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No Miranda reading: Good or bad idea?

No Miranda reading: Good or bad idea?

  • It's fine, and warranted

    Votes: 6 14.3%

  • It's BS, and shouldn't ever be done

    Votes: 28 66.7%

  • I'm somewhere in the middle on this one

    Votes: 6 14.3%

  • Other (please explain)

    Votes: 2 4.8%
  • Total voters
    42
radcen said:
No Miranda reading: Good or bad idea?
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It's a violation of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, according to the Supreme Court (Miranda v Arizona), and makes anything said during interrogation inadmissible in a court of law. So it's not only bad for them to not read a suspect their rights upon arrest, it's recklessly stupid.
 
I can almost guarantee this guy already knows his rights. The only bearing this has on the situation is that anything he says during interrogation is inadmissable if he can prove he wasn't aware of his right to remain silent and speak to a lawyer. It's a gamble but I agree with not reading him his rights. If for whatever reason he isn't aware that he can stay silent and gives up information on other bombs and other threats to civilians then it would've been worth it. If he wasn't read his rights and he stayed silent anyway then oh well. As many have said before me, there is more than enough evidence to convict him anyway.
 
First, Miranda rights are not read to a suspect upon arrest. That's only on TV. In reality, they must be read before a suspect is interrogated, before the police ask them any questions. They can put a suspect in the back of the car and not say anything, and if the suspect talks, that information can be used as trial. They didn't have to tell the suspect about the right to remain silent. But once the cops start asking questions, then they must inform the suspect of that right.

The facts about Tsarnaev's interrogation are extremely limited, so I don't even know if there are any circumstances that warrant the public safety exception. Once he's safely in custody, what possible public dangers could exist? The only thing I can think of is to ask him "are there other bombs out there?" Which they should ask. And hopefully he would answer. But then they can't use those bombs as evidence. But they really shouldn't need to!!

The public safety exception comes from a supreme court case in 1980, and it is utter crap. It was more of the modern court's relentless drive to gut amendments four through eight. There was no real basis for the decision. It was arbitrary and they simply decided to create an exception. And it is an easily exploitable one. All a cop has to do is suspect public danger and Miranda flies out the window. It's astoundingly subjective and opens the door to a lot of potential abuse. Being dangerous (or rather, being accused of being dangerous) does not deprive a person of their fifth amendment rights.

This is a terrible precedent to set.
 
Guy Incognito said:
2. No lawyer is going to get anybody off. The public safety exception to Miranda is perfectly legal.
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So how was the public's safety in jeopardy at the time? The dude was down and bleeding. No pending attack was on the horizon. No evidence of a pending attack is on the horizon as far as we know. The dude is an American citizen regardless of what he did.
 
radcen said:
No Miranda reading: Good or bad idea?

Feds Make Miranda Rights Exception for Marathon Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev - ABC News

I'm feeling pretty confident that we got the right guy. But, as someone who believes that the integrity of the overall system is more important than any single incident and/or suspect, I have issues with not reading the guy his Miranda warning. One, as he is in custody, I'm failing to see any scenario where he continues to pose any threat to public safety that would trigger this, and two, it smacks of yet another end-run around the Constitution using fear and emotion as the rationalization.
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As disgusting as this POS is, I have to agree that all American citizens should have full advantage of our COTUS and laws, just like the rest of us.

He can then be tried, convicted, appeal, and finally executed, just like McVeigh.
 
Schutzengel said:
The only way that the "Public Safety" rule could be imposed is if they truly believe that there are more pending attacks that can be stopped.
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Is this why the second bomber's university campus remains shut down?
 
Paschendale said:
First, Miranda rights are not read to a suspect upon arrest. That's only on TV. In reality, they must be read before a suspect is interrogated, before the police ask them any questions. They can put a suspect in the back of the car and not say anything, and if the suspect talks, that information can be used as trial. They didn't have to tell the suspect about the right to remain silent. But once the cops start asking questions, then they must inform the suspect of that right.

The facts about Tsarnaev's interrogation are extremely limited, so I don't even know if there are any circumstances that warrant the public safety exception. Once he's safely in custody, what possible public dangers could exist? The only thing I can think of is to ask him "are there other bombs out there?" Which they should ask. And hopefully he would answer. But then they can't use those bombs as evidence. But they really shouldn't need to!!

The public safety exception comes from a supreme court case in 1980, and it is utter crap. It was more of the modern court's relentless drive to gut amendments four through eight. There was no real basis for the decision. It was arbitrary and they simply decided to create an exception. And it is an easily exploitable one. All a cop has to do is suspect public danger and Miranda flies out the window. It's astoundingly subjective and opens the door to a lot of potential abuse. Being dangerous (or rather, being accused of being dangerous) does not deprive a person of their fifth amendment rights.

This is a terrible precedent to set.
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That makes a lot of sense, thanks.
 
Well, we do know where the Right stands on this issue. Whatever Obama supports, they support the opposite........................
 
Paschendale said:
First, Miranda rights are not read to a suspect upon arrest. That's only on TV. In reality, they must be read before a suspect is interrogated, before the police ask them any questions. They can put a suspect in the back of the car and not say anything, and if the suspect talks, that information can be used as trial. They didn't have to tell the suspect about the right to remain silent. But once the cops start asking questions, then they must inform the suspect of that right.

The facts about Tsarnaev's interrogation are extremely limited, so I don't even know if there are any circumstances that warrant the public safety exception. Once he's safely in custody, what possible public dangers could exist? The only thing I can think of is to ask him "are there other bombs out there?" Which they should ask. And hopefully he would answer. But then they can't use those bombs as evidence. But they really shouldn't need to!!

The public safety exception comes from a supreme court case in 1980, and it is utter crap. It was more of the modern court's relentless drive to gut amendments four through eight. There was no real basis for the decision. It was arbitrary and they simply decided to create an exception. And it is an easily exploitable one. All a cop has to do is suspect public danger and Miranda flies out the window. It's astoundingly subjective and opens the door to a lot of potential abuse. Being dangerous (or rather, being accused of being dangerous) does not deprive a person of their fifth amendment rights.

This is a terrible precedent to set.
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America began to set alot of "dangerous precedents" when it acquiesed to goverment by subterfuge with the election of Reagan...............
 
Mason66 said:
How could the authorities possibly know the answer to this unless they get him to talk? How many other bombs did they disable all around the city? It would be wrong to beleive they found them all just by luck.
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They, hopefully, didn't torture him, so how does reading him his rights change his likelihood of talking? There's no reason to deny him his rights. He's a monster, but there's far more than enough evidence to put him away without him saying a peep.
 
MarineTpartier said:
So how was the public's safety in jeopardy at the time? The dude was down and bleeding. No pending attack was on the horizon. No evidence of a pending attack is on the horizon as far as we know. The dude is an American citizen regardless of what he did.
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The bold is exactly the point - as far as we know. As far as we know, there are no other explosives and there are no accomplices planning other, imminent attacks. But we may NOT know which is the point of the public safety exception - to gain that knowledge.

Now, I'm ambivalent about whether I support the public safety exception, but Dzhokhar is only person in custody who can tell the FBI if he and his brother were working with other people or hid explosives that have not yet been found. Those potential threats to public safety are not in question.
 
MarineTpartier said:
So how was the public's safety in jeopardy at the time? The dude was down and bleeding. No pending attack was on the horizon. No evidence of a pending attack is on the horizon as far as we know. The dude is an American citizen regardless of what he did.
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Who knows if there are still other bombs out there?
 
Bonzai said:
Well, we do know where the Right stands on this issue. Whatever Obama supports, they support the opposite........................
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Bull****.
 
Guy Incognito said:
Who knows if there are still other bombs out there?
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Oh, for God's sake - it's not like there is a trail of bomb 'bread crumbs' to follow.

Seriously!?

Really!?
 
The second anyone starts to whittle away at the basic rights of any and all people, regardless of how horrendous the crimes, is a second we all start to pay the price.

The same laws and rights that any natural born American citizen would expect to be followed, should they ever be arrested for anything, should apply to this individual.
 
There was absolutely no logical reason to not have read him his rights, nor is there any excuse for failing to have done so.
 
Dragonfly said:
The second anyone starts to whittle away at the basic rights of any and all people, regardless of how horrendous the crimes, is a second we all start to pay the price.

The same laws and rights that any natural born American citizen would expect to be followed, should they ever be arrested for anything, should apply to this individual.
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Ikari said:
There was absolutely no logical reason to not have read him his rights, nor is there any excuse for failing to have done so.
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The only reason to say this is because of a poor understanding of the right at issue. Miranda is not some pinnacle of civil liberties, and all these sanctimonious reactions are just examples of unthinking totemism. The exceptions to Miranda exist for a reason, and it is because there can be circumstances where Miranda warnings are unnecessary without infringing on civil liberties. Miranda is vastly misunderstood, and falsely lionized, as many of the reactions in this thread amply demonstration.
 
Having just recently (within the last year) learned a heck of a lot about Miranda rights with my CJ classes, I really don't know why people are so up in arms about this. All it really means is that anything they do get from him might not be able to be used against him in a trial. The guy is still in critical condition from what I've seen. Not exactly coherent enough at the moment to legally give Miranda to. Prior to this, it would all depend on what questions were asked of him. It could end up that whatever he answered to those questions won't be able to be used in court, but that is basically it. Nothing more. And considering it sounds like they were just asking him two things, about others working with him and more bombs, that certainly could be seen as a safety of the public issue. If he didn't say anyone else was working with him, then it isn't like that really matters (had he indicated someone, it could have been/could be an issue for charging them). His rights weren't truly being denied to him. He still did/does have "the right to remain silent, the right to a lawyer, including one appointed to him if he can't afford one". No one is forcing him to talk or keeping lawyers away from him, not from what we know.

Once he recovers (if he does), they will read him his rights before they officially start asking him questions (if they want any hope of using his testimony against him).
 
Guy Incognito said:
The only reason to say this is because of a poor understanding of the right at issue. Miranda is not some pinnacle of civil liberties, and all these sanctimonious reactions are just examples of unthinking totemism. The exceptions to Miranda exist for a reason, and it is because there can be circumstances where Miranda warnings are unnecessary without infringing on civil liberties. Miranda is vastly misunderstood, and falsely lionized, as many of the reactions in this thread amply demonstration.
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The exceptions to Miranda exist for the same reason many heinous judicial precedents exist -- because in the last 20 years, the Federal bench has become more and more permissive when it comes to whittling the rights of the individual in exchange for the "greater good."
 
TacticalEvilDan said:
The exceptions to Miranda exist for the same reason many heinous judicial precedents exist -- because in the last 20 years, the Federal bench has become more and more permissive when it comes to whittling the rights of the individual in exchange for the "greater good."
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Which happens all the time. My instructors described this as a pendulum. Every generation or so it swings back and forth between the rights of the individual and the safety of the public. It ends up proving hard to find a good balance between the two so we end up with lots of precedent.
 
TacticalEvilDan said:
The exceptions to Miranda exist for the same reason many heinous judicial precedents exist -- because in the last 20 years, the Federal bench has become more and more permissive when it comes to whittling the rights of the individual in exchange for the "greater good."
Click to expand...

Look, this isn't Law & Order: SVU. Forget all the Miranda myths you've ever learned from TV. Miranda has a very limited role as a rule of evidence, it is going to make almost no difference here is this guy never gets read his rights. All the police are doing is giving the suspect's lawyer a little bit more negotiating power, and I'm sure they have a very good reason for doing so. If you really understand what is at stake here, you can see this is not a civil liberties issue of any significance whatsoever.
 
Guy Incognito said:
Look, this isn't Law & Order: SVU. Forget all the Miranda myths you've ever learned from TV. Miranda has a very limited role as a rule of evidence, it is going to make almost no difference here is this guy never gets read his rights. All the police are doing is giving the suspect's lawyer a little bit more negotiating power, and I'm sure they have a very good reason for doing so. If you really understand what is at stake here, you can see this is not a civil liberties issue of any significance whatsoever.
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If it makes almost no difference, then it should cost the cops almost nothing to read the man his rights.
 
roguenuke said:
Which happens all the time. My instructors described this as a pendulum. Every generation or so it swings back and forth between the rights of the individual and the safety of the public. It ends up proving hard to find a good balance between the two so we end up with lots of precedent.
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Sure it's a pendulum -- one that keeps swinging further and further towards the statist end of things with every stroke. Decade after decade for the last 50 years, the government gets bigger and more powerful, and our civil rights are steadily eclipsed. There is no backward swing, not in the sum total of things.
 
TacticalEvilDan said:
If it makes almost no difference, then it should cost the cops almost nothing to read the man his rights.
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They want to be able to question him about any other explosives out there (public safety exception) and a terrorist does not have the same rights as a normal criminal so Miranda really is irrelevant.
 
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