I have seen the future.

Yeah, I do.

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The thing is, as much as Miranda was a huge, monumental, game-changing decision in some ways, in others, it wasn't really a success at what it tried to do. The idea was to stop coerced confessions while allowing properly-obtained confessions...without a good definition of what "coerced" or "properly-obtained" actually mean (We're all clear that Jack Bauering a suspect is bad; but what about lying to him about DNA matches? Or the photocopier "lie detector" trick?). In addition, what ended up happening was the creation of Miranda warnings, which become part of the automatic routine and aren't the important clarifications they were designed to be.

And while Miranda included language for "what the rights should sound like," it specifically said that other language could work. Case in point: Florida v. Powell had the cops tell Powell “You have the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any of our questions,” and “[y]ou have the right to use any of these rights at any time you want during this interview," instead of a more "classic" formulation. The Supreme Court decided that this was sufficient explanation of the right to counsel.

His Weaselly Majesty calls this "lying to a suspect." I'm not sure I agree.

As to Maryland v. Shatzer, the question was, if you invoke your right to counsel in interrogation, and they stop interrogating you (which is the normal response to the invocation of the right to counsel) two weeks later when they start interrogating you again, have you still invoked your right to counsel, or has that invocation effectively dissipated due to the break? The Supreme Court says yes.

Which goes to show you. If ever you are in police custody and interrogation, demand a lawyer as clearly and as loudly as you can, and do it every chance you get.

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Are you perhaps a newspaper reporter? Or am I merely missing something here, since your "headlines" don't seem to bear too much resemblance to their respective syllabi. The first one seems to be an exaggeration, stretching the ruling almost (but not quite) to the breaking point in order to get an alarming newsbite. The second seems to completely mis-represent the ruling in that there's no indication that the suspect WASN'T read his rights in the second questioning. I agree that it opens the door to "we'll just keep bringing him back in until he slips up," but I can't see where it absolves the cops from reading the rights each time.

Both of these rulings are indeed troubling, and I suppose you might have phrased things this way in order to get people to follow the links, but isn't there already enough fear mongering going on?

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His Weaselly Majesty calls this "lying to a suspect." I'm not sure I agree.

They tell you that you have a right to speak to an attorney *before* interrogation, not during. They then, in a separate sentence, tell you that you have the right to stop the interrogation and talk to an attorney, but then *the attorney leaves and the interrogation resumes*.

This is NOT a sufficient explanation. This is a bald-faced lie: At no point do they tell you you have the right to an attorney present during interrogation and they strongly imply that no such right exists.

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The second seems to completely mis-represent the ruling in that there's no indication that the suspect WASN'T read his rights in the second questioning.

In fact, the suspect explicitly was, according to the opinions.

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soappuppy.livejournal.com

Here's a little more information on that....

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2010/0223/Supreme-Court-rules-that-police-can-ad-lib-Miranda-warnings (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2010/0223/Supreme-Court-rules-that-police-can-ad-lib-Miranda-warnings)

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You're wrong about the second case: He was read his Miranda rights at the time of the second interview, and waived them in writing. What the SCOTUS ruling says is that two and a half years is a long enough period of time that the cops aren't considered to be badgering you into waiving your rights, even if that time was spent in prison.

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They tell you that you have a right to speak to an attorney *before* interrogation, not during. They then, in a separate sentence, tell you that you have the right to stop the interrogation and talk to an attorney, but then *the attorney leaves and the interrogation resumes*.

This is NOT a sufficient explanation. This is a bald-faced lie: At no point do they tell you you have the right to an attorney present during interrogation and they strongly imply that no such right exists.

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Oh, I see the argument. I'm just not sure what I think.

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I suspect I would make a terrible defense lawyer. If a man came to me and said, "The way the cops said it made it sound like I couldn't have a lawyer with me the whole time, and that's why I told them about my illegal gun - can you get me out of prison?" I'd slap him with a haddock.

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You're right.

You would make a terrible defense lawyer.

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Actually, it seems like the question in Shatzer was "if they start interrogating you again, is it 'badgering the suspect into waiving his Miranda rights' (which is not allowed) if the suspect spent the time between interrogations in prison?" Their answer was "No, you are not badgering the suspect, carry on."

Shatzer was read his Miranda rights at each interrogation, and waived them in writing during the second one. TWK's headline is wrong.

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I'm generally of the opinion that anyone who admits to doing anything illegal, to a cop, deserves what they get.

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You misunderstand the issue.

According to prior case law (mainly Edwards v. Arizona), once you invoke your right to counsel in custodial interrogation, all interrogation must cease until you are provided with counsel (with the exception of a narrow carve-out for if you initiate interrogation without any police pressure whatsoever--it's complicated but not important here). This case asked if there's an upper limit on how long interrogation must cease for. Answer? Yes. Fourteen days.

If you invoke your right to counsel and they stop interrogation for a week, then start interrogating you again, that's invalid unless they provide you with counsel. Two weeks or up--including three years, as here--is valid.

Edited Date: 2010-02-24 07:37 pm (UTC)

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That is why I said that you did not stretch it beyond it's breaking point. However, they did inform him of his right to consult a lawyer and, presumably, had he done so the lawyer would have corrected such a miss-understanding.

I agree that this ruling will probably result in behavior that we don't wish the police force engaging in. I disagree that a "strong implication" is the same thing as a "bald faced lie."

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And if the person admits to doing something illegal (true or not) because he's being rubber-hosed?

What if he's just been in an interrogation room for nine hours, denied food, water, or even bathroom breaks?

What about constant questioning for those nine hours, and "all you have to do is tell us what you did, and we can stop"?

That's what Miranda was designed to stop. (Well, the second and third, anyway. The first was already unconstitutional.)

Thing is...it didn't exactly work out as designed.

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Yes, there was the "he was released back into prison, does that count?" issue...but that reads as a secondary concern to me. "Back into general prison population constitutes release from custodial interrogation as much as back into public."

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You're right, you'd make a terrible lawyer, because you tend to think that actually being guilty trumps your rights. And that's bad.

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I disagree that a "strong implication" is the same thing as a "bald faced lie."

They've gone way out of their way to word things specifically to give the wrong impression that they want to give. They *could* tell him his rights in a clear and accurate way, and they specifically *don't* do that because they find it useful to have the suspect misunderstand in the way they're trying to make him misunderstand.

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Actually, the ruling said that 14 days was long enough, and that is where I agree with theweaselking. I don't think that, given the length of many investigations, it's too large a stretch of imagination to think that therer will be cases of "we'll just keep bring him back every two weeks until he slips up or we get another lead."

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pope-guilty.livejournal.com

Being a defense attourney isn't about giving people what they deserve, other than in the sense that everyone, by law, has a right to the best defense available. That's the whole basis of the oppositional system, rather than, say, the Confucian system.

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Possibly my personal decision to lie as rarely as possible has colored my opinion of what constitutes a lie. Do you think I was lying to my former co-workers when I debated their bible interpretations citing chapter and verse, (trying to soften their stances on topics such as homosexuality) thereby letting them think that I was christian? I was aided in this by the fact that they apparently assumed I was one from the very first and then never asked me, but the fact is that I actively concealed my beliefs from them by choosing which truths to tell them.

Please note that I know that this is a tangent, there is no law requiring me to inform my co-workers about my beliefs whereas there is one requiring the police to inform suspects of their rights. However, we seem to be arguing from different definitions of certain words.

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publius1.livejournal.com

Let's also not forget that Crime and Punishment conservatives actively hate Miranda, think it's a disgrace to the law, and want it stricken from the books, and consider every ruling like this to be one incremental step down the road to defanging the ruling entirely.

Me, I personally am a huge fan of it.

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publius1.livejournal.com

I still think there's nuance here; they said "before answering any questions", which is different from "interrogation" to me.

I mean by this that "interrogation" to me constitutes a series of questions during a block of time, whereas "answering any questions" can happen multiple times over the course of one interrogation, and they should understand from that, that they have the right to ask for a lawyer before answering anything.

That this sort of heavy parsing of Miranda rights defeats the entire purpose of reading Miranda rights to someone who might not know them is its own serious issue though!

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