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.
Obviously - It's good to know that we're goose-steepin' into the brave new world with the anti-freedom crowd in control
Whatever you say. Just quit hitting me. I'll sign whatever you want.
Many, many here while goose-steepin' will sing that whatever is decided it is for your own good too.
The world has always known that we were a little too free, it is good to know that they have finally convinced those in power of this freedom thingy problem.
Pretty strange thinking.
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.
I hate it when I agree with the 9th Circuit.
No, you always have rights
It's a mystery
Gotta love it!
It would not surprise me one bit if we are soon to be subject to coercive interrogation, with no witnesses, and no boundries on the interrogators.
Any cop with an IQ of at least -1 sigma should recognize that when someone has sustained life threatening injuries, is ignoring your questions, and calls for medical help, he is exercising his right to remain silent on the subject matter of the interrogation.
What next? Holding US citizens without trial or attorney on the basis that they might commit a crime?
You'd think . . . he's probably related to the genius that killed a girl's dog.
Don't be silly, that tact would be deemed unconstitutional, it would be far easier to declare all activity criminal thus guaranteeing probable cause.
It looks like the courts have sided with keeping an improperly obtained confession out of civil litigation.
IMHO, they should keep police abuses out of civil trials. I must admit that I am completely ignorant on the differences in legal standing between criminal and civil law.
The scary part of this is if the SCOTUS allows cops to interrogate a suspect when he has been injured by the cops (lawfully or not).
I always like to reduce state powers down to the tax-evasion level. Could the cops use this in cases of tax evasion? It scares the crap out of me to think the IRS could darken your doorstep, start pulling teeth, and get you to reveal what your Cayman bank accout numbers are.
Between the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism it isn't far fetched to think this is possible.
The overbearing state scares me more than the drug users and Islamobastards. The first you can ignore, the second you can kill, but the state is here and has more guns and money than the drug cartels and al-Q.
Don't be silly, that tact would be deemed unconstitutional,
Ask Jose Pedilla. He has yet to be charged with a crime (unless I missed something).
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