as we take another leap toward 1930's germany....

[Guest guest]

does this mean they'd have top rewrite all those cop shows on tv?? hmmm....

 

 

 

Supreme Court Could End Miranda Warnings

Mon Dec 2, 8:06 AM ET

 

By LINDA DEUTSCH, AP Special Correspondent

 

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 (news - web sites) 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 Bush

administration, which supports Oxnard's appeal, in its questioning of terrorism

suspects, experts said.

 

 

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (news - web sites) 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, which is scheduled to hear arguments

in the case Wednesday.

 

 

The U.S. Justice Department (news - web sites) filed a friend-of-the-court brief

along with police organizations and the conservative Criminal Justice Legal

Foundation contending 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 (news - web sites) 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.

 

___

 

On the Net:

 

Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov

[Guest guest]

Hi Fraggle

 

> 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

 

You're only a few steps behind the UK - we haven't had the right to silence

for several years. The official warning is now something along the lines of

" if you refuse to make a statement, your silence could be used in evidence

against you " - in other words, if you refuse to state that you're not

guilty, it is taken as evidence that you are!!

 

BB

Peter

 

 

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