Miranda Rights Suspension? US Attorney General!

Eric Holder (the US Attorney General) was on CNN today saying that it is time to revisit the 1966 ruling giving people Miranda Rights when charged with a crime. Not surprisingly, there is no link to this story on the CNN website that I can find.

This is being talked about on the same weekend as John McCain and Joe Lieberman introduce a bill to suspend US citizenship for those folks who are accused of supporting terrorism, at the whim of the Secretary of State, without trial by jury, just on the SoS say so.

Under the Patriot Act, people who can be accused of terrorism includes ANYONE who attacks a Federal employee who is in the process of going about their daily work.

And I thought the Patriot Act was bad !

The sheeple will wake up on day and find out that all of their rights and freedoms have been taken away.

Nope that is NOT what he said. He said he was rethinking the law requiring notification of Miranda during arrest. In other words Miranda will be active however, they will no longer be required to "read you your rights". Thus closing that loophole in said law. Article

[edit on 9-5-2010 by djvexd]

I saw a part of that interview. The part that stood out to me the most was when he stated he wanted more time to question these people "before they get the chance to lawyer up". That just doesn't sit well with me. Call me crazy.

Let them do it and a number of people arrested for crimes will go free on the orders of the courts. There are some things that won't change and this one of them.

But if they're no longer required to read someone their rights, then it becomes up to the individual to KNOW their rights when they get arrested.

Many people don't realize that things they say when arrested can be used against them.

As an earlier poster mentioned, this also gives the arresting agency the opportunity to question a suspect without a lawyer present.

This leads towards all sorts of possibilities for breaching of the rights to a fair trial, etc etc etc.

This sort of thing is what leads to erosion of freedoms and rights.

You DO NOT have the right to remain silent
and anything you say can and will be used
against you in a military sanctioned
courts martial especially when we
waterboard your @$$, you WILL give us
any confession we so desire.
You DO NOT have the right to an attorney
and $h!+ if we're gonna give u one
since it costs taxpayer money and wait
lists for public trial extends over 2 years.
If you cannot afford an attorney, that is just
tough $h!+.
We have the right to call you a terrorist
if we so desire and you have no recourse
but to be labeled as such and expatriated
from being an American Citizen and sent
to the nearest FEMA installation for
re-programming as a slave worker.
Do you understand these rights as
I have explained them to you?
If not, tough $h!+

reply to post by boondock-saint


Ahh exactly, it's a pretty scary thing. They start off saying these things and people accept them because ... well it's terrorists we're talking about, right? No one wants a terrorist to walk free. But where is the line drawn? If they do this, ug, I want to vomit just thinking about it.

After reading the article and giving some thought to this issue here is what I believe needs to happen for it to be acceptable.
1) They can not suspend the Miranda rights under any circumstance. They do that, and the very next criminal who is arrested, no matter what the crime, they take a chance of walking out, on the grounds all they would have to state: I did not know my rights, or understand them. The court would have to invalidate and wave all evidence given by the police to the DA.
2) On the matter of terrorist who are American Citizens. If they have not renounced their citizenships, then they are still entitled to the full protection of the law and presumption of innocence before guilty. The main problem is that there is no Declaration of War, so the rules are very clear cut, and to allow for them to remove the citizenship of anyone deemed a terrorist can be a door and a rule that would open up to abuse by the federal government. After all the question is out of all of the citizens in the country, and over 1 million on a list what would happen to those people?

That yahoo article is a mess. What Holder wants to have happen is the undoing of the general requirement that suspects be Mirandized upon arrest, which is done to satisfy the requirement that they be made aware of their rights (so that evidence they may provide before arraignment is not later deemed inadmissible because of the police's failure to make their rights known to them).

In other words, the goal is to keep suspects ignorant of their rights to the fullest plausible extent. I have to imagine that this would also involve gutting the rules of evidence and bypassing the 5th Amendment somehow. Coincidentally, Leiberman's bill would afford prosecutors a means of doing exactly those things, as non-citizens have only arbitrary rights (in this case, those the justice system chooses to grant them). By stripping suspects of their citizenship, prosecutors enable themselves to treat them basically how they want.

The question of stripping individuals of their citizenship, or the rights guaranteed them as a consequence thereof, has no place in a republican form of government, it is the domain of tyrannical regimes such as, you guessed it, Nazi Germany. The legal mechanism used to carry out the Final Solution was stripping targeted individuals of their full citizenship thereby exempting them the protections afforded by the the Weimar Constitution. As the article explains, erosion of the Constitution was a major instrument in the Nazi's political ascension.

The Third Reich, of course, wasn't the only government to abuse the concept of citizenship, the formal concept goes all the way back to the Roman Homo Sacer. In folk etymology, the word "fired", with the meaning of dismissal or discharge, arose from the supposed barbarian practice of burning down the dwellings of persona non grata. Ostracization as a form or means of punishment is common among social mammals. All of this highlights the magnitude of the milestone achieved by the American founders in enshrining enumerated rights and guaranteeing them unequivocally.
But that's just me

reply to post by EtSolveMundi


Nah, that's just not you.
All very well said

~Tragic~

reply to post by babybunnies


What are Miranda rights and who do they pertain to?

Citizen of the United States or citizen of the Republic of say New York in the jurisdiction of the United States of America? Are they 14th Amendment citizens or are they citizens of a Republic.

Signing those pesky contracts with the corporation of the UNITED STATES can be a little irksome now and then.

Discussion ongoing on the actual rights (or lack thereof) of a citizen here-

Are you a citizen and is there a legal government?

Originally posted by djvexd
Nope that is NOT what he said. He said he was rethinking the law requiring notification of Miranda during arrest. In other words Miranda will be active however, they will no longer be required to "read you your rights". Thus closing that loophole in said law. Article

[edit on 9-5-2010 by djvexd]

There is no specific law that requires Miranda advisal.. other than Miranda case law.

The police do not have to read you your rights if they don't care what you have to say, and as I've said many times, it's not uncommon for the arresting officer(s) to leave Miranda up to interviewing detectives.

Otherwise, the instant you are suspected of a crime, anything you say can and will be used against you.. beyond a limited window of "spontaneous utterances", all questioning done outside Miranda is in-admissible in civilian court.

There also comes a point outside Miranda where officers should tell the suspect to stop talking..cops who have lost Miranda issues in court know there is a certain point that no matter how incriminating the suspects statements.. they will be tossed out if all the officers do is sit there and let the suspect yammer away.

"Tell me officer, when my client was allegedly admitting to where the bodies were buried, during this so called "spontaneous utterance", did you even try to advise my client his statements would be used against him?"

The govt hates Miranda because it keeps them honest and limits how much time they have to harass & intimidate people into incriminating themselves...

BTW a spontaneous utterance example: if officers arrive, and before figuring out who is who in the zoo, an unknown person (later Id'd as the suspect) covered in blood approaches them and says "Thats right, I killed the damn whore".. outside Miranda, but admissible.. at this point the officers should advise per Miranda or risk further statements being thrown out.