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MIRANDA "Turned Upside Down
| By Attorney Mark Stevens Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Miranda v. Arizona in 1966, the Miranda warnings have become as American as baseball. Read |
About Those Presidential
Promises
By James C. Capretta
Over the past three years, President Barack
Obama made many promises to the
American people about his health care plan.
Among other things, he said it would reduce
the federal budget deficit in coming years,
promote better quality care and improve
access to physicians...more
Promises
By James C. Capretta
Over the past three years, President Barack
Obama made many promises to the
American people about his health care plan.
Among other things, he said it would reduce
the federal budget deficit in coming years,
promote better quality care and improve
access to physicians...more
Gun Control Laws
By Thomas Sowell
Now that the Supreme
Court of the United States
has decided that the
Second Amendment to
the Constitution means
that individual Americans
have a right to bear arms,
what can we expect?
By Thomas Sowell
Now that the Supreme
Court of the United States
has decided that the
Second Amendment to
the Constitution means
that individual Americans
have a right to bear arms,
what can we expect?
MIRANDA "TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
Want to Remain Silent? You Better Speak up About it.
| By Attorney Mark Stevens New Hampshire Herald |
| Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Miranda v. Arizona in 1966, the Miranda warnings have become as American as baseball. Due to the number of times they’ve heard the warnings on TV, most Americans can recite them, particularly the line: “You have the right to remain silent”. On June 1, 2010 the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in Berghuis v. |
| Thompkins. The court was sharply divided in a 5 to 4 vote. Justice Sotomayor, in her dissenting opinion, wrote that the Thompkins decision “turns Miranda upside down”. Van Chester Thompkins was wanted by police in Michigan for murder after a shooting near a Michigan mall. Police in Ohio arrested him and held him for Michigan police to return him to Michigan. When the Michigan police arrived in Ohio, they interrogated Thompkins. Thompkins was confined in a small room for three hours in a small wooden chair that he complained about. At the beginning of the interrogation the police read Thompkins his Miranda rights. Thompkins never expressly waived his rights. Thompkins refused to sign a Miranda waiver and refused to sign an acknowledgment that he had even been read the rights. Through the first two hours and 45 minutes of questioning, Thompkins remained mostly silent. At that point, one of the officers asked him, “Do you believe in God?” Thompkins said “yes”. The officer asked, “Do you pray to God?” Thompkins answered “yes”. The officer then asked, “Do you pray to God to forgive you for shooting that boy down?” Thompkins answered “yes” and looked away. He refused to sign a written confession and the interrogation ended about 15 minutes later. Thompkins moved to suppress his statements at trial, arguing that he never waived his Miranda rights and that his silence constituted an exercise of his rights that should have stopped the police interrogation. The trial court and Michigan state appellate courts disagreed and his motion was denied. Thompkins was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. The Supreme Court accepted the case for review after federal habeus proceedings, and ruled that Thompkins’ silence did not amount to an invocation of his rights, and that by eventually answering questions he had waived them. In the Court’s majority opinion, Justice Kennedy wrote that “there is good reason to require an accused who wants to invoke his or her right to remain silent to do so unambiguously”. In the wake of Thompkins, a person in police custody who wants to exercise his right to remain silent and stop questioning must now say so if he wants the police to stop. It remains to be seen whether police will amend the actual warnings to advise suspects that they now have to invoke their rights to exercise them. “I want to talk to my lawyer” and “I don’t want to answer any questions” remain good responses when in police custody. It is best to speak to your lawyer before speaking to police. For a card with an invocation of your Miranda rights feel free to write info@byebyedwi.com and we’ll be happy to send you one. |
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