges to do with 'fruits of the poisonous tree,' a colloquial term for improperly acquired evidence.
That's why I dislike statements like "party1's rights trump party2's rights." In reality, it's a balance, and that probably means that reasonable people can disagree on where exactly the balance point should be placed.
It is a normal and sane that a society scrutinise those cases, to make sure the exceptional stays exceptional and not the first step down a slippery slope.
There is an argument for fear in this case. The amount of exception done for terrorism "seems" quite big, compared to, for example, the cases of proven criminal let go for technical reason. Yet, there does not "seem" to be the same amount of exception to avoid due process in the name of public safety.
Also, other exception, like arresting money instead of the people in case of the war on drug. It has been proven many time that this quite clever exception, has been widely abused.
(disclaimer: "seem" between quotes because lack of hard data, and skills to find them. Would be interesting to have them though.)
Jesus this is scary thinking. You're saying the rights of a suspect go out the window when we can contrive a situation where you think other people's rights are more important?
My 'right' to murder someone is taken away by the law because it is deemed that the right of the other person to stay alive is more important.
In this case, the only right that is being taken away is the right to be informed (or reminded) of your rights prior to interrogation. He still retains his right to remain silent, he just isn't specifically told about it by police. The purpose being to allow a line of questioning that would help to eliminate the risk to the general public (in this case accomplices, hidden bombs, ties to terrorist organizations, etc). If they use this as an excuse to ask him questions that clearly aren't going to help resolve the "risk to the general public," I'm sure his defense attorney will have a field day with it.
They're not ways of skirting civil liberties. They are ways of defining the contours of their protections.
| which is why evidence obtained as a result of
| a Miranda-less interrogation is nonetheless
| admissible
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_warning#Consequences_of...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_warning#Public_safety_...
I'm not sure if having a reasonable opportunity to read someone their rights, then choosing not to, is in the spirit of the public safety exception. Public danger alone can't be the reason, since the whole reason for criminal law in the first place is to protect the public from danger. Interested if an actual lawyer could clarify.
Your assuming the motivation is to violate the suspect's rights. It might not be -- there might be a clear and reasonable aim to find out if there are others involved.
The authorities probably has a lot of evidence & a strong case without the interrogation. That they want to question the suspect about other parties or networks seems reasonable.
It's a tactic, but perhaps their primary motivation isn't to interrogate to get a conviction -- it's to garner a wider net of information. In that case, the Miranda & having the suspect clam up would be a hinderance.
Supposedly, the government believes it is gaining "no bombs more bombs exploding people in Boston" as they get the opportunity to evacuate and/or defuse, if there are any more bombs in the first place. I don't think we should deprive them of that, precisely...
The public safety exemption to Miranda rights DOES allow the results of questioning to be used as evidence. That is what is happening here.
This exception stems from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_v._Quarles
Or any evidence that those statements lead them to, if I'm not mistaken.
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
If the FBI or police try to misuse or abuse the public safety exception to attempt to get Tsarnaev to incriminate himself then they are going to have some fun times in court and get their asses handed to them. I'm skeptical that that's what's happening. I'm also skeptical that he's not been read his rights before being interrogated. Let's keep our heads on straight and avoid operating on incomplete data.
This implies he'll be going through a potentially long interrogation with the FBI that may be admittable as evidence, without having been given a Miranda warning. There is definitely something about this application of the "public safety exception", and the stare decisis discussed in the article, that gives cause for concern. We generally prefer citizens to know of their fifth amendment protections prior to a custodial interrogation. The fact he was in possession of a weapon or other armaments in his person should not defeat this aim.
Public safety is involved because, lets see, millions of people were locked in their homes, a public curfew was in effect, the dead were piling up, and no one knew how many more bombs or co-conspirators were still at large.
They have a duty to learn the full extent of the terrorism, and protect the public, First. Then, worry about prosecuting this one guy's sorry ass.
Any statements before the Miranda warning are inadmissable in court:
http://www.volokh.com/2010/05/05/shahzad-and-miranda-rights/
The public safety exception allows for some latitude for police to gather admissible information prior to giving a miranda warning.
They don't need him to say a word to convict him of a staggering number and severity of crimes. I would be surprised if they even bother trying to admit as evidence anything he says during interrogation, and after chatting with a couple of con-law lawyers who all concurred I feel that's a pretty fair guess.
That is completely false, and suggests you haven't read anything in this entire thread discussing these issues, including the link you link to.
I'd go further, and say that no statements made by an accused person should be admissible in court. That way, you don't give any incentives for coercion.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/20/boston-m...
I don't think refusing the accused a voice would really help the investigation of most cases, nor the course of justice. But the path the US (and allies, such as Great Britain) have started down is a very dark one.
The whole point of rights is to protect individuals when things get difficult, when people's emotions or political bias over ride actual justice.
When everything is normal and fine, what do you need rights for? Nothing what so ever. You only rely on them in the extremes, when things go wrong or when you are being unfairly treated by the state (or business). But that is exactly when government, law enforcement, etc want to suspend them, and they do. So, in the end, it become totally pointless.
You are suggesting that rights only have value if there are no exceptions to those rights. I disagree.
Rights have value, but there must be a way to assign value to each individual right for each person, otherwise, when you cannot grant everyone in society all of their rights simultaneously, how do you decide who gets which rights and who does not?
If my rights depend on abusing other human beings, I don't want them. They are worthless, because one day it could be me, or you.
Are you really prepared to give up your rights if law enforcements believes you threaten the rights of others? Would you accept it if you could not challenge that? Really? I bet you just assume it only happens to other people.
Lastly, this notion of every one getting their human rights simultaneously is absurd. As I said, they are only required when things go wrong or are difficult for a public to be reasonable and fair. I don't need my right to not be blown up while a police officer is observing Miranda rights, for example. This suspect's right to a free and fair trial has no baring on my right to not be harassed by government, or be blown up. Its a totally false premise, which makes no sense.
As to the other questions, if an actor deprives another person of their rights, we assign the blame to the actor alone and not to any third party who allowed it to happen unless it can be proven that the third party had the intent to allow it to happen and were therefore co-conspirators in the crime. Where rights conflict, the questions of who gets which rights and who does not are answered by writing laws and judicial opinions. Several hundred years of such work has produced ready answers for most situations.
1. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-stat...
2. I haven't been able to find video although I saw it live, this site confirms http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/19/boston-bombing-su...
So, no.
A DOJ official explains why Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzokhar Tsarnaev has not been read his Miranda rights.
"The suspect is en route to the hospital for immediate treatment," the official tells TPM's Sahil Kapur. "But we plan to invoke the public safety exception to Miranda in order to question the suspect extensively about other potential explosive devices or accomplices and to gain critical intelligence."
The public safety exception allows law enforcement officials to question suspects briefly in a legally admissable way prior to providing Miranda rights in cases of terrorism or when the public might face imminent threat.
I'm not versed in the law at all, but this seems intuitively sketchy and lacking in justification. Am I missing something?
Here in Australia, things are a little different - not talking to the police can be held against you in a court of law, as you've hindered them in their duties. I'm not sure of the details, just that the local law advice sites say "It's not like in the US on TV".
Be VERY, VERY careful before you throw out that distinction. One day you may find yourself arrested for something you did or didn't do, only to find public opinion very much against you based on little more than hearsay.
Let justice do its blind thing but it's OK for us to state the obvious. They did it.
I am embarrassed to say that I got caught up in the "reddit is internet detectives" on Thursday and Friday. It was only after a lot of thought Friday evening that I realized where my own head was and how far away from where I wanted to be I was.
But believe in your State™.
I do believe that the State™ (in this case, not my state, as I'm not American) has the right and the responsibility to do what they are doing.
But hey, lets us tort laws because the ends justify the means, because we all know something like this will never happen again once this person or all possible related persons are brought to justice.
Well if the FBI has to release photos to the public for people they were already well aware of, I'm sure anything they call evidence would suffice, much in the same manor Netanyahu could parade in front of the UN with his Wile-e-Coyote poster.
| I'm just a lowly peasant who has no say in
| the political process
| Well if the FBI has to release photos to the public
| for people they were already well aware of
Additionally, they don't need to know who someone is to have evidence that they did something. They could have a video of him planting the bomb, for example. Just because they don't know who it is in the video doesn't mean that they don't have evidence once they connect the face with a name.
Well after consulting with people behind some of tech behind OWS, I doubt something like this would be effective. After all, you paint a big red x on yourself for the FBI spooks to go after, while senators and bankers call you domestic terrorists while the police and private security beat you in the streets for not staying in the "Free Speech Zones". I think letting the country go down the path most of its citizens are willing to let if come to will suffice.
Yes, no doubt this person will be going to prison. But you suggest that they dont know who was in the video, and even the FBI has stated that they were well aware of who they were before the incident had even taken place. People have been saying matter-of-factly that they planted the bombs… gee wiz, I wonder where they got that idea since they haven't been convicted of anything yet.
In the meantime I'll keep pushing code and my matsci knowledge to Defense Distributed, since we all know real political power comes from the barrel of a gun (or a drone…).
You could try doing it without calling for a war to kill everybody who disagrees with you, without turning to violence as your first resort, without trying to change the names of public parks that were named after civil rights activists, without raping the women who make the mistake of joining your movement alone and before becoming members of the protected in-crowd, without the antisemitism, without seizing or destroying public property, without trying to divide society against itself, without shitting on police cars, without demanding that other people pay for the costs of your expenses that you create, etc, etc.
TL/DR: Don't be a bunch of fascist yobs or else society might treat you like you're a bunch of fascist yobs.
I was just helping them out with technical things and stating what I saw + heard from their experiences.
As I mentioned already I think this type of protest is highly ineffective in country where you can effectively shut down a city with coercive fear mongering.
But hey, people are willing to let it become like this so it will only continue. I'll sit back and watch the State™ wash itself in its own flames :D
You would rather see yourself as a helpless pesant being oppressed than admit you're closer in status to the bourgeoisie.
You sound like my old friend Steve. So let me say this: don't do anything stupid, you will get caught. I think he's out of prision now but I don't talk to him anymore.
I was really hoping that I could personally make the world a better place by engaging in discussion on HN that would ultimately go on to change the world, and ultimately gain some much needed ego points I could cash in for that Tesla™!
Thank you almighty oracle, you have brought me salvation! :D
P.S. Steve is probably better off without you in his life :P
It's insane that confessions are admissible at all really, since they are almost always false.
When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was interrogated, they only asked him questions that they already knew the answers to. They weren't immediately trying to get information. They were trying to get cooperation. Once he started answering truthfully, then they asked him questions for information.
In this case, it seems pretty unlikely to actually matter.
I guess all rights can have restrictions in this country except gun ownership.
Several Senators have insisted he should NOT be mirandized a couple days after voting down background-checks for all gun sales. I don't understand how they can not implode from their lack of consistency.
I think the argument is specifically about how the positions they hold are inconsistent. This says nothing about the positions themselves. Doesn't even imply it, to my eyes!
So apparently immigration restrictions despite there will always been some who immigrate illegally = okay, but gun restrictions even though there will always be some with illegal guns = nope.
I find this increadibly dangerous. Does that mean the police will move against "potential" crimes? Against people making plans? I hereby jokingly declare that I am planning to steal a cucumber at my local supermarket. Does this make me a goal of preventive action? Did I commit a thought-crime?
1984 and Minority Report come to mind when people say stuff like this.
But where does it stop? If, hypothetically, children raised by a single mother are more likely to commit violent crimes, then it ought to be illegal to be a single mother. That sort of law, which seems crazy, seems to be along the same thought process of why you shouldn't use your cell phone while driving.
So the right to a family life (to use the EU term) is held to be very important, and thus the bar to sterilisation/removing children is really high. The right to use a phone whilst driving on a publicly maintained road is not. Especially as the public's right not to have a 1 ton+ vehicle travelling at speed driving in an impaired fashion is quite important.
Plus it is about mitigating harms. Handsfree kits are allowed for example.
The exact thing happens in this case. His right to be silent or have a lawyer present is not infringed. His right to be informed whilst being asked questions relating to public safety about future threats is being infringed, because society shouldn't have to choose between future potential victims and prosecuting an individual for crimes already committed.
Attempting to commit a crime is also a crime in many jurisdictions, and only requires one person - maybe a prosecutor could convince a court that Derbasti was going to steal something, as demonstrated in a HN comment, but the plan was foiled.
Also, perhaps it is a threat - if other comments could be used to show that he/she was threatening the local supermarket unless they do something, perhaps charges for threatening could be filed.
Edit: Your claim that this is limited to mainly English speaking countries is not even true.
"Most nations prosecute inchoate acts (such as conspiracy and incitation) in their domestic criminal law."
https://www.law.upenn.edu/journals/jil/jilp/articles/1-1_Ste...
Now, the question is this: do the authorities make a big deal of not reading him his Miranda warning simply because they expect that if they do he will excercise his rights? Or are they implying, without saying it explicitly that he has no constitutional rights? If it is the latter, then this is worse than declaring him an enemy combatant (for which I see no basis), since now it basically means that anyone the Feds want to nail badly enough can fall under this category.
Imagine a hacker who responsibly disclosed a security issue with some military property being declared as having no fifth amendment rights. Does that sound like a precident we want?
I am not in any way trying to condone Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's actions. At the very least, he fired shots at the police on his own accord and I am fairly certain we will find out a whole lot more terrible stuff as the investigation continues. However, I am not a fan of how the interrogation is being presented.
Remember, the authorities are perfectly free to interrogate you as much as they like without reading you any warnings at all. It's only at trial that the warnings become relevant. If your case isn't going to trial, it's not relevant.
My issue is that despite the horrific things that the suspect allegedly, and in my mind certainly, has done, he has certain rights, like the right to remain silent and the right to representation. Whether the case goes to trial or not, is irrelevant to how the detainee is treated. Otherwise, the police can pick you up, rough you up, prevent you from contacting anyone on the outside world, and then release you, saying that they never intended for you to go to trial, so it's all good.
> Remember, the authorities are perfectly free to interrogate you as much as they like without reading you any warnings at all.
I don't believe they are. I believe they need probable cause, and they need to charge me with something first. Otherwise, I would be living in a police state where I am presumed guilty unless proven innocent. The warning itself is meaningless. It only comes into play if I can reasonably claim that I did not know the Constitution.
Unless they're questioning an unconcious person, there is no gray area.
I was expecting an invocation of a god or the State™ whims, but an appeal to some kind of morality not mentioned in relation to works just as well.
/sarc
/sarc
Well if the State™ has to circumvent it's own laws to achieve some ends (which i doubt are really ends since incidents like this will continue to happen), one could argue that grounds for morality are null and void.
After all, that's what Terrorists™ do.
Also, people have a natural tendency toward defending themselves after being accused. Being read your rights is a reminder, in the heat of the moment, that no, you don't have to talk and you have the right not to. And your right to remain silent is important even if you're not guilty (maybe especially!). Dont Talk to Police: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
References:
[1] Think Progress - http://goo.gl/DPV6L [2] Wall Street Journal - http://goo.gl/fEPnO
Now where did you buy those pressure cookers, hmm?
But in this case, certainly they should ensure he doesn't die due to lack of medical attention while they attempt to read him his Miranda rights.
It's just another example of how far our nation has fallen in a relatively short period of time.
Completely disagree.
There's a vast difference between assassinations without trial of both US and foreign nationals vs. not reading a suspect their Miranda rights. Note that the rights themselves are not being stripped away, as is obviously the case with the former.
This doesn't mean either practice is noble or desirable, but it's patently ridiculous to draw false hyperbole-laced equivalencies all over the map.
In short, the Supreme Court ruled that not informing suspects of these rights violated the amendments, and the Constitution itself says they have the right to do that.
If we don't treat the worst of us the same as the best, what can the rest of us expect?
Here is a real risk to end like in Madrid's 11-M, dead terrorists -> no answers -> a lot of problems for all spaniards. The FBI will probably want to secure the game and to avoid this, and to avoid the spreading of rumours for years also. The full recovering of this guy probably is in his priority's list now. And I'm not joking at all. Simply there is no point in let him die; only other terrorists (if they are other terrorists) could gain something with this. It's the old same history since Lee Harvey Oswald.
So, not much of a commitment at all. I am so committed to my wife that I only recognize one exception to my marriage vows: if I get a chance with a really attractive woman, then not only can I do it, but I can charge my wife for the cost of dinner.
I think the proper balance would probably be to allow physical evidence produced under "implied duress" (being in confinement/control and asked without being notified of Miranda rights), but not statements. So, maybe 25% more restrictive than the current legal standard.
The true problem with Mirandizing someone is that anyone who isn't a fucking moron will realize "oh, I shouldn't say anything until I get an attorney". Physical evidence is assumed to not depend upon statements to discover, but it certainly will be discovered faster with a statement. This argument isn't actually 100% valid in some scenes and with some types of evidence.
I don't have as much of a problem with lack of notification of someone of his rights vs. not giving him rights when demanded, too -- interrogating someone without Mirandizing him, in a very limited fashion, is less objectionable than doing the same interrogation under direct threat or execution of death/physical attack, drugs, etc.
No turn on red.
Second, I was expecting him to mention a case where the police or FBI didn't read the rights to what turned out to be a non-threat/wrong accusation, etc. At least in all the cases mentioned this is not the case, the person presented a clear and present danger.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/us/boston-marathon-bombing...
And the police will win the case _anyway_ because we got so much evidence on this guy they can win the case in their sleep. So it all won't matter in the long run.
Thats the good thing about the courts. The Police don't decide whether or not they're exercising the Public Safety Exception... the courts do.
Only a court can convict someone.
Only a convicted person may be legally punished.
Before a conviction can occur, there must be suspicion, and most probably an arrest. A suspect is still to be treated as innocent.
If you allow suspects to be punished, you allow innocents to be punished. At that point, the rule of law has ended, and your country is not part of the civilized world anymore.
This discussion is all about future cases.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/20/boston-m...
Also, as a friend commented -- labelling this as "an act of terrorism" has another effect: making many insurance policies void. Were it a "mass murderer" (as I believe seem to more correct, based on what we know so far of what happened) -- most of those policies would still be valid.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5583278
Gee, where have I heard her name before?
I guess that is because at the end of the day the odds of me being substantively impacted from terrorism is actually low. The odds of me being impacted from degradation of constitutional protections, actually quite high and I would argue I experience quite frequently.
I just found my own emotional reaction interesting, and indicative that winning for the terrorists is solely in how we react.
What the feds are really interested in is the intelligence they can gather in regards to terrorist activity. If this is part of something bigger, the feds need to figure it out.
Don't talk to the police http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
From what I understand there is no such things as miranda rights. They are miranda reminders about your rights granted by the US Constitution.
Also any country worth living in has anti self incrimination right.
Any law enforcement is screwing themselves by not advising a suspect about his "Miranda" rights. They are risking blowing up the case and forcing the courts to toss evidence that could be critical to achieve a conviction.
In 1941 Adolf Hitler ordered a directive intended to suppress members of the resistance. It was called Nacht und Nebel ("Night and Fog"). People suspected of "offenses against the Reich" would disappear without any trace.
Who could be considered suspect? "anyone endangering German security" (die deutsche Sicherheit gefährden).
The public safety exception is a very specific exception. Let's say you're a cop who just caught a guy who has rigged a building with bombs and you ask him where the bombs are and how to disarm them. If he tells you and incriminates himself before being mirandized that's still kosher. That's the public safety exception. Period.
If you ask him "why did you do this", and you haven't mirandized him yet and he confesses right then but recants later, you dun fucked up.
-Benjamin Franklin
The point of the Miranda warning is to make it crystal-clear that a suspect is aware that he doesn't have to speak to police without a lawyer, and is aware that if he does speak to police, what he says can be used against him. The Miranda warning is not a right; it's literally a warning, meant to save people from their own ignorance of their actual rights.
It also does not mean police can't question someone, just that if they do, and don't observe certain forms, a court may not allow the resulting evidence to be admitted at trial.
In this case, the police are basically going to go ahead with questioning, and let the courts sort out later what's admissible and what's not. Courts have been known to allow non-Mirandized statements obtained in circumstances where some immediate risk made it impractical to give the warning before asking a question.
It is in times such as these, it is the most important to remind us of this.
1) In this particular case, the public safety exception to Miranda has been around since 1984 (cue Orwellian conspiracy theories). So, for almost 30 years (longer than my existence), Americans have been "deprived" of this "liberty". Suddenly it becomes an issue in 2013 for armchair devil's advocates in a pretty much open-shut case of domestic terrorism.
Furthermore, the Miranda warning never existed in Ben Franklin's time -- it's a "right" given to us purely via judicial policy. Given that not even Ben Franklin thought that an explicit reading of one's Constitutional rights was worthy of inclusion in the amendments, one could argue that the Miranda warning is a "nonessential liberty," in which case Franklin's quote wouldn't even apply.
2) The same people who spew out this quote give up liberty for safety every day as a convenience. Our purchases, thoughts, questions, conversations, and movements are all monitored on a daily basis. Ironically, the people who frequent HN are actually the ones responsible for not only implementing these monitoring technologies, but also monetizing them--figuring out how to use all of this data collected on you to squeeze extra nickels and dimes out of you. In these cases, we give up liberty for...what, exactly? "Free" products? Certainly not safety. This "it's only wrong if the government does it" BS doesn't fly with me. We ARE the government.
3) The quote itself doesn't explain why those who choose to give up liberty for safety deserve neither--in fact, the only thing going for this quote at all was that Ben Franklin said it. Take away the attribution and you're left with an empty sound bite.
Good point. I think of Maslovs hierarchy and decisions rational people take almost every time they are in danger.
Nuanced, it is not.
You just want to feel safe. And watching the good guys kill this guy should provide a quick shot of safety and revenge in what must be a dark and terrified world.
But you can't call it justice if you don't care at all about the details and just want blood.