High Court Hears Challenge to Miranda

Several Supreme Court justices expressed surprise Wednesday when lawyers for the Bush administration and the Oxnard police asserted that officers are free to press unwilling suspects and witnesses to talk, as long as their forced confessions are not used in a trial.

The arguments came in the case of a farm worker who was shot five times during an encounter with Oxnard police and then pressed in the hospital to admit he had grabbed an officer’s gun.

At issue is whether the law forbids “coercive questioning” by the police.

The Constitution and the right against self-incrimination do not put “a direct limitation on the conduct of law enforcement officers,” Deputy U.S. Solicitor Gen. Paul Clement told the court.

In the Oxnard case, the police supervisor did not violate any right by questioning the gravely wounded man in the emergency room, he said.

“That’s extraordinary. So there isn’t any constitutional violation?” asked Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. “So you could lock him for five days, and you say there’s no violation?”

No, not a “complete constitutional violation,” Clement replied.

The 5th Amendment “safeguards the integrity of the trial process,” he said, so it would violate his rights only if the suspect’s words were used against him in court.

“I acknowledge there was coercion in this case. We don’t blanch from that,” said attorney Lawrence Robbins, representing the Oxnard police.

“We can win this case the hard way or the easy way. I want to win it the hard way,” he added, by winning a ruling that says that coercive police questioning does not violate the Constitution.

The easy way, he said, would be to have the court rule that since the law is not clear, Sgt. Ben Chavez cannot be sued for his 1997 emergency-room questioning of Oliverio Martinez.

Though left blinded and paralyzed, Martinez survived and sued Oxnard police, including Chavez.

“It’s important we not torture the language of the 5th Amendment because of a concern the police would engage in torture,” Robbins argued.

Because the 5th Amendment says no one shall be “compelled in a criminal case to be a witness against himself,” the police cannot violate this right, he said. Only prosecutors in the courtroom can do that, he said.

“I take it your view is that if a police officer quite deliberately violates the person’s Miranda rights, he never commits a [constitutional] violation,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said.

Yes, Robbins responded.

“So, following Miranda is not an obligation of the police officer?” she inquired further.

No, he replied, although a suspect’s incriminating statements cannot be used in court.

Legal experts say this is a crucial issue daily for police.

So-called Miranda rights were created by a Supreme Court ruling in a 1960s case, Miranda vs. Arizona, in which Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that because police questioning is inherently coercive, officers must warn suspects of their rights before questioning begins.

Warren’s opinion and the others that have followed described the Miranda warnings as limitations on the police, and all along, some lawyers and law professors have questioned whether they are a constitutional requirement.

If today’s court decides that the Miranda rules are constitutional rights, then officers will have to stop questioning people who invoke their right to remain silent.

However, if they are not constitutional rights, officers will be able to pressure unwilling people to make them talk and then use the information or evidence they reveal against them.

George Washington University law professor Stephen Saltzburg, an expert on criminal law, said police in many areas have come to realize they can ignore the Miranda rules.

“The irony is that people know about Miranda from TV and think they have these rights,” he said.

Police often know better, he said.

“For the police, it pays to read people their rights,” Saltzburg said. “But it also pays for them to violate the rights if they refuse to talk.”

Officers can learn about key evidence against a suspect, even if they cannot use their confessions against them, he said.

He predicted that the case heard Wednesday, Chavez vs. Martinez, is likely to make clear that police are free to violate the Miranda rules.

The justices wondered how far officers can go in pressing people to talk.

“Suppose [the officer] beats him up to get him to talk. Not to use the statements against him in court, but to get information. Is there any constitutional violation?” asked Justice John Paul Stevens.

That would not violate his right against self-incrimination, Clement replied, but the victim could sue the police for the beating.

In their briefs, the Justice Department and the Oxnard Police Department say “shocking” police conduct, such as beatings and torture, could violate the Constitution’s guarantee of “due process of law.”

Los Angeles lawyer R. Samuel Paz, representing Martinez, urged the court to uphold the rulings of judges in California who said the Oxnard police violated the rights of the badly wounded man.

In the emergency room, “Mr. Martinez twice said, ‘Leave me alone. Leave me alone. I’m dying.’ No reasonable police officer would think continued questioning in that circumstance is appropriate,” Paz said.

He also said people should have a right against coercive police questioning, even if they are not charged with a crime.

“A person like Mr. Martinez, who was not charged with any crime, would have no remedy,” he said, for rough treatment in police custody.

“Persons in this country should still be allowed the dignity to say: ‘I don’t want to speak,’ ” he said.