High court: Suspects must directly invoke right to remain silent

Use it, or lose it; your right to remain silent, that is! Now, how do we get teens and pre-teens (and lately, toddlers) to do that when faced with a BIG cop who -contrary to common sense- is trying to get a confession using lies or lets call them blatant untruths. So many folks are intimidated when facing the police.

6-1-2010 Washington DC:

Washington (CNN) -- If criminal suspects fail to invoke their right to remain silent, they have waived that right, a divided Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The high court upheld the murder conviction of a man who did not verbally assert his right to remain silent during his police interrogation. In a 5-4 ruling, the court said a suspect must explicitly tell officers he or she is asserting that right, known as Miranda rights.

The famous constitutional "right to remain silent" and the "right to talk to a lawyer before answering any questions" are among the well-known warnings all criminal suspects must be given upon arrest. The conservative court has generally been supportive in recent years, when police challenges to Miranda rights have been raised.

"A suspect who has received and understood the Miranda warnings, and has not invoked his Miranda rights, waives the right to remain silent by making an uncoerced statement to police," said Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court.

Van Chester Thompkins was convicted of a January 10, 2000, murder outside a shopping mall in Southfield, Michigan. He fled the scene, but was as arrested about a year later in Ohio.

Local police began what turned out to be a three-hour interrogation, with Thompkins at first forced to read aloud part of a copy of "constitutional rights" derived from the original Miranda case that went before the Supreme Court in 1966. The five rights included the warning "anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law," and "the right to decide at any time before or during questioning to use your right to remain silent."

Thompkins refused to sign the form and there was strong disagreement over whether he verbally confirmed he understood them. He remained mostly silent during questioning, but later implicated himself in the shooting. He was later convicted of first-degree murder and other offenses.

The court majority sided with the police's version of the events.

"Thompkins did not say that he wanted to remain silent or that he did not want to talk to police," Kennedy concluded. "Had he made either of these simple, unambiguous statements, he would have invoked his 'right to cut off questioning.' Here he did neither, so he did not invoke his right to remain silent."

Kennedy's views were supported by Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

A federal appeals court in Cincinnati agreed with Thompkins his confession should be thrown out, but the high court reversed that decision.

In a sharp dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the court's ruling a "major retreat" from protections against self-incrimination guaranteed by the original Miranda ruling.

"Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent -- which counterintuitively requires them to speak," she said. "At the same time, suspects will be legally presumed to have waived their rights even if they have given no clear expression of their intent to do so. Those results, in my view, find no basis in Miranda or our subsequent cases and are inconsistent with the fair-trial principles on which those precedents are grounded."

Sotomayor said the Thompkins ruling "turns Miranda upside down." Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer backed her conclusions.

Thompkins had implicated himself after police asked if he believed in God. After replying yes, officers then asked, "Do you pray to God to forgive you for shooting that boy down?" asking about victim Samuel Morris. The court transcript said Thompkins replied "Yes," and turned away, but later refused to make a written confession.

The case is Berghuis v. Thompkins (08-1470). ....... ..Source.. Bill Mears

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

High Court Loosens Rule On Questioning Suspects

2-25-2010 National:

The U.S. Supreme Court has created a new rule governing the repeat questioning of suspects without a lawyer.

Until now, if a suspect refused to talk without an attorney, police were supposed to leave him alone. Once the suspect was released, it was not clear whether police could make a second attempt at interrogation or how long they had to wait. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court set a bright line of 14 days. After that, police have to readvise a suspect of his rights, but if this time they can get him to talk without his lawyer, the confession can be admitted in court.

The Supreme Court's decision came in the case of a Maryland man name Michael Shatzer, who was in prison for an unrelated crime when police first tried to talk to him about allegations that he had sexually abused his 3-year-old son. When police advised Shatzer of his right to remain silent and to have a lawyer, he refused to talk and asked for a lawyer. Police didn't contact him again.

Two and a half years later, with Shatzer still in prison, police reopened the case and tried again, only this time Shatzer answered questions and gave incriminating answers.

The Maryland Court of Appeals, ruled, though, that those incriminating statements could not be used at trial. The state court cited a 1981 Supreme Court ruling that, without exception, police must stop all questioning once a defendant has asked for a lawyer.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court said unanimously that rule does not last for "eternity." Writing for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia conceded that it is unusual for the court to "set forth precise time limits governing police action," but he added, "it is not unheard of." And, said Scalia, a 14-day break in custody "provides plenty of time for the suspect to get reacclimated to his normal life, to consult with friends and counsel, and to shake off any residual coercive effects of his prior custody."

George Washington University law professor Stephen Saltzburg, author of a leading text on criminal law, says the rule is a "good" one. It's "totally arbitrary and created out of whole cloth by a majority of the court," he acknowledged, but "it provides very clear guidance to the police" and "gives people a chance to be free from police coercion."

Stanford law professor Jeffrey Fisher says the decision illustrates how the court has moved away from worrying about the coercion of suspects. A generation ago, he says, the court would likely have been closely divided on this question. "It just shows how far to the right the constitutional jurisprudence has moved, at least in this field," said Fisher.

Both criminal law professors agree on one thing. As Saltzburg puts it, "The most surprising thing is that Justice Scalia wrote the majority opinion, because he's constantly criticizing the court for making up rules. And this 14-day rule is a complete judicial creation. It comes out of nowhere."

Justice Scalia didn't really dispute that. But he said it was a practical line for the courts to draw.

Two justices did not join the opinion in full. Justice Clarence Thomas thought there should be no limit on when police can requestion a suspect. And Justice John Paul Stevens objected to the 14-day rule as so short that it made police appear to "lie" when they promise a suspect initially that he has the right to an attorney. The simple solution, suggested Stevens, is to provide such an attorney before trying to requestion a suspect. But he agreed that the 2 1/2-year hiatus in the Shatzer case was sufficiently long that police acted properly. ..Source.. Nina Totenberg

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Supreme Court takes up Md. case on lawyer request

1-26-2009 National:

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court today agreed to clarify how long a suspected criminal's request for a lawyer during police interrogation should be valid, taking on a case where a child molester asked for a lawyer almost three years before admitting to the abuse.

The high court agreed to consider the state of Maryland's appeal of a decision throwing out child molester Michael Shatzer's confession.

Shatzer was imprisoned at the Maryland Correctional Institution in Hagerstown for child sexual abuse in 2003 when police started investigating allegations that he had sexually abused another child. Shatzer requested an attorney and the case was soon dropped.

Three years later, the boy was old enough to offer details. According to court documents, when a different police officer questioned Shatzer again about the case, he was advised of his rights and signed a form waiving them before confessing.

After Shatzer was charged, he filed a motion to suppress his statements, arguing that he had asked for an attorney in the case before. A lower court did not accept his argument, but the Maryland Court of Appeals agreed with his position and threw out the confession.

"After a substantial period of time, however, the presumption that a defendant wishes to proceed only in the presence of counsel is not reasonable," said Douglas F. Gansler, Maryland's attorney general.

State and federal courts have differed on how long a request for a lawyer is valid, Gansler said.

Shatzer's lawyers say the request is permanent.

"A prior request for counsel prohibits further interrogation," Shatzer's lawyers said in court papers. "Even if it did not, this court should recognize, as other courts have, that a police officer who is resuming an investigation has a duty to determine, before questioning a suspect, if that person has previously requested an attorney."

The Supreme Court likely will not hear the case until the fall.

The case is Maryland v. Shatzer, 08-680. ..News Source.. by BaltimoreSun.com

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...