Miranda Warning
by digby
Despite the fact that the terrorist suspect is "singing," as Chris Matthews puts it, Pat Buchanan asks "why would you Mirandize him?"
I think people are very confused. Just because the police fail to give a suspect the Miranda warning, it doesn't mean the rights that are mentioned in the warning are no longer operative. In fact, it means that the government can't use the information against you if they fail to give it. The law of the land is as that old bleeding heart terrorist symp William Rhenquist described it back in 2000, when the court reaffirmed the law:
Taking up one of the most famous and harshly assailed decisions in American law, the Supreme Court forcefully reaffirmed Monday that the Constitution requires police officers to give suspects Miranda warnings before questioning them in custody.
The opinion, written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, was short, emphatic and rejected arguments that Miranda vs. Arizona, the landmark 1966 decision, no longer should be the law of the land. Rehnquist, an early Miranda critic, wrote for the 7-2 majority that Congress could not overrule it and that the court would not do so.
In a hushed courtroom crowded with spectators, Rehnquist provided high drama to a case already among the most anxiously awaited of the court's term. Announcing he would explain Miranda's fate, he began by reciting the familiar warnings, pausing after each one.
"You have a right to remain silent," said Rehnquist, his strong voice filling the marble courtroom. "Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have a right to the presence of an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you."
Those warnings, Rehnquist continued, "have echoed through police stations and on television screens" since 1966, when the court's Miranda decision gave judges a way to evaluate when confessions could be admitted into evidence. If a suspect in custody did not get the Miranda warnings before he was questioned, the case made clear, his statements could not be used as evidence against him.
So, short of a new Supreme Court decision reversing Miranda, or a move to strip us all of our citizenship and ship us to Gitmo if we're accused of crimes, the authorities had no choice if they want to convict this person in a court of law.
Now we know that people like Buchanan believe that he should be called an unlawful combatant regardless of his citizenship, tortured, tossed in a cell and we should throw away the key, but so far that isn't the law of the land or the policy of the government (at least not on US soil.) Therefore, the government had no choice but to go by the book.
Assuming the right's non-stop bleating about the constitution and the rule of law has any basis in reality, they need to come to terms with the idea that the government doesn't have a choice in this. They have to mirandize suspects and follow the law. And they need to understand that if the government just decides not to, it doesn't mean that the suspect never had those rights. The fifth amendment still exists even if the suspect isn't told about it --- it is not contingent on the Miranda warnings. And if he evokes it on his own, an anyone who's ever watched a Law and Order episode is likely to do -- you don't get to torture him to make him talk.
I honestly had no idea that any of this was considered up for debate, but it certainly seems to be.
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