What the Hell?! So we have a right to remain silent AFTER we’re told we have the right to remain silent or it WILL be used against us?
This nation is lost.
So you have to be told you have a right in order to invoke it? This makes absolutely no sense. If he’s in custody and subjected to interrogation, he has the right to remain silent and Miranda v. Arizona requires the police to inform the accused of the right to remain silent. If they don’t advise him of the right, they can’t use any statements made. Now they say that if you don’t make a statement, they can use that.
I’d have to read the whole opinion, but this does not square logically.
Technially, if you are silent, nothing can be used against you, since you haven’t said anything. The perp in the case had started answering questions and then stopped. It’s not pick and choose. Either stay silent or speak, whether mirandized or not.
There is no Constitution any more. You can’t even ask someone if they are a citizen before they vote and now you can’t even keep your mouth shut before being mirandized?
I've wondered about ballistic matching on shotguns. I would guess they could chemically match the shot recovered from similar rounds in the perps possession, but that's general enough to allow reasonable doubt. Can they match striations from bullet to barrel on a shotgun if you're firing buck shot?
But also said your silence can’t be used against you if you explicitly invoke your Fifth Amendment right to remai silent.
This is ridiculous. Just don’t offer anything to the cops but “I want my attorney.” They are not your friends and they are not there to “help” you.
“Texas courts disagreed, saying pre-Miranda silence is not protected by the Constitution.
WHAT???? Since when does our right to be silent require to first be read that right???
In other words, you do not have the right to be silent until they read you the right to be silent.
This is a bad decision.
The average person is not a defense lawyer and doesn’t know that you can forfeit your 5th amendment rights by answering a question. I just learned that myself in the last month as part of the IRS thing.
If excorcising your fifth amendment rights can be used against you as an implication of guilt then you have no fifth amendment right.
I hope they appeal.
SCOTUS ping.
Gee another 5-4 decision! Without even attempting to debate on the actual issue, it is one more proof, we do not have a USSC court to judge laws base upon the Constitution.
These are nothing but political hacks with the goal of protecting the ruling elite at all costs.
No other explanation holds water as these are supposed to be the best and brightest legal minds, (meaning they can distort the truth better than anyone else), and they cannot agree any better than 5-4 on what a rather small document means even when it comes with an Owners Manual known as the Federalist Papers.
None of the branches of the Federal government are doing their Constitutional limited tasks yet we have done nothing!
There is the fall-back of, when asked questions by the police, to respond with the “name, rank, and serial number” mnemonic, except by saying, “Please direct all statements and questions to my attorney.”
Remember that invoking your rights is meaningless until you have been arrested. And the police will use that against you.
Importantly, the police can use “catch and release” against you. That is, tell you that you are under arrest, give you your Miranda warnings, and then ask you questions that they tell you cannot be used in court. When you answer, if you give them useful information, they can *release* you from arrest, and use that information to gather incriminating evidence, then re-arrest you.
This is a really nasty trick, but has been upheld by at least one federal court.
So the bottom line, is never, ever, talk to the police.
The bizarre thing is that it was the liberal judges who dissented!!???
The conservative judges were fine with giving away our fifth amendment rights.
Seems to me the world has gone insane. This sort of hogwash is embarrassing to read:
“Petitioner claims that reliance on the Fifth Amendment privilege is the most likely explanation for silence in a case like his, but such silence is “insolubly ambiguous.” See Doylev. Ohio, 426 U. S. 610, 617. To be sure, petitioner might have declined to answer the officer’s question in reliance on his constitutional privilege. But he also might have done so because he was trying to think of a good lie, because he was embarrassed, or because he was protecting someone else. Not every such possible explanation for silence is probative of guilt, but neither is every possible explanation protected by the Fifth Amendment. Petitioner also suggests that it would be unfair to require a suspect unschooled in the particulars of legal doctrine to do anything more than remain silent in order to invoke his “right to remain silent.” But the Fifth Amendment guarantees that no one may be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” not an unqualified “right to remain silent.”
The decision can be read in full here:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-246_7l48.pdf
If the US Supreme Court says there is a “right to remain silent”, then this statement seems fair:
“Petitioner also suggests that it would be unfair to require a suspect unschooled in the particulars of legal doctrine to do anything more than remain silent in order to invoke his “right to remain silent.”
If there is NOT a right to remain silent, then what the hell was Miranda decided on?
Bottom line - if asked anything, tell the cops you want to speak to a lawyer.