By Jill King Greenwood
Pittsburgh Tribune Review
The Miranda rights warning made familiar with regular recitation by cops in Hollywood and on TV will not change because of Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling that suspects must explicitly state their desire to remain silent.
But a Duquesne University professor said he worries the 5-4 decision, the third impacting rights established by the landmark 1966 case Miranda v. Arizona, signals a possible end to the reading of the constitutional rights within the decade.
“The Miranda is getting chipped away at, to the point where it almost makes you wonder if in a few years, the court will overrule it altogether,” said Bruce Antkowiak of Duquesne Law School.
During police interrogations, the Fifth Amendment guarantees a suspect the right to remain silent as well as the right to a lawyer. In the past, justices ruled the government must show that a suspect “knowingly and intelligently waived” his rights before prosecutors can use a suspect’s statement against him in court.
The conservative majority in yesterday’s ruling in a Michigan case said the suspect had the duty to invoke his rights and tell police he wants to remain silent, in the same way he must say he wants an attorney.
Van Chester Thompkins remained mostly silent for a three-hour police interrogation before implicating himself in a Jan. 10, 2000, fatal shooting outside a Michigan mall. He appealed his conviction, saying he invoked his right to remain silent by not speaking before saying “Yes” when an office asked, “Do you pray to God to forgive you for shooting that boy down?”
The suspect “did not say that he wanted to remain silent or that he did not want to talk to police,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote.
Lawyers said the decision means police can keep asking questions of a suspect who refuses to talk as long as they want, with the hope the person will crack.
“This will make it more difficult for suspects and people in police custody to get the benefit of their Miranda rights,” University of Pittsburgh law professor David Harris said. “You can’t just be silent, or say, ‘I don’t think I want to talk about this anymore.’ You have to specifically say, ‘I want to remain silent.’ Very few people actually talk that way.”
Elena Kagan, whom President Obama nominated to join the court, sided with police as U.S. solicitor general when the Michigan case came before the court. She would replace Justice John Paul Stevens, one of the dissenters.
Obama’s first appointee, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said the ruling turned Americans’ rights of protection from police abuse “upside down.”
“Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent, which counterintuitively requires them to speak,” Sotomayor said. “At the same time, suspects will be legally presumed to have waived their rights even if they have given no clear expression of their intent to do so. Those results, in my view, find no basis in Miranda or our subsequent cases and are inconsistent with the fair-trial principles on which those precedents are grounded.”
Antkowiak said the wording of the warning will not change. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court may not rule similarly in its cases, because justices “traditionally follow our own state constitution, which gives more inherent protections to the citizens,” he said.
Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Diane Richard said city officers will be informed of the change during annual training they undergo.
“It will not change how we conduct investigations,” Richard said.
The high court made other rulings this term limiting Miranda rights.
Justices ruled a suspect’s request for a lawyer is good for only 14 days after the person is released from police custody -- the first time the court placed a time limit on a request for a lawyer -- and that police do not have to explicitly tell suspects they have a right to a lawyer during interrogation.
Copyright 2010 Tribune Review Publishing Company