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Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights?

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Re: Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights?

#201

Post by guelo »

anigbrowl wrote: post #126
icelancer wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public safety exception strikes me as equivalent to the enemy combatant exception - a way to just skirt civil liberties when it seems relevant.

For heaven's sake. Assuming that they have arrested the correct person, he and his brother had a stack of tactical explosives that they were throwing around with abandon, as well as having bombed a major public event with loss of life and a huge level of injury. Of course the public (via its designated law enforcement agents) has a legitimate interest in establishing whether all possible explosive devices have been f…

Imagine that the guy knows his Miranda rights, refuses to talk and demands a lawyer. The unsaid implication of the supposed public-safety exception is that the police will do anything to get the guy to talk, constitution be damned.

Re: Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights?

#202

Post by tptacek »

benihana wrote: post #185
pyre wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

| a way to just skirt civil liberties when | it seems relevant That's exactly what it is, with good reason. When this is used, we are saying that the rights of others trump the rights of this suspect. When we're talking about the possibility of active bombs hidden within a civilian population, I would think it's a no-brainer that the rights of the people to not be blown up trumps the suspect's rights. Also, as @anigb…

> When this is used, we are saying that the rights of others trump the rights of this suspect. When we're talking about the possibility of active bombs hidden within a civilian population, I would think it's a no-brainer that the rights of the people to not be blown up trumps the suspect's rights. Jesus this is scary thinking. You're saying the rights of a suspect go out the window when we can contrive a situation wh…

You can reframe most laws in the same terms.

Re: Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights?

#203

Post by VikingCoder »

hncommenter13 wrote: post #36

You shouldn't care. Because not reading someone under arrest the Miranda warning is constitutionally irrelevant in and of itself. It only acquires relevance if the government seeks to have the statements admitted at trial. Discussing the similar case of Faisal Shahzad, who attempted to bomb Times Square, Orin Kerr, a law professor who is an expert on the 4th Amendment wrote: "Importantly, though, it would not have vi…

> It only acquires relevance if the government seeks to have the statements admitted at trial.

Or any evidence that those statements lead them to, if I'm not mistaken.

Re: Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights?

#204

Post by mattzito »

benihana wrote: post #185
pyre wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

| a way to just skirt civil liberties when | it seems relevant That's exactly what it is, with good reason. When this is used, we are saying that the rights of others trump the rights of this suspect. When we're talking about the possibility of active bombs hidden within a civilian population, I would think it's a no-brainer that the rights of the people to not be blown up trumps the suspect's rights. Also, as @anigb…

> When this is used, we are saying that the rights of others trump the rights of this suspect. When we're talking about the possibility of active bombs hidden within a civilian population, I would think it's a no-brainer that the rights of the people to not be blown up trumps the suspect's rights. Jesus this is scary thinking. You're saying the rights of a suspect go out the window when we can contrive a situation wh…

Kind of how your first amendment rights stop at shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater and causing a stampede

Re: Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights?

#206

Post by pfortuny »

newbie12 wrote: post #153
lbarrow wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being read your Miranda rights also serves as an explicit acknowledgement by the state that you have those rights. Most of the time, this isn't really important, but in this case it would have served a very important purpose. The Bush administration systematically created a legal netherworld for people they captured on suspicion of terrorism -- people usually referred to as "enemy combatants". They weren't arrested p…

Don't blame Bush, the Obama administration Justice department created the Miranda exception for "operational terrorists". This has nothing to do with enemy combatants; rather, there is the possibility that an active terror suspect on US soil has information about an active threat to public safety, and the police have a right (and duty) to question him about possible threats.

They have the duty to do that, only he has the right not to answer, despite not having been told so. You have to defend even terrorists' rights if you want yours to stand.

Re: Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights?

#207

Post by Tangaroa »

eggnet wrote: post #167
alan_cx wrote: post #145

There is literally no point having rights at all if there are exceptions to those rights which can be used but authority when things get difficult or controversial. A right is universal, if there is an exception, its is no longer universal, there for no longer a right. If a right is not universal, it becomes a privilege. The whole point of rights is to protect individuals when things get difficult, when people's emot…

Let's cut to the chase, what if, as in this case, granting an individual their full rights could deprive others of their rights, like the right to not be blown up by another bomb? You are suggesting that rights only have value if there are no exceptions to those rights. I disagree. Rights have value, but there must be a way to assign value to each individual right for each person, otherwise, when you cannot grant eve…

Every criminal case could be similarly described as one in which allowing the defendant their legally guaranteed rights (to remain silent and have legal advice) could (through strengthening the defendant's case and allowing silence on the question of co-conspirators) lead to someone depriving others of their rights (not to be victims of crime, from murder to graffiti). The question is not how to weigh these peoples' rights against each other. Instead, we have set standards on what the police are allowed to do and what the police are not allowed to do. The question is whether the police are failing to follow these standards.

As to the other questions, if an actor deprives another person of their rights, we assign the blame to the actor alone and not to any third party who allowed it to happen unless it can be proven that the third party had the intent to allow it to happen and were therefore co-conspirators in the crime. Where rights conflict, the questions of who gets which rights and who does not are answered by writing laws and judicial opinions. Several hundred years of such work has produced ready answers for most situations.

Re: Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights?

#208

Post by axus »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #47

Jesus people. Read about what the "public safety exception" actually is before going all police-state-paranoid. If the FBI or police try to misuse or abuse the public safety exception to attempt to get Tsarnaev to incriminate himself then they are going to have some fun times in court and get their asses handed to them. I'm skeptical that that's what's happening. I'm also skeptical that he's not been read his rights…

Why even have an exception? Surely public safety is more important than trying to add a confession to all of the other evidence. The exception seems like something that could be abused in other cases.

I'd go further, and say that no statements made by an accused person should be admissible in court. That way, you don't give any incentives for coercion.

Re: Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights?

#209

Post by vpeters25 »

venomsnake wrote: post #102
Kiro wrote: post #93

Other countries get by fine without having a Miranda law at all so I don't see what the big deal is about. To be honest I thought Miranda was only used in movies to make an arrest sound cool.

There is no such thing as Miranda law. It is just a warning/reminder about constitutional rights. Also any country worth living in has anti self incrimination right.

I am not a lawyer but I think precedents have the force of law, and the "Miranda rights" were established by the Supreme Court's ruling on Miranda vs Arizona: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_v._Arizona

Any law enforcement is screwing themselves by not advising a suspect about his "Miranda" rights. They are risking blowing up the case and forcing the courts to toss evidence that could be critical to achieve a conviction.

Re: Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights?

#210

Post by jeltz »

analog wrote: post #178
pyre wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also getting away with it because the torture isn't of the "strap electrodes to his genitals" variety, which most people would immediately reject. Stuff like "loud music," "putting a holy book in a toilet," or "make him think he's drowning," don't evoke the same sort of immediate reaction. If the administration were openly performing at "Inquisition" levels of torture, there would be massive public outcry.

Actually the Spanish Inquisition used similar methods, including waterboarding [1]. Certainly some of the US prisoners have been tortured to death [2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition#Torture [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilawar_(torture_victim)

Interesting, so apparently the Spanish inquisition too started using waterboarding to avoid having to permanently harm their victims.
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