Court: Silence Can Be Used Against Suspects

AP ^ | Aug 15, 2014 | PAUL ELIAS

[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.

[Rashputin]

Revise the Miranda statement and it'll all be fine. Just include :

      . . . and anything you don't say or haven't said can and will be used against you

/sarc if some need it

[dfwgator]

Whoever made this ruling must have gone to the Roland Freisler School of Law.

[Lazamataz]

Yes I am an attorney.

Oh, that's a shame.

"Asking about the other parties condition could ALSO be introduced, as a 'guilty conscience' presumption of guilt."

In this case the issue was not being guilty of causing the crash, the issue was whether or not the defendant showed a callous disregard of life.

Neat. So there is now a law, "Callous Disregard of Life in the First Degree", in which people are ordered by the state to care deeply about other people's condition. I did not know that, counselor.

But according to the particulars in the article, his conviction was NOT for 'callous disregard', but for the act of vehicular manslaughter, which conviction was reinstated.

In THAT situation, saying anything at all WILL be twisted to show a 'guilty conscience' and thusly, Mens Rea.

Hell, I'm not even an attorney, and *I* know that.

With this one ruling, you are now damned if you speak, and damned if you don't.

I don't see how an attorney can miss this -- perhaps you are a prosecutor and cheer this new legal weaponry.

[Talisker]

If he was silent, they were free to draw whatever inference they could from that fact.

No.

LOL, no.

Silence can only be considered within context, since it is NOT an act, by definition. You would first have to somehow prove that silence could ONLY mean guilt in specific context in order to invoke it as an act.

Oh yeah, and trash the 5th Amendment, due process, and any possible, conceivable limit on granting infinite power to the government to seize and convict anyone at any time for any reason using silence itself as the proof of their guilt.

This ruling is insane.

[Age of Reason]

Should the fact that he didn't bother to inquire as to the condition of the dying 8 year old have been withheld from the jury?

Please tell me how it would have any bearing on his guilt or innocence.

[CodeToad]

The US Supreme Court already ruled on this and said we no longer enjoy the 5th Amendment, that silence can be used against you.

We have lost just about every right we supposedly held.

[Hugin]

That's absurd. The Miranda warning informs you of your rights, it doesn't give them to you. The only reason for the warning at all is to make sure people know about them. Hopefully this will be overturned in federal court.

[usconservative]

Sometimes I'm just amazed at the lucidity of your posts.

Other times, not so much.

[CodeToad]

“: It had better end up at SCOTUS, because this isn’t right. “

SCOTUS already ruled in favor of this.

[OneWingedShark]

CWII Spark — Know Your Holder Rights: Anything you say or don't say can and will be used against you in a secret court operating above the law!

---

Welcome to the Star Chamber and the Witch-Trials.
Why do I get a feeling that this time, the Giles Corey refusal to enter a plea would not be an honored tactic?

The 80-year-old Corey was accused of witchcraft during the 1692 Salem trials, but he refused to enter a plea to the court. As punishment, he was laid naked in a pit in a field, and slowly pressed to death over two days. Heavy rocks were gradually placed upon his chest–but he refused to cry out in pain, or enter a plea, and each time he was asked to do so, he simply replied: “More weight.”

— tvtropes explains why this was both necessary, and a Crowning Moment of Awesome —

More weight. — Giles Corey, being tried-by-crushing-ordeal for witchcraft in Salem, asked if he would confess to his "crime." He was a Real Life Rules Lawyer, and knew that if he died under interrogation, he was still legally a Christian and his sons could inherit his property. Confessing would spare his life, but he would no longer be considered a Christian and his property would be forfeit. Denying the charges would result in his conviction and execution, as the trials were flagrantly rigged, and again his property would be forfeit. So, by refusing to enter any plea at all, he saved his family from poverty and earned a Dying Moment of Awesome.

IOW, it averted the Catch-22 that the legal-system had going; this time I do not think that the judiciary would honor the rules, the law, Justice or the people.

[Lazamataz]

We’re not talking about silence regarding your own role in an accident. We’re talking about silence while you know that someone could be dying just over yonder and you’re refusing to say anything to let people know someone is seriously injured.

Hold on for a tick, this might change everything.

If this man knew of injuries, esp. critical ones, and said nothing -- and IF THE COPS DID NOT KNOW OF THEM -- then this guy would definitely be guilty of the Good Samaritan laws that have popped up everywhere, including California.

However, it should not factor into a Vehicular Homicide case. Only his driving actions should be introduced to demonstrate 'depraved indifference to human life'.... NOT his failure to speak...... otherwise this becomes a very ugly precedent.

[HartleyMBaldwin]

His silence was a fact, but was completely irrelevant in terms of being evidence. It was also a fact that Tom did not discuss thousands of other topics. The jury might have been informed of that as well, and drawn assumptions from his silence concerning, for instance, preschool education of Finnish children, or sustainability of the Pacific tuna fishery.

Once again, silence is not a confession. Absence of evidence is not evidence. Juries are supposed to draw reasonable inferences from evidence, true, but not necessarily to “draw whatever inference they could” from the fact of the absence of evidence. That would be like saying that failure to find a murder weapon in someone’s house or car constituted proof that the person had disposed of it.

Anyway, I don’t expect to sway anyone here with facts or logic. Big day tomorrow and plenty to do beforehand, so I’ll wish you a very pleasant evening.

[xzins]

There is truth in everything you say, but we do want our court system trying to determine the truth about events that are up before them. In my world, if a prosecutor discovers a stripper is lying about a lacrosse team member trying to rape her, he then stops prosecuting. Why? Because he’s interested in truth and doing what is right.

[Tau Food]

Prosecutors argue that Tom's car was speeding at 67 mph in a 35 mph zone when the collision occurred.

Well, he should be in prison. Jerk.

[xzins]

If it’s my daughter dying in a car and this jerk knows it and doesn’t speak up, then why do I feel justified in shooting his sorry ass? After all, he didn’t confess to me.

[DoughtyOne]

Okay, that’s better. LOL

I hear ya. Good one.

[P-Marlowe]

Should that fact be withheld from the jury?

Yes or No?

[Talisker]

We’re not talking about silence regarding your own role in an accident. We’re talking about silence while you know that someone could be dying just over yonder and you’re refusing to say anything to let people know someone is seriously injured. In a situation such as that, it is letting someone die unnecessarily.

You'd have to prove a requirement to not only act, but provide supposition.

I would remind you that police and emergency personnel have stood by and watched people drown in shallow water because they did not have the training certification for water rescue - and this in four feet of water.

I would also remind you that the same police have no problem arresting someone who is providing emergency aid that is considered beyond the helper's training level.

Requiring a person subject to arrest for causing an accident to provide supposition as to the medical requirements of victims simply won't fly, unless the perp is a doctor or nurse.

[TexasGator]

1. He plowed into a car at a high speed while drunk killing a person.

2. He was convicted and got off on a ‘constitutional technicality.

3. This decision reversed the previous reversal.

He was NOT convicted on his silence.

[Lazamataz]

If it’s my daughter dying in a car and this jerk knows it and doesn’t speak up

Do the facts of this case show the police were unaware of the injury? If so, get him on Good Samaritan laws. If not, then this information is immaterial to the case.

then why do I feel justified in shooting his sorry ass?

I understand that anger, but FRiend, if I was on your murder trial, I would have to vote guilty.

Being a jerk is not a shootable offense^*.

^*Except in Texas.