This bunch should have lots to say about this? High court trims Miranda warning rights bit by bit - Yahoo! News Sotomayor raises one of the most ridiculous arguments I may have ever heard. "Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent — which counter intuitively 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."
i read it and dont understand. why do you have to say that you are silent? isnt being silent another way of announcing that you are silent?
Cops have used silence as affirmation for a long time. For example, while reading rights to someone arrested for DWI, but they are too drunk to answer in the affirmative. This is just an extension of that. Not really very cool, but that is what they are trying to say.
Verbalizing their decision to remain silent confirms that they understand their rights as read to them.
True. But my point was, it would be like trying to Mirandize a foreigner. The questioning just stops after that. It seems to me that its more of a ploy to loophole the whole questioning area. Meaning that if you read them Miranda and they don't respond that any statements they make after that could lead to some sort of violation and then the officer would be liable. Or the whole case would go out the window. Also, a nod isn't verbal.
Seems to me most of it revolves around the right to have a lawyer present while in custody of the po po prior to being hauled into the precinct? I guess the bottom line is if you don't break the law you should never have to worry about it eh?
Innocent people are arrested all the time, and they incriminate themselves for crimes they did not even commit becasue they don't understand the situation. For a long time Miranda was swinging to strongly in the favor of the arrested, and now things are swinging back. I'm not sure what to think of this case. The purpose of Miranda's is to advise folks they have a right not to speak and the right to counsel. I don't understand why that changes after 2 weeks.
i dont see how it (miranda itself) was swinging too strongly to favor arrested if it was the same as it had always been. rather it would be the interpretation by the courts that would have been swinging to favor the arrested. so now is it going to be mandatory upon law enforcement to get a verbal yes or no to "do you understand these rights"? and do they have to keep asking and will not be able to proceed without an answer?
