Turning Miranda ‘Upside Down’? The high court keeps pecking away at the famous 1966 decision

[usregimechange]

You have the right to remain silent. anything you say can, and will, be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. And so on and so forth.

Just about every American can identify the Miranda rights; they are almost as familiar as the Pledge of Allegiance. But three U.S. Supreme Court decisions this term show that the court is continuing to slice off pieces of the famous 1966 criminal rights case, Miranda v. Arizona.

The high court ruled this term that a suspect's request for a lawyer is good for only 14 days after release from custody, that police do not explicitly have to tell suspects they have a right to counsel during an interrogation, and that criminal suspects must unambiguously announce to police that they wish to remain silent.

"These three cases indicate the court is not going to expand Miranda an inch, and if they can construe it to cut back slightly, they will," says Rory Little, a specialist in criminal and constitutional law at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.

Historically, Miranda warnings have served as a procedural safeguard, articulated by the Warren court "to secure the privilege against self-incrimination," including the right to remain silent and the right to have counsel present during interrogations.

http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/turning_imiranda_i_upside_down/



"Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent—which, counterintuitively, requires them to speak. 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." -Justice Sotomayor, BERGHUIS v. THOMPKINS

[mike r]

1. Fascists in black robes will not rest

until their fascist work is complete.

[izquierdista]

2. "Pecking" away?

One might infer that they are a bunch of peckers.