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June 1st, 2010, 01:55 PM #1
Supreme Rules on Miranda!!!!!!!!!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_suprem...miranda_rights
Court: Suspects must say they want to be silent
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– The US Supreme Court in Washington, DC. The US Supreme Court has upheld the custody rights of a British … By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer Jesse J. Holland, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 53 mins ago
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.Last edited by customloaded; June 1st, 2010 at 02:02 PM.
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June 1st, 2010, 02:07 PM #2
Re: Supreme Rules on Miranda!!!!!!!!!
You have the Right to Remain Silent, Sorta, you have to speak to invoke it. Huh? You must speak to be silent. And one wonders why our country is going in a wrong directoin.
How does one who is deaf or unable to speak communicate to Law Enforcement they do not wish to interact with them?
I do not agree with the decision.
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June 1st, 2010, 02:08 PM #3Grand Member
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Re: Supreme Rules on Miranda!!!!!!!!!
being discussed here:
http://forum.pafoa.org/political-was...nt-silent.htmlF*S=k
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