The Right to Remain Silent--Still

Drawing the line between the right of society to protect itself from crime and the right of those accused of crime to defend themselves from the accusations of the state has never been an easy task and it’s not going to get any easier. The police are increasingly overwhelmed by crime, court dockets clogged with cases. The role of the court in reviewing criminal convictions must be neither to nit-pick the police to death nor chisel away at the constitutional rights of citizens. The job is made even harder when in the particular case under review the alleged crimes are truly heinous and the police have worked hard to crack the case.

Take the case of Minnick vs. Mississippi, which was decided Monday by a 6-2 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of a defendant who escaped from jail and then allegedly shot two men. The Mississippi Supreme Court had ruled that police acted properly when they resumed questioning after permitting the defendant, as required by Miranda vs. Arizona (1966), to consult with counsel. But the high court has now said that police can’t question a suspect without an attorney present when one has been requested.

Although in effect an affirmation of Edwards vs. Arizona (1981), the ruling was unexpected, because the Supreme Court in recent years has appeared to reflect in some rulings the view in some circles that Miranda is an impediment to good law enforcement and the war on crime. The truth is that Miranda has proven not an impediment but an enhancement: It provides police with clear and reasonable guidelines for their interrogations. Nothing galls the cops more than to have all their hard work thrown out on a technical error that could have been avoided had the ground rules been laid out for them clearly.

The procedures of Miranda in fact were taken from pre-existing FBI interrogation guidelines; now they are used by state and local law enforcement throughout the nation. Miranda simply underscores the notion that in the United States the accused has a vested right to silence unless choosing to speak out in the “unfettered exercise of his own will.” That’s a standard all good cops can live with. It’s a standard a free society cannot live without.