US Supreme Court weakens “Miranda” rights of criminal suspects

[Hannah Bell]

The US Supreme Court on June 1 repudiated by a 5-4 vote the key provision of the landmark 1966 Miranda v. Arizona decision requiring criminal suspects to affirmatively waive their right to remain silent before statements made during police interrogations can be used against them in trials.

The ruling is the latest in a string of Supreme Court rulings eroding the basic civil liberties principle spelled out by the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself...”

The controlling precedent is clear. Miranda directs: “If the interrogation continues without the presence of an attorney and a statement is taken, a heavy burden rests on the government to demonstrate that the defendant knowingly and intelligently waived his privilege against self‑incrimination and his right to retained or appointed counsel…. A valid waiver will not be presumed simply from the silence of the accused after warnings are given or simply from the fact that a confession was in fact eventually obtained...”

Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy...authored the majority opinion...Instead of following the law that police interrogators bear a “heavy burden” to prove that a suspect understood and waived his constitutional right to not “be a witness against himself,” the Supreme Court majority ruled, “Where the prosecution shows that a Miranda warning was given and that it was understood by the accused, an accused’s uncoerced statement establishes an implied waiver of the right to remain silent.”

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/supr-j04.shtml

[sakabatou]

1. WTF, USSC?

[Art_from_Ark]

2. Once again, a 5-4 wrong ruling

This provides a good argument for term limits for Supreme Court justices, say １０ years. That way we would at least be able to shed bad justices after a relatively short time, instead of being stuck with them for 20 or 30 years.