In 2001, a chap by the name of Van Chester Thompkins was arrested in Ohio, for first-degree murder that occurred during a drive-by shooting at a mall in Michigan. Before he was interrogated by the police for 3 hours, he was read and given a printed copy of the now-famous set of rights that were postulated by the US Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona.
- 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. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you.
Thompkins peppered his response to the interrogation with “yes”, “no” and “I don’t know”. But when he was asked by an officer if he prayed for forgiveness for “shooting that boy down”, Thompkins said “Yes”.
That statement was used to convict him, but on appeal Thompkins argued that he had invoked his Miranda rights, and was being uncommunicative (largely) with the interrogation. Consequently, he said, the statement which was self-incriminating was coerced out of him despite such invocation.[1]
The Michigan Court of Appeals rejected this stand, but the Sixth Circuit reversed, bought the argument and threw the ‘confession’ out of the window.
However, the US Supreme Court in Berghuis, Warden v. Thompkins ruled on Tuesday that suspects must explicitly (or in the Court’s words, “unambiguously”) tell the police that they want to remain silent and take refuge under the Miranda rights during a criminal interrogation.
There are two important angles to the Court’s decision.
- The right to remain silent, must be conveyed expressly by the criminal suspect before interrogation.
- On the other hand, the prosecution does not need to prove the express waiver of such rights. An “implicit waiver of the right to remain silent is sufficient”.
Where the prosecution shows that a Miranda warning was given and that it was understood by the accused, an accused’s uncoerced statement establishes an implied waiver of the right to remain silent. (III-B, page 12)
Thus, while there is a prescribed procedure mandated upon the State to read/inform the Miranda rights to the accused, the Supreme Court has effectively done away with any such formal requirements for waiving the rights. I am tempted to quote our former Constitutional law teacher, Prof. Errabbi, from a not-altogether different context:
What you give with one hand, you cannot take away with the other.
In essence, the Court has diluted the standards that offer succour to the accused during an investigation. The verdict completely discounts the environment that may prevail during an interrogation, that often renders the suspect to be in no state of mind to speak up to remain silent. In addition, the language of the judgment is couched in bias towards the suspect, and makes you wonder what happened to “innocent until proven guilty”. To quote Justice Kennedy who rendered the majority opinion,
When the suspect knows that Miranda rights can be invoked at any time, he or she has the opportunity to reassess his or her immediate and long-term interests. Cooperation with the police may result in more favorable treatment for the suspect; the apprehension of accomplices; the prevention of continuing injury and fear; beginning steps towards relief or solace for the victims; and the beginning of the suspect’s own return to the law and the social order it seeks to protect.
Not surprisingly, the decision pitted the conservatives against the liberals (5-4). Justice Sotomayor has written a strongly-worded dissent, saying the majority’s decision “turns Miranda upside down“. Miranda itself, according to the dissent, places a heavy burden of proof on the prosecution, if the statement was obtained in the absence of an attorney – in addition, the fact that the accused “knowingly and intelligently” waived his rights must also be proved (II-A, page 6).
To sum up the story of this unfortunate verdict, one just needs to go through the start and end of Justice Sotomayor’s opinion.
The Court concludes today that a criminal suspect waives his right to remain silent if, after sitting tacit and uncommunicative through nearly three hours of police interrogation, he utters a few one-word responses[...]Today’s decision turns Miranda upside down. Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent—which, counterintuitively, requires them to speak[...]Those results, in my view, find no basis in Miranda or our subsequent cases and are inconsistent with the fair-trial principles onwhich those precedents are grounded[...] I respectfully dissent.
[1] Factually though, the accused had not given any indications, either oral or written, of waiving or invoking them.
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