High court trims Miranda warning rights bit by bit

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100802/ap_on_go_su_co/us_supreme_court_miranda

High court trims Miranda warning rights bit by bit

By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer J. Holland, Associated Press

Writer – 39 mins ago

WASHINGTON – You have the right to remain silent, but only if you tell the

police that you're remaining silent.

You have a right to a lawyer — before, during and after questioning, even though

the police don't have to tell you exactly when the lawyer can be with you. If

you can't afford a lawyer, one will be provided to you. Do you understand these

rights as they have been read to you, which, by the way, are only good for the

next two weeks?

The Supreme Court made major revisions to the now familiar Miranda warnings this

year. The rulings will change the ways police, lawyers and criminal suspects

interact amid what experts call an attempt to pull back some of the rights that

Americans have become used to over recent decades.

The high court has made clear it's not going to eliminate the requirement that

police officers give suspects a Miranda warning, so it is tinkering around the

edges, said L. Fisher, co-chair of the amicus committee of the National

Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

" It's death by a thousand cuts, " Fisher said. " For the past 20-25 years, as the

court has turned more conservative on law and order issues, it has been

whittling away at Miranda and doing everything it can to ease the admissibility

of confessions that police wriggle out of suspects. "

The court placed limits on the so-called Miranda rights three times during the

just-ended session. Experts viewed the large number of rulings as a statistical

aberration, rather than a full-fledged attempt to get rid of the famous 1966

decision. The original ruling emerged from police questioning of Ernesto Miranda

in a rape and kidnapping case in Phoenix. It required officers to tell suspects

taken into custody that they have the right to remain silent and to have a

lawyer represent them, even if they can't afford one.

The court's three decisions " indicate a desire to prune back the rules

somewhat, " Kent Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal

Foundation, a victims' rights group. " But I don't think any overruling of

Miranda is in the near future. I think that controversy is pretty much dead. "

The Supreme Court in 2000 upheld the requirement that the Miranda warning be

read to criminal suspects.

This year's Supreme Court decisions did not mandate changes in the wording of

Miranda warnings read by arresting police officers. The most common version is

now familiar to most Americans, thanks to television police shows: " You have the

right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a

court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford

an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as

they have been read to you? "

However, the court did approve one state version of the Miranda warnings that

did not specifically inform suspects that they had a right to have a lawyer

present during their police questioning.

The Miranda warning used in parts of Florida told suspects: " You have the right

to talk to a lawyer before answering any of our questions. If you cannot afford

to hire a lawyer, one will be appointed for you without cost and before any

questioning. You have the right to use any of these rights at any time you want

during this interview. "

Lawyers — and the Florida Supreme Court — said that didn't make clear that

lawyers can be present as the police are doing their questioning. But Justice

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing the 7-2 majority decision, said all the required

information was there.

" Nothing in the words used indicated that counsel's presence would be restricted

after the questioning commenced, " Ginsburg said. " Instead, the warning

communicated that the right to counsel carried forward to and through the

interrogation. "

The next day, the court unanimously limited how long Miranda rights are valid.

The high court said for the first time that a suspect's request for a lawyer is

good for only 14 days after the person is released from police custody. The 9-0

ruling pulled back from an earlier decision that said that police must halt all

questioning for all time if a suspect asks for a lawyer.

Police can now attempt to question a suspect who asked for a lawyer — once the

person has been released from custody for at least two weeks — without violating

the person's constitutional rights and without having to repeat the Miranda

warning.

" In our judgment, 14 days will provide plenty of time for the suspect to get

reacclimated to his normal life, to consult with friends and counsel and to

shake off any residual coercive effects of his prior custody, " said Justice

Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion.

And finally, the court's conservatives used their 5-4 advantage to rule that

suspects must break their silence and tell police they are going to remain quiet

if they want to invoke their " right to remain silent " and stop an interrogation,

just as they must tell police that they want a lawyer.

All the criminal suspect needs to say is he or she is remaining silent, wrote

Justice Kennedy. " 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. "

But Justice Sotomayor said the majority's decision " turns Miranda upside

down. "

" Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent —

which counter intuitively 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. "

Police officers will look at these decisions and incorporate them into their

training, said Pasco of the National Fraternal Order of Police. " Officers

are expected to adapt to changes required by the Supreme Court, " Pasco said.

" This will be no different. "

But Fisher thinks the court's Miranda decisions will make it easier for police

to get confessions out of people who don't want to confess. " Those decisions

open up ways for cops to work around Miranda, " Fisher said.

[Guest guest]

And Congress has been trimming back our Constitutional Rights and adding so many federal laws to the register it is estimated that the average American now commits at least 3 felonies per day. The Second Amendment has long been under assault, at least since the 1920's. The First has also been under direct assault by way of "campaign reform" laws like McCaine-Finegold. Since then, they have tried "lobbyist" reform bills and so on that are only going further harm political speech. That's not even counting the hate crimes statutes which will be the most insidious of them all.

So, why wouldn't Miranda be cut back?

In a message dated 8/2/2010 4:08:29 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, no_reply writes:

High court trims Miranda warning rights bit by bit