I just heard an NPR report on the US Supreme Court's decision, 5-4, saying that to invoke one's Miranda rights, one has to speak up and inform the police that one is doing so. Silence alone is not enough. The newest associate justice, Sonja Sotomayor, dissented. Law professors across the country, be they politically to the right or to the left, also dissented. They are all correct.
It's simple logic: if you have to speak up to invoke your right to remain silent, then you do not really have a right to remain silent. Bad enough that the police are allowed to question you for hours on end in the face of your silence, to, in essence, badger you until you crack (which is what happened in the case at hand), but to allow the police and prosecutors then to use what you say against you simply shocks the conscience.
It's as if the razor-thin Supreme Court majority thinks nothing else matters because you are actually guilty. The hallmark of a truly civilized society is how it treats the most helpless of its members: the disabled, the elderly, the poor, those facing -- alone -- the full police power of the state weighing down on them. Today, we are officially less civilized than we were yesterday.
2 comments:
Seriously, this decision is so screwed up that it sounds almost like something out of Gilbert and Sullivan. Except it's not funny.
Has the Supreme Court gone nuts lately?
"Lately"? If the past 20+ years constitutes "lately," perhaps.
You are right about it sounding like Gilbert and Sullivan except for its being not funny.
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