Posted on 12/01/2002 10:44:59 AM PST by Sub-Driver
US Supreme Court Could Make Miranda Warnings Thing of the Past By Linda Deutsch The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) - For five years, Oliverio Martinez has been blind and paralyzed as the result of a police shooting. Now he is at the center of a U.S. Supreme Court case that could determine whether decades of restraints on police interrogations should be discarded. The blanket requirement for a Miranda warning to all suspects that they have the right to remain silent could end up in the rubbish bin of legal history if the court concludes police were justified in aggressively questioning the gravely wounded Martinez while he screamed in agony.
"I am dying! ... What are you doing to me?" Martinez is heard screaming on a recording of the persistent interrogation by police Sgt. Ben Chavez in Oxnard, a city of 182,000 about 60 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
"If you are going to die, tell me what happened," the officer said. He continued the questioning in an ambulance and an emergency room while Martinez pleaded for treatment. At times, he left the room to allow medical personnel to work, but he returned and continued pressing for answers.
No Miranda warning was given.
A ruling that minimizes defendants' rights would be useful to the administration, which supports Oxnard's appeal, in its questioning of terrorism suspects, experts said.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a federal judge that the confession was coerced and cannot be used as evidence against Martinez in his excessive-force civil case against the city. It said Chavez should have known that questioning a man who had been shot five times, was crying out for treatment and had been given no Miranda warning was a violation of his constitutional rights.
Oxnard appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Justice Department filed a friend-of-the-court brief along with police organizations and the conservative Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.
They contend that unfettered police questioning is allowable so long as the information obtained from a suspect is not used against that person in court.
Opponents of the government position say a ruling diluting the Miranda protections would be another nail in the coffin of individual rights sacrificed in the interest of rooting out terrorists.
"This is a case to be concerned about," said Charles Weisselberg, a University of California, Berkeley, law professor. "To see the (U.S.) solicitor general arguing that there's no right to be free from coercive interrogation is pretty aggressive."
On Nov. 28, 1997, Martinez, a farm worker, was riding his bicycle through a field where police were questioning a man suspected of selling drugs. The police ordered Martinez to stop. When an officer found a sheathed knife in his waistband, they scuffled and the officer's partner, perceiving that Martinez was reaching for the officer's gun, shot him five times, in the eyes, spine and legs.
Chavez eventually got an acknowledgment from Martinez that he did grab for the officer's gun. But Martinez's lawyers said that statement was coerced and is inadmissible in the damage case that Martinez filed.
Martinez was never charged with a crime.
The Oxnard appeal argues that the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination applies only at a criminal trial and the 14th Amendment guarantee of due process of law is violated only if the questioning of a suspect is so excessive that it "shocks the conscience" of the community.
Martinez is represented by R. Samuel Paz, a frequent critic of police practices.
"I think it will turn on whether the court is going to stand up and say what it said before," Paz said, "that the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments protect people, and that we do have rights that extend beyond having a coerced confession admitted into a criminal case."
Martinez, 34, blind and paraplegic, lives in a one-room trailer in a remote rural area, tended by his father.
"It's tragic," said Alan E. Wisotsky, the lawyer for the city of Oxnard, "but you can't look at it from a philanthropic standpoint. He tried to kill police officers or they thought he was trying to kill them .... Does the tape (of the interrogation) sound bad? Yes, the guy is in agony. But the questioning was to get at the truth."
The Miranda warning takes its name from the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in a 1966 case involving the use of a confession in the rape prosecution of Ernesto Miranda.
"A generation of Americans has grown up since 1966 confident that, if brought to the police station for questioning, we have the right to remain silent, that the police will warn us of that right and, above all, that they will respect its exercise," said a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Martinez by the American Civil Liberties Union and California Attorneys for Criminal Justice.
"... If petitioners' theory of the Fifth Amendment is correct, then the public's confidence has been misplaced for all these decades and is about to be shattered," it said.
I'm not sure about that. I've read everything I can get my hands on about this case, and it seems to be directed at the question of whether it is "clearly established" that "Miranda rights" - right to remain silent, have a lawyer present, etc - apply during questioning, or only apply during a trial. The city of Oxnard apparently has a law allowing citizens to sue the police department (or city) for violating a "clearly established right." The DOJ brief seems to be arguing that the case should be dismissed because the "Miranda rights" are not "clearly established" to apply to questioning, not that the case should be dismissed because a violation of Miranda rights doesn't "create cause of action by itself." In other words, they're arguing that the officers' treatment of Martinez doesn't meet the standard of "violating a clearly established right."
For the Supreme Court to agree that Miranda rights are not "clearly established" as applying during questioning, would (I THINK) not "overturn" Miranda per se, but would still have the effect of giving police free rein to do anything they want during questioning, as long as they don't use any self-incriminating statements against you at trial.
But, then again, I'm not a lawyer, and I could be misunderstanding what I'm reading. Any lawyers out there with an opinion of just what the heck the DOJ is actually arguing?
And if this appeal fails and there isn't an out of court settlement, that's surely what will be argued in court: that the confession was trash. Losing the appeal won't prevent this from being argued.
The way it looks, counsel for the plaintiff is trying to get a 5th Amendment criminal law exclusionary rule applied to a civil case, and I would expect the SCOTUS will flush this attempt away by a large margin. This will not do boo to the rights of defendants in criminal cases.
This is because they hadn't had time to digest the full implications which were not anywhere close to as dire as feared, and beneficial for the efficiency of the criminal justice system. Few criminal cases get tossed today because of Miranda, because police know it in their sleep, and this nice bright line works the other way too - if the suspect was mirandized the government will virtually never lose the ability to cite a subsequent confession in a criminal case. In a recent SCOTUS case, Rehnquist himself affirmatively recited the Miranda mantra.
When there is a credible expectation that this will in fact happen, I'll consider your proposal. Ping me when Lon Horiuchi gets strapped down.
For that reason, I expect Miranda to remain SOP even if the SCOTUS overturns the requirement.
You have just encapsulized the popular misconception extant regarding Miranda warnings, their uses and their scope. It didn't help that the movie itself totally disregarded the existing law enforcement understanding of Miranda, either.
If the movie had been based on fact in this particular instance it would have admitted that from the very beginning of police training and practice based on Miranda, law enforcement understood and accepted that on a case-by-case basis they would have to juggle conflicting interests; i.e., those of the accused and those of the victim.
It doesn't happen all that often, but there are occasions when a conscious decision is made by law enforcement to forego prosecution of a suspect in order to save the life of a victim. That decision is never made lightly, but it is made in full recognition that a trade-off is being made, prosecution of the bad guy giving way to saving the life of an innocent civilian.
Think of it this way: rights exist in a sort of hierarchy; life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. The first right, that of life, must be upheld for either of the other two to come into play. In the trade-off scenario offered by Dirty Harry, the victim's right to life took precedence over the perp's Miranda rights to silence, and had it been "real life" Callahan would have known there would be no prosecution.
Bottom line, there are few real absolutes in real life; sometimes, one good must be sacrificed for the better good.
And of course, none of the above is meant to excuse the illegal practices of any individual cop in any particular case, but believe me, violations of Miranda are made far less often than the public seems to think.
But isn't ANY claim of a violation of civil rights a civil case? I mean, it's not technically a crime to violate somebody's civil rights, it's more like a tort, right? Or is that only when you're suing a government (or agent of a government)?
If so, the question of whether there is a civil liability for violating Miranda outside of a trial setting WOULD have the effect of "immunizing" agents acting on behalf of a local, state or federal government against claims of "coercive interrogation" or any other violation of Miranda as long as they don't use that information at trial.
And another question, if they did use the information obtained by "coercive interrogation" against him in a criminal trial, it wouldn't be a civil case, it would be part of the appeal regarding criminal conviction, right? I.E. the only outcome would be that the conviction was either upheld or overturned, rather than any "damages" or other remedy, right? He (the defendant, I mean) would have to file a separate, civil case to get any damages. Which then goes back to the question of whether they can use a confession obtained "coercively" as a defense in the civil suit. If this case is decided according to the Gov't's argument, they could. ACK! Talk about your Catch-22!
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