Yankee Clipper

The Supreme Court Decided Your Silence Can Be Used Against You
Posted by ilona trommler

Written by Alexander Abad-Santos
A nation continues to wait for final word on the Supreme Court's Big Four cases this term — v****g rights, affirmative action, DOMA, and Proposition 8 — but the justices' closest decision arrived first on Monday, in a 5-4 ruling on Salinas v. Texas in which the conservative members of the Court and Anthony Kennedy determined that if you remain silent before police read your Miranda rights, that silence can and will be held against you. Here's what that means.
Basically, if you're ever in any trouble with police (no, we don't condone breaking laws) and want to keep your mouth shut, you will need to announce that you're invoking your Fifth Amendment right instead of, you know, just keeping your mouth shut. "Petitioner's Fifth Amendment claim fails because he did not expressly invoke the privilege against self-incrimination in response to the officer's question," reads the opinion from Justice Samuel Alito, which Justice Kennedy and Chief Justice John Roberts backed. Justices Thomas and Scalia had a concurring opinion while the remaining four Supremes dissented.
The Salinas case revolves around Genovevo Salinas, a man who was convicted of a 1992 murder of two brothers. Salinas was brought in for police questioning in January 1993. According to the dissenting opinion of Justice Breyer, he was called in to "to take photographs and to clear him as [a]suspect" and Salinas was questioned without being read his Miranda rights:
Because he was "free to leave at that time," [App.14], they did not give him Miranda warnings. The police then asked Salinas questions. And Salinas answered until the police asked him whether the shotgun from his home "would match the shells recovered at the scene of the murder [Id., at 17.] At that point Salinas fell silent.
That silence was then used against Salinas in court, and he was eventually convicted. But the bigger question in revisiting this 20-year-old murder case was whether or not prosecutors were allowed to point to that silence, and win a case using Salinas' own silence against him.
You know what's a much more recent wrinkle to the potential precedent effect of today's ruling? A case like that of the younger Boston Marathon suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who reportedly sat through 16 hours of questioning before he was read his Miranda rights. Had Tsarnaev, who was recovering from serious injuries at the time, remained silent during questioning without explicitly invoking his Fifth Amendment, prosecutors could, under the Salinas ruling, now use that silence to their advantage.
It all seems ridiculously terrifying, this idea that in order to claim your Fifth Amendment, you now need to know how to call the on-the-fly legal equivalent of "safesies." Your right to remain silent just got more complicated, and it will require potential criminals to be more informed about their protections and the linguistic details on how to invoke them. "But does it really mean that the suspect must use the exact words 'Fifth Amendment'? How can an individual who is not a lawyer know that these particular words are legally magic?" Breyer wrote.
Make your comments HERE:
Laura J Alcorn, National Director



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Tasine Loc: Southwest US

Time to face facts. Our nation is done. Finished. Kaput. Over. Non-existent.

And the reason is that all of our elected officials are out to lunch or need to be incarcerated for life.

Until we kick every blasted one of them onto the curb, we are going to have to put up with legislated insanity. If there is a SANE one of them in existence, would someone please point him out to me because I don't believe there is a sane one.

OR ............... THEY ARE PERFECTLY SANE AND ARE, INSTEAD, CO-CONSPIRATORS TO DESTROY OUR NATION. THINK ABOUT THAT SCENARIO!

CrazyHorse Loc: Kansas

Quid Pro Quo, Yankee Clipper: Would you suspect this ruling would have any affect upon OIllegal's failure to produce his original birth certificate, or even a photographic copy of his original birth certificate, or authorizing the state of Hawaii to release copies of his original birth certificate on file in Hawaii?

The Obama Express Train Wreck to Hell

Yankee Clipper

CrazyHorse Loc: Kansas

Quid Pro Quo, Yankee Clipper: Yes. :thumbup:

Tasine Loc: Southwest US

A VERY dangerous precedent. IMHO, this decision borders on insanity. The very existence of the 5th Amendment denies the t***h of this decision! What are the Supremes drinking or snorting these days?

mmccarty12 Loc: Zionsville, Indiana

Liberal Kool-aid.

Augustus Greatorex Loc: NE

I don't think it is law enforcement's job to tell you your rights, do you? The fact that law enforcement is required to "merandize" suspect has been a problem since 1966.

Yankee Clipper

Augustus Greatorex

I don't think it is law enforcement's job to tell you your rights, do you? The fact that law enforcement is required to "merandize" suspect has been a problem since 1966.

And will continue to be so as per this decision. Have you ever refused to sign a speeding ticket? I have and at that point you have two choices either sign it or be arrested and thrown in jail. I say that you are forced to sign the ticket under duress of criminal arrest. Any lawyers out there? That question does not include the Marxist i***t who says he's studying to be an attorney. Even though it says on the ticket that signing the ticket is not an admission of guilt, I say it is, because you are forced to put yourself in the position being quilty by just being at the scene of the offense. In other words, you must be quilty, because you were there and your signature verifies that you were there. Whose side do you think the court is going to take?

Tasine Loc: Southwest US

I'm certainly no lawyer, but I have an opinion anyway. :-) I think the cop needs the signature to prove he stopped you and talked with you - otherwise he would have no case. OTOH, I have looked at the signing of the ticket as not quite kosher.

My current thinking is this: Actually I find nothing wrong about signing something that clearly states this is not an admission of guilt. The officer stopping you, citing you, having you sign the ticket, PROVES only ONE thing: that you and he met up personally and that he thinks you are guilty of an offense.

CrazyHorse Loc: Kansas

Whose side do you think the court is going to take?

Quid Pro Quo, Yankee Clipper: This last sentence makes me consider the Supreme Court's problem. It seems to me that when Justice Roberts ruled clearly unconstitutional Obamacare's mandatory purchase of insurance, constitutional as a tax, notwithstanding the Obama Administration was pleading the case that it was not a tax; that for me, that was evidence that Justice Roberts was intimidated by Obama's public threats to the Supreme Court. I think so ruling, Justice Roberts lost the credibility of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has no army to guarantee its existence. It only has the Constitution, and the Constitution's support by the citizens. In Germany, when Hitler obtained ultimate power, he vitiated the German Supreme Court, and appointed a German People's Court, with Yan Earnest as the Chief Judge. It was no more than a sycophant court for Hitler. I think upon reflection, the Supreme Court now has to support law enforcement as much as possible, if you no other reason than to try to protect their own position. These are not considerations that the Supreme Court should be considering, but they are human nature type of considerations, and I think OIllegal's rant against the Supreme Court prior to the decision on Obamacare, did in fact intimidate Justice Roberts who then v**ed with the four brain dead libs on the Supreme Court. Further CrazyHorse saith not.

Yankee Clipper

Augustus Greatorex Loc: NE

I have contested speeding tickets and had them thrown out. The signature is an agreement that both signing parties were at the location at that time, and both agree to appear in court at the specified time, date, and location.

If the signing officer does not appear in court the charge is thrown out.

Yankee Clipper

Tasine Loc: Southwest US

YankeeClipper wrote: Look at it this way, when you sign the ticket you are acknowledging that the officer pulled you over for speeding, whether he made a mistake or not is irrelevant to the court, you have acknowledge you were stopped for speeding anyway you cut it. The question then boils down to how much over the speed limit the office charged you with and how large a fine should be imposed. The Judge doesn't care if you were actually speeding or not because you agreed with the officer and attested to that fact in writing that you were stopped for speeding.
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I think this boils down to whether you get an honest and just hearing or not. We tend to think we would get a bad hearing because it occurs so much, but I don't think the problem is the ticket so much as it is the judge. And a rotten judge would find HIS way, no matter of your guilt or innocence.