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 ...
Somehow I must have missed the part of the article that indicated the defendant was compelled to be a witness against himself in court.
I guess it must be there somewhere. Can you show me that from the article?
After the investigations from the 90s, I certainly wouldn’t disagree.
Witness; Def #3: to bear witness to; testify to; give or afford evidence of.
If his silence, and his speech, both can be used to give or afford evidence of
his guilt, then there is no way that he cannot but witness against himself. Period.
I guess it must be there somewhere. Can you show me that from the article?
Insane. Maybe 100 people in the whole state would know that..
How was he compelled?
Definition of compel (vt)
Bing Dictionary
com·pel
force somebody: to force somebody to do something
force something to happen: to make something happen by force
synonyms: force · induce · require · coerce · oblige · make · twist somebody’s arm
Shades of Sir Thomas More...
Cromwell: Now, Sir Thomas, you stand on your silence.
Sir Thomas More: I do.
Cromwell: But, gentlemen of the jury, there are many kinds of silence. Consider first the silence of a man who is dead. Let us suppose we go into the room where he is laid out, and we listen: what do we hear? Silence. What does it betoken, this silence? Nothing; this is silence pure and simple. But let us take another case. Suppose I were to take a dagger from my sleeve and make to kill the prisoner with it; and my lordships there, instead of crying out for me to stop, maintained their silence. That would betoken! It would betoken a willingness that I should do it, and under the law, they will be guilty with me. So silence can, according to the circumstances, speak! Let us consider now the circumstances of the prisoner’s silence. The oath was put to loyal subjects up and down the country, and they all declared His Grace’s title to be just and good. But when it came to the prisoner, he refused! He calls this silence. Yet is there a man in this court - is there a man in this country! - who does not know Sir Thomas More’s opinion of this title?
Crowd in court gallery: No!
Cromwell: Yet how can this be? Because this silence betokened, nay, this silence was, not silence at all, but most eloquent denial!
Sir Thomas More: Not so. Not so, Master Secretary. The maxim is “Qui tacet consentire”: the maxim of the law is “Silence gives consent”. If therefore you wish to construe what my silence betokened, you must construe that I consented, not that I denied.
Cromwell: Is that in fact what the world construes from it? Do you pretend that is what you wish the world to construe from it?
Sir Thomas More: The world must construe according to its wits; this court must construe according to the law.
Not everyone copes with horror and tragedy and fear in the same way. Insisting that silence is indicative of guilt, just because YOU wouldn't remain silent, is moronic.
Equally plausible: He knew what happened, and he was scared out of his mind, and he knew that anything he said could easily lead to worse things for himself... including getting beaten to death right there on the roadside, as has happened recently in some urban US area with a struck child (who may have actually ran into the SIDE of the moving vehicle).
Can he, upon being arrested, both speak and remain silent? No.
Can he, prior to being arrested, both speak and remain silent? No.
Can he, if the government is about to arrest him, both speak and remain silent? No.
If both speaking and remaining silent are used to prove guilt, then you actions are witness against you regardless of what they are.
Now for force:
Are you free to avoid being arrested? No.
Can you legitimately fight being arrested? Theoretically, if it is a false arrest, yes; realistically, no.
What happens if you try to avoid it or resist? The police use force to make it happen.
At this point you have been forced into a situation where your action (speaking or remaining silent) is witness against you.
Thereby you have been forced to witness against yourself.
I miss the rule of law.
No. As much as I like to see killers receive justice, silence cannot constitutionally be used against the accused. I miss the rule of law.
Criminal Investigation Division. Basically, they are the Army detectives.
To be clear, this evidence was necessary to convict the man. He clearly was the drunken driver of the car that killed the little girl and injured the mother. The court had to REINSTATE his conviction after it was overturned by the appeals court. IOW, he was going to get away with killing a little girl and walking away from it.
Is that what we want?
This evidence was not used to convict of the crime. It was used to distinguish between whether he had shown callous disregard or had shown simple disregard (by his drunken driving.)
It seems to me that it would have made a difference in the level of charge against him (manslaughter) and in the punishment. Not at all in his guilt or innocence. That was a given.
You tell me why it’s wrong for the police at the scene to be asked about the defendant’s behavior/demeanor while a woman was screaming in the background and a child was dying or had died? The jury gets to infer what it wants.
The drunkenness and speed of auto were more telling signs of callous disregard, and I’m sure they were also the highlighted FACTS. The silence seems like only an additional circumstantial tidbit that wasn’t even crucial...or even necessary. I don’t want the guy walking over something like that when there’s no doubt he is the guy who had murdered a little girl.
You folks are thinking that this guy was found guilty because of his silence. I’d say that the conviction was because of the facts. He did have a drunken blood/alcohol level, he was the driver of the car, he did kill the little girl and injure her mother and sister.
There is ZERO dispute about those facts. Zero.
The appeals court overturned his lower court conviction, and they were going to let this killer (67 mph in a 35 zone) WALK. Nothing against him. Nada. Free as a bird even though there is NO DOUBT that he killed that little girl.
The ‘silence’ was not about the certainty of the case against this killer. It wasn’t even crucial evidence in his behavior being calloused behavior. The 67/35 and the drunk driver are already evidence of callous disregard. That the man’s behavior (silence) is cited as additional circumstantial evidence of his state of mind is not even crucial. What do I think it meant? I think his behavior meant that he was trying to legally protect his butt from the consequences of what he’d just done, even though he knew he’d just done it.
EVERYONE knew he was guilty.
Do you want him to walk away from a murder, over which there is no dispute as to his guilt, over a legal technicality, when the court says he hadn’t even been arrested and people are free to infer what they want from his behavior prior to his arrest and Miranda reading?
THAT IS NOT WHAT I SAID!!!
Counselor P-Marlowe, if I was a judge in a court in which you and OneWingedShark were in a legal struggle, I would rule for OneWingedShark. If I was a jurist, I would vote in favor of OneWingedShark's plaintiff.
Counselor P-Marlowe, if I was a judge in a court in which you and OneWingedShark were in a legal struggle, I would rule for OneWingedShark. If I was a jurist, I would vote in favor of OneWingedShark's plaintiff.
(Second post correcting the failure to ping)
Huge difference.
Actually his silence was used as evidence to support a higher charge, first degree manslaughter or second degree murder involving a reckless disregard for human life. It was the difference between a slap on the wrist and a long well deserved prison sentence.
There was no doubt that he was speeding and no doubt that he was drunk, but the silence following the accident was used as evidence to support the charge of reckless disregard for human life.
In this case his silence was construed as him saying to everyone around, “hey, I don’t give a damn about those people.” If he had shown some kind of remorse instead of just trying to hide the fact that he was drunk then it might have mitigated the charge down to involuntary manslaughter. Instead, because he showed indifference to his victims, his silence was highly relevant to the charge of reckless disregard for human life and as such the evidence should have been admitted and it properly was. In other words it was interpreted as saying “I don’t care about that little girl.”
I suspect that the mere fact that he was drunk shows a reckless disregard for human life, but sometimes a jury will only convict on that if the defendant is fall down drunk and in this case I believe the prosecution felt that additional evidence was necessary and fought for the inclusion of his callous silence as evidence of his state of mind.
I have yet to see a single poster give me a valid constitutional argument for his silence prior to being given his Miranda warning as violative of the original intent of the first amendment. It was evidence of his behavior and his mental state. It was the nail in the coffin to prove that he really had no concern for either his possible victims while driving the car drunk, or the actual victims that he killed and maimed.
Amazingly I suspect that if this thread were over on DU or some liberal site, that I would get the same arguments from the liberal posters over there that I have been getting from the Conservatives here, i.e., that this man’s CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS were violated by the evil prosecutors.
What a bunch of malarkey. He violated some 8 year old girl’s right to life. He should not be given the benefit of the doubt as to whether his silence was the exercise of some right or an attempt to shield himself from the consequences of his actions. His silence in this case spoke volumes about his mental state at the time of the accident. You don’t incriminate yourself when you show compassion for the dying victims in a car wreck that you caused. However it is clear that you do incriminate yourself when you callously ignore their plight and think only of yourself and button your lip to the point where you clearly show no concern for anyone other than yourself.
In the absence of the evidence of his silence, then he might have gotten away with a slap on the wrist rather than a well deserved prison sentence. The Fifth Amendment was never intended to prevent the introduction of evidence of callousness towards the victims of the crime. He may have been attempting to preserve his constitutional right to remain silent, but sometimes invoking your constitutional right says a lot about your state of mind and where it is relevant and in the interests of justice, it should be admitted.
Something I’ve seen courts rule in the past is that piece of evidence X, while improperly admitted, was not sufficient cause to overturn the conviction because it was only one small piece of the puzzle, and the case did not rest on it. I think that is what should have been done this time - say using the defendant’s silence was wrong, but not critical enough to overturn the conviction.
Yes.
For I believe it is better that the guilty are set free than that the innocent should suffer [for the failure to do so].
By destroying the right to remain silent you assuredly make future innocents suffer.
This is indeed the foundation of our own classical jurisprudence [link]:
In criminal law, Blackstone's formulation is the principle that:Moreover, to intentionally remove the right to silence is blatantly contrary to our Constitution, and to remove it is to directly act against that Constitution which guarantees it."It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer",...as expressed by the English jurist William Blackstone in his seminal work, Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in the 1760s.It is worthwhile to note that the actual numbers are not generally seen as important, so much as the idea that the State should not cause undue or mistaken harm "just in case". Historically, the details of the ratio change, but the message that government and the courts must err on the side of innocence is constant.
This evidence was not used to convict of the crime. It was used to distinguish between whether he had shown callous disregard or had shown simple disregard (by his drunken driving.)
The drunkenness and speed of auto were more telling signs of callous disregard, and I’m sure they were also the highlighted FACTS. The silence seems like only an additional circumstantial tidbit that wasn’t even crucial...or even necessary. I don’t want the guy walking over something like that when there’s no doubt he is the guy who had murdered a little girl.
This is contrary to what you have agreed/admitted; to wit: this evidence was necessary to convict the man.
I therefore reject this argument in total.
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