Posted on 08/15/2014 3:47:36 PM PDT by Jet Jaguar
The California Supreme Court has ruled that the silence of suspects can be used against them.
Wading into a legally tangled vehicular manslaughter case, a sharply divided high court on Thursday effectively reinstated the felony conviction of a man accused in a 2007 San Francisco Bay Area crash that left an 8-year-old girl dead and her sister and mother injured.
Richard Tom was sentenced to seven years in prison for manslaughter after authorities said he was speeding and slammed into another vehicle at a Redwood City intersection.
Prosecutors repeatedly told jurors during the trial that Tom's failure to ask about the victims immediately after the crash but before police read him his so-called Miranda rights showed his guilt.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Yes, put me down on your chart.
Apparently a person needs to specifically invoke their right to be silent before being Mirandized.
Okay, but you’re reasoning that there is only one reason why he would remain silent. Is there only one reason why he would remain silent? No.
He could just as easily have remained silent because he felt terrible about what he had done and surmised there was absolutely nothing he could do to undue the damage he had done.
He could have thought that saying he was sorry might actually hurt the parents more, because it would have sounded self-serving.
Perhaps there’s additional information that shows callous. I’m not sure.
It appears I’m trying to defend this guy. I’m actually trying to run interference on where this might lead.
If it’s only frame of mind, it’s not quite so dangerous. I do think silence is open to interpretation. It’s subjective what it really means IMO.
The Fifth Amendment was designed solely to ensure that the European court system would not be used where the defendant is presumed guilty until proven innocent. In many parts of Europe the defendant was required to take the stand in his defense and prove his innocence. Failure to take the stand would be tantamount to pleading guilty.
The fifth amendment was never intended to be a protection against having your own out of court statements brought up in court. It was the Earl Warren Court that made it mandatory that before you confess you have to be advised of your right to keep your mouth shut. That was a really stupid decision and was way out of line with the intent of the founders.
Yet here we are on Free Republic with the majority of Freepers arguing that the Miranda Decision IS THE FIFTH AMENDMENT!
Warren used the same bastardization of the law to justify that decision that the Berger Court used to justify Roe v. Wade and the Roberts Court used to justify Obamacare.
The prosecutor argued to the jury that his silence was evidence of guilt. The California Court of Appeal said he should get a new trial at which the prosecutor couldn't make that argument. All the other evidence would still come in. The California Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeal and said the prosecutor was right.
I understand your premise. You represent it decently.
I’m only a layman, but it seems to me it’s reasonable to warn people to keep their yap shut. The general defendant at times is confused about what actually took place themselves. They’re confused about what guilt is reasoned. They’re confused about what the law actually is. In these instances they can confess guilt on conscience grounds, and be as wrong as can be.
Let me ask you this. Do you believe a spouse should be forced to testify against against their spouse? Perhaps you do.
If you do, then your argument would make more sense. If you don’t, it would seem you agreed with a guy being required to testify against himself, but then his wife wouldn’t have to.
It is open to interpretation. That is why we have juries. So they can weigh the evidence and hopefully come to a just verdict. However when relevant evidence is withheld from the jury you can't expect them to come to a just verdict.
In this case the jury was asked to determine whether or not the defendant was acting with a callous disregard for human life when he was driving drunk and speeding and killed a little girl. The defendant was arguing that he was not acting in such a manner but he never took the stand to testify as to what his state of mind was. Instead he hid behind his silence.
So the question is, in this case, where the issue is the defendant's state of mind, would it be relevant to show that even before he was given his worthless Miranda warning he had zipped his mouth and was refusing to even inquire as to the condition of the kid he just killed or the other victims in the car?
In other words should the jury be told about his demeanor at the scene? Should that evidence include the fact that he didn't seem to care about anyone other than himself and that he was trying to protect himself from incrimination rather than concerning himself with the human damage he had inflicted?
Would you have kept this information from the jury if you were the judge?
Simple - without definitive contextual meaning, there is literally no possible way to make such a determination. What if he was in shock? Drunk? Trained or habituated not to say anything to police in order to protect his rights? Frightened? Confused? Feeling persecuted?
I mean really, how can this even be asked? The very reason for the existence of the Fifth Amendment is the abiding fact of these undeterminable possibilities, and the fact that they have been so abused across the centuries. Not to mention that he had no obligation to understand the fine legal points of his silence, when the very subject had risen in contention to the level of the Supreme Court. The fact that there is a dissenting opinion on the Court proves right there that a trained legal mind of the highest rank would have done exactly what he did in remaining silent. So how, in his case, does it turn into depravity?
Perhaps you are reading something into my statements that isn’t there. Where did I mention the 5th?
Is there any adult in America who hasn't watched a cop show where they read the defendant his rights? Is there anyone in America over the age of 18 that doesn't know he has "A right to remain silent"?
Why on Earth should the cops have to tell every suspect in every crime that they should not talk to them?
Is that REALLY in the Fifth Amendment? Is it written somewhere in the penumbras of the words in between the lines?
Let me ask you this. Do you believe a spouse should be forced to testify against against their spouse? Perhaps you do.
That is not a constitutional protection. It is a statutory protection and the states are free to remove that protection should they so desire. These days, with homosexual marriage being solemnized, I might reconsider whether the protection is a good idea, since marriage apparently has no meaning at all anymore.
FWIW, there is no jurisdiction where a parent cannot be forced to testify against their own child. I would think that a parent/child bond is more deserving of that protection than a husband/wife and particularly more than a husband/husband or wife/wife marital bond.
If the guy was laughing making statements that showed he obviously didn’t care, I would be a lot more inclined to let the jury hear. If he was simply silent, it could mean a number of things. Can the jury actually determine why he was silent? I’m not convinced of it.
” Is there anyone in America over the age of 18 that doesn’t know he has “A right to remain silent”?”
If only that were true. English is not spoken by many these days.
.
You were included in a ping to another freeper who claimed that the judge denied the defendant his “rights”. I wasn’t quoting you. I just pinged you to that post because you and a lot of other Freepers had apparently made some argument that the decision was wrong.
Those people watch Spanish TV. They know.
Well, you’ve asked a question that sortof answers itself. Would every adult have heard of Marada rights if they weren’t required to be read? I don’t believe so.
I can see your argument regarding the bond between children and parent to be stronger, but in the eyes of the law, the husband and wife are one.
He takes out loans while they are married and she doesn’t know about it. She becomes responsible for them when he dies.
I recognize your same sex argument and feel that it is simply one more reason why those arrangements should not be recognized on a part with heterosexuals.
I appreciate you mentioned that there is no protection against a parent being required to testify against their child. To me, children are a temporary charge of the parent. From birth to roughly 20, they are in the parents lives daily. From about then on, their lives separate. The children are then on their own for the most part. They are no longer in the mix as a man and a wife would be.
Once married, the assumption is that the man and wife are together until death. That could be 40, 60, 70 years.
You make a reasoned argument on behalf of the parent/child protection, or more accurately the lack of one. I’m not sure I see it as strong as the man wife argument.
Then you would keep that information from the jury, is that correct? You would not give them the opportunity to determine its relevance and would instead foist your own opinion on that subject on them by denying them the opportunity to determine that on their own?
I think it is very relevant. It is arguable about whether it is an indication of his state of mind and therefore the jury should be allowed to consider it. To deny facts from the jury because you don't think it is important or you have a different opinion as to its meaning is to impose your own opinion on the justice system and to deny the jury the opportunity to come to the opposite conclusion.
It would seem to me he kept his mouth shut because he had probably heard that talking to the police will hurt you. It no way shows he intended the accident. It no way means he had no compassion for the other party. Your logic is as flawed as the prosecutions. Opening his mouth would not have done the girl any good or would not have prevented the accident. What could he have said that would exonerated him? If he is guilty of recklessness or DUI, then yes there are laws against that. That's what should have to be proved, an actual violation of the law.
My judgment would be not to tell the jury if he simply remained silent. I’ve sat on juries and I’m not convinced they’re equipped to read the defendants mind on this. I don’t face this sort of decision every day, so I’m not going to pretend I know I’m right.
Should the jury get the right to determine silence must mean he didn’t care? It’s something they cannot know for sure.
My answer is no.
Regardless the fifth amendment does not protect a husband from having his wife testify against him, so raising that point is a red herring. The issue here is whether the fifth amendment prohibits the government from referencing the fact that you didn’t say anything when you had just killed an 8 year old when the issue is your state of mind at the time of the accident.
Would you keep that fact from the jury?
Where in the fifth amendment do you have the right to keep that information from the jury?
Didn’t you just state that state laws generally provide for spousal protections? I believe that is reasoned. So my red herring wasn’t so red herring after all was it.
Judges make determinations all the time regarding what juries will or will not hear. Not all of it is expressly written in the U. S. Constitution.
I’m sticking with my decision. You can file an appeal.
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