The shotgun ballistic evidence is what got him the guilty verdict (and I'm sure quite a bit of other things). Not being able to answer a reasonable question was just the icing on the cake.
Ballistic reports showed the shells matched the shotgun, but police declined to prosecute Salinas.
Maybe I don't understand shotgun forensics very well, but as I understand the only ballistics that they could match it the gauge of the shotgun and possibly match gunpowder residue. Other than that, shotguns don't have riflings, which make them very difficult to pinpoint as a weapon.
As an example, if I were to fire 5 different shotguns of the same gauge but use the same shells and you either had the expended shell or the result of the shot (buckshot or slug), you most likely wouldn't be able to tell which rifle shot which shell.
While the jury may still have had plenty to convict on with other circumstantial evidence (motive, means, opportunity), I will say that this is a bad decision.
If the report is accurate, shells are what's left behind, the assembly of brass and plastic that you reload and all that. And for those on the brass base there will be extractor and ejector markings, and as jlgreco reminds me, maybe the firing pin, although how good they will be as evidence I don't know. I.e. sufficiently unique, then again a lot of this science isn't really anything resembling science as it's used outside the judicial world, excepting DNA matching.
My reading here (and IANAL, too) is that Salinas' trouble came from the fact that he was answering some questions, and then stopped when they got relevant. That is to say, his selective silence was the damning thing, not his silence, period. If you say nothing all along, or only say, "Lawyer.", your silence isn't so inculpatory.
IANAL either but that is also how I read it. I don't really find this all that disturbing. He chose to talk and then chose to not answer that specific question. Plus, as was pointed out in the article and by another poster here, the ballistics confirmed a match to the gun. So there was more at play in the court room than just his silence.
Being Mirandized doesn't give you those rights; it only reminds you that you have them. More to the point, you're only Mirandized upon arrest. Salinas hadn't been arrested yet. More fool him for talking to the cops in the first place...
Right. The problem here is that many people would be willing to answer police questions up and until the point that they suspect that they are the ones being questioned for the crime. If I go against my principles and answer questions from the police, then once you start asking me about where I hid the body, I am absolutely shutting up and asking for my lawyer.
This ruling allows the police to use that against me. It allows for false evidence to be leveraged against innocent people in a subjective and potentially manipulative way.
There no legal restriction, now, to police questioning people under the guise of just asking questions about the incident and then asking a direct question accusing you of the crime, and then using your refusal to answer that question against you--something innocent people would, could, and should do--as an argument that you are guilty.
It's over folks, don't talk to the police for any reason beyond the extent required by law (check your state requirements).
Prosecutors argued that since Salinas was answering some questions - therefore not invoking his right to silence - and since he wasn't under arrest and wasn't compelled to speak, his silence on the incriminating question doesn't get constitutional protection.
This judgement sends a very strong message to never talk to the police. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik explains why its a monumentally stupid idea to talk to the cops.
I wish I could upvote this more than once. Not talking to the police isn't just a good strategy for an individual, it is also important for the collective. If no one ever talks to the police, then not talking to the police won't be a suspicious or rebellious act, just par for the course.
I find it somewhat upsetting, and somewhat expected that the more the police and judicial system use people's words against them, the further they push communities away from cooperating and even helping the police.
I had a friend who used to police in Queens, NY and he said relations got so bad with the people in some neighborhoods that these people wouldn't say a word to the cops even when someone they knew was killed on their block! Talk about a sick world to live in, but can you really blame them?
Hypothetical: you are visiting a zoo. You see a bear get out of its enclosure, grab a baby human, and run away. You are the only witness who saw which direction the bear ran.
A police officer comes running up and asks where the bear went.
Question: Do you tell him, or do you say that you will not talk without a lawyer present?
I've asked people on Reddit similar questions when this video has come up there, and a lot of them say they would not talk without a lawyer, based on the video.
Missing unattended baby, and I was the only witness? I want nothing to do with that. I'd point in the correct direction then run in the opposite direction, as presumably everybody else was doing (because hey, escaped bear).
I think there's a difference between: "Hey, did you see which direction [insert bad situation that just happened that the police can help with] went!?"
…except that answering any questions at all by the police now means that the police can accuse you of some unrelated crime and use your silence at that point against you.
I am guessing the angle would be something related to why you and the baby were the only two people present if you were not the parent. If you were the parent, then I would be concerned about being blamed for somehow purposely causing the incident. Aside from the police I would be worried about the parents and any civil case they might try to bring in some misguided attempt to find someone to blame in their grief.
These are probably unlikely concerns, but I can imagine them and I don't like them. If there were other people around then these issues would be mitigated... but I would also feel no pressure to talk to anyone.
Let's say that you tell the officer: "The baby ran off with the bear that way." According to this case, you have now waved your 5th amendment rights. Now let's say, instead of running after the bear, the officer asks you "where did you hide the baby?"
Now, if you're smart, you would keep your mouth shut. You're innocent and anything you say can and will be used against you, in the event that the officer doesn't or refuses to believe you. But, according to this case, if you do keep your mouth shut then the officer can now offer as evidence to the court the fact that once he asked you specifically about the location of the baby, you didn't answer.
The prosecutor will then, legally, stand before a jury begging the question "why didn't he just answer the question? Obviously because he is guilty." Now you're the guy last seen with a missing baby who refused to say where the baby was. You're obviously guilty.
I, for one, will never speak to another on duty officer again except to the extent required by law.
Depending on the state and situation, you are required to by law to answer certain questions. I would answer these questions and otherwise ask if I am free to go.
If you have important evidence to solve a crime like that (missing children is a great example), the best thing to do is give your evidence to the police in as anonymous a fashion as possible, and also try to give strong signals that the evidence is credible.
The complaints people have with the system is that it incentivizes silence. I think most people don't advocate "don't talk to the police" because they want to see innocent people harmed (as in your example). It's precisely because they don't want to see innocent people harmed by police whose incentives, frankly, don't match up with "trying to find innocence".
The problem is, saying anything may cause you a world of hurt (e.g., obviously since you know so much you were the one who set the bear free) and will bring you absolutely no benefits, whereas saying nothing carefully is safe.
Yes, there is that minor detail of your conscience, but then again, in a society that's so dangerously crazy, that allows the police-judicial complex so much freedom to harm so many innocents, or harmless or most-harmless "clueless" (as used in http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Ex-Cop-Reveals-A...), just how much duty do you owe to those who are not kin or close friends? Given the possible consequences of using my guns in defense of others, no matter how legitimately or legally, I've had to make this decision ahead of time, and it has to be that limited.
As the government gets ever more predatory, I suspect we're getting an education in why various more "primitive" societies are that way, why family, clan and tribe are so very important in them.
If you're arrested or indicted, these make it clear: it's better not to have talked to the police.
But I'm still looking for analysis of how talking to the police affects the chance that they won't arrest you at all. If we're interested in P(trouble | talk to police) vs. P(trouble | don't talk to police), this part is just as important.
Isn't the idea that the Miranda warning does not grant rights, but merely serves to inform the recipient of rights that they already have? Well, I thought that was the idea, it clearly is not the case anymore...
Indeed, and that was an argument the Federalists made against the Bill of Rights.
But then again, does negatively defined law ever work in practice? Sure doesn't seem to in a whole bunch of areas that don't touch on the 1st through 8th Amendments.
Well, to take the area of Constitutional jurisprudence I'm most familiar with, look at all the effort that was put into claiming the 2nd Amendment created a "collective" right instead of acknowledging an individual right. This interpretation caused more than a little mischief, especially in state courts against their own versions of the 2nd Amendment, but also in at least one lower level Federal court decision, but a bottom line was that it was rejected 9-0 in Heller (this is a good article on all that: http://davekopel.org/2A/Mags/Collective-Right.html).
The Federalists' argument was that a government of limited powers could never even do such things. Unfortunately, the subsequent history of "a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce [us to] absolute Despotism...."
Well, the Federalists didn't think far enough ahead. We have CPUs that are Turing complete with only a single instruction, so in retrospect simply limiting the number of abilities the government had wouldn't have been sufficient in the long term. It's easier to say that in retrospect but I'm glad that the debate process for the Constitutional ratification led to the Bill of Rights being drafted in a compromise.
I'm not sure how to take the last sentence though. I know who the Continental Congress felt the despot was; who is the despot now?
A "Despotism" can be run by an oligarchy, which is what our ruling class has become. And "absolute Despotism" is a reasonably accurate description of where we seem to be headed, given a minimal allowance for rhetorical flourishes.
Quite seriously, re-read the Declaration if you haven't lately, history does tend to repeat itself, for people remain people.
I've actually read the Declaration recently enough to have linked a good part of it into one of the innumerable HN discussion threads around here.
And if this is an absolute despotism then I'll need to know what word to use for what despotism meant when Jefferson wrote those words, so that I can keep my thoughts straight.
I think the non-legalese gist of it was that by enumerating the right of citizens, it's too easy to get around them on technicalities. "Reasonable suspicion? Sure, we can come up with reasonable."
A negative definition puts the ball on the other side of the court. "Being searched, where does it say specifically that you have a right to search me?"
Yes, and the framing of this article as being about before-versus-after is misleading.
It's not before-or-after Miranda that matters. It's when you start talking, when you stop talking, what you say when you stop talking, etc. As other commenters have said, you can simplify this decision by never talking to police without your lawyer present.
IANAL. And also I generally answer questions for cops when they ask me.
From the article: Salinas' "Fifth Amendment claim fails because he did not expressly invoke the privilege against self-incrimination in response to the officer's question," Justice Samuel Alito said. "It has long been settled that the privilege `generally is not self-executing' and that a witness who desires its protection `must claim it.'"
Does this mean one must actually say "I plead the fifth" to 'claim' one's rights under the fifth amendment?
The 5th amendment says, in relevant portion: "No person... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself..."
I don't think it's a great decision, but it's misleading to say "that's not what the constitution says." The constitution doesn't say anything, one way or the other, about the proper way to invoke the right against self-incrimination. It just says that people shall not be "compelled."
If you're under oath, testifying in court, you're expected to give an answer of some form — in fact, you've sworn an oath to do exactly that — so in order to invoke your 5th Amendement right against self-incrimination, you must do so explicitly.
If you're being questioned by the police, even subsequent to an arrest, however, your silence should be sufficient.
Salinas' trouble didn't come from not explicitly invoking his privilege, but from waiving it by starting to talk, and then invoking it by refusing to talk further once the State's line of questioning in the pre-Miranda police interview became relevant to the crime in question.
The moral of the story? "Don't talk to the police. Ever."
In Jenkins, does the Court construe the Defendant's not immediately coming forward about the incident as "silence", or are they talking about his not answering the State's questions prior to his arrest for the incident?
Because, if it's the former, that seems reasonable to me: if I kill someone someone with mens rea, I'm presumably less likely to go to the police about it. Contrariwise, it seems to me that jurisprudence's notional "reasonable person", having killed someone in self-defense, would want to inform the authorities immediately, precisely in order to avoid suspicion.
Based on some quick study, it seems that is indeed what the Court is taking "silence" to mean: that he stabbed a dude, and didn't come forward about it immediately. SCOTUS didn't say that remaining silent in the face of police questioning prior to an arrest is somehow different from doing so afterwards. They said that his "silence" (i.e., not coming forward immediately about having killed someone in "self-defense") is something that the State can bring up in cross examination, in order to impeach his affirmative defense of self-defense.
Again, IANAL, but Jenkins doesn't seem dispositive on the specific question of law at issue in Salinas. Any actual lawyers playing along at home want to tell me where (or whether) I'm wrong?
"Jenkins doesn't seem dispositive on the specific question of law at issue in Salinas."
I guess Salinas is an extension of Jenkins to the somewhat broader circumstances of a suspect not answering direct police questions. While the circumstance of Jenkins are weaker, the actual opinion held that:
"The Fifth Amendment ... is not violated by the use of prearrest silence to impeach a criminal defendant's credibility."
Yes, just like you have to say "I intend to utilize my first amendment rights" before you say or write anything or "I am exercising my fourth amendment rights" whenever you lock your front door. If you don't actively claim it, you don't get it.
The prosecutors say that because Salinas was not compelled to speak that they could have used his silence against him, but (in their view) the only truthful thing he could have said was that his shotgun would match, which would be self-incriminating. Why bother making "compelled to speak" a factor at all if it would be abused like that?
Likewise Alito says that the Fifth Amendment right must be specifically exercised even before the Miranda warning to have any effect, once you've started speaking. What's the point of the Miranda warning then, if not to remind one of their Constitutional rights?
Even refusing to talk to the cops is no longer enough now, since if you're not under arrest and they are not "compelling" you to speak there's no end to the questions that they can ask you where silence or self-incrimination are the only choices.
Salinas isn't about silence. It's about selective silence. Salinas started talking to the cops, voluntarily. Then they started asking questions about the crime of which he was later convicted, and he clammed up.
If he'd not opened his yap in the first place, this wouldn't even be a thing.
And according to Alito he would have been fine even after clamming up... if only he'd mentioned that he was invoking his Fifth Amendment rights, so it's not even just about silence.
If you confirm your name to a cop after this ruling, have you permanently waived your requirement to be Mirandized?
Seeing as a lawyer is a tangible thing that doesn't really strike me as a fair analogy. Also, isn't Salito quoted as stating it as a privilege in the article?
A lot of developments lately make me think of this wonderful letter Emily Haines sent fans of Metric last fall.
> The thing we have to get our heads around on a daily basis is that even a small step in the wrong direction is too far when attempting to prevent a slide backwards.
Full letter here: http://peg.gd/3eN (short URL is not a redirect, but in fact a mirror of the email content itself).
This is one more of a creeping unbalancing of the checks and balances of modern government and it causes me great unease
In the UK we lost the "right to silence" twenty years ago - I remember campaigning to stop the bill. (Don't hire me as a lobbyist)
I think only the PACE reforms which focused police back on real evidence and away from confession and go policing has kept us from an explosion in the courts system.
Bein arrested and interviewed is a massively intimidating thing and just shutting up is almost always the best advice.
But if that advice can add years to your sentence you are asking people to make a fine risk assessment at the point most people are just in a head spin.
Not good. Aaron Schwartz had time to think about his fine balancing act. Look how that played out.
Keep the courts a long way away from inferences about why you shut up - write your congressman now. Seriously
Are there any questions that a suspect is required to answer? Like their name, where they live etc?
I think if you are driving a car you are required to produce your driver license on request, but other than that you don't have to answer any questions.
- convicted based on weapon only? Isn't that just an indirect proof?
- 2nd trial after the first one was a mistrial - I thought you can only be tried once?!
- convicted 15 years after it happened - isn't there a time bar?
- the whole miranda business - when they arrested Tsarnaev, they didn't read him his rights and people just assumed he had them anyway. This guy apparently didn't have them until they read it. So, if they don't read them you either have them if they won't read them to you ever or don't have them if they will read them in some unspecified point in the future?
I think I'll just stay out of Texas for a while.
EDIT: also "did not answer when asked if a shotgun he had access to would match up with the murder weapon" what kind of idiotic question is that?! "Excuse me sir, does your weapon match with the murder weapon?" "Yes, it does, officer!"
Sufficiently strong circumstantial evidence has long been enough to convict.
You can only be tried once, by both a state or subdivision, and the feds, "on the same set of facts", if a verdict of innocence is rendered. In a mistrial, the trial is ended for whatever reason without a verdict of any sort being rendered, generally the judge prematurely ends it because of a procedural issue or the jury deadlocks.
The prohibition against double jeopardy (which the courts have determined does not extend to both a state and a federal prosecution each, e.g. see the Rodney King debacle) is to prevent the authorities from trying you again and again until they get a jury to come to the "right" decision, and this decreases the problem of "the process is the punishment". Also protects you from a better prosecution after you reveal your (successful) defense the first time.
74 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 125 ms ] threadBallistic reports showed the shells matched the shotgun, but police declined to prosecute Salinas.
Maybe I don't understand shotgun forensics very well, but as I understand the only ballistics that they could match it the gauge of the shotgun and possibly match gunpowder residue. Other than that, shotguns don't have riflings, which make them very difficult to pinpoint as a weapon.
As an example, if I were to fire 5 different shotguns of the same gauge but use the same shells and you either had the expended shell or the result of the shot (buckshot or slug), you most likely wouldn't be able to tell which rifle shot which shell.
While the jury may still have had plenty to convict on with other circumstantial evidence (motive, means, opportunity), I will say that this is a bad decision.
(I don't know if they can do that or not, just an idea.)
BTW, some shotgun barrels do have rifling for shooting unrifled slugs for deer hunting (e.g. http://www.brownells.com/items/rifled-shotgun-barrels.aspx), but I'll bet that's not the case here.
This ruling allows the police to use that against me. It allows for false evidence to be leveraged against innocent people in a subjective and potentially manipulative way.
There no legal restriction, now, to police questioning people under the guise of just asking questions about the incident and then asking a direct question accusing you of the crime, and then using your refusal to answer that question against you--something innocent people would, could, and should do--as an argument that you are guilty.
It's over folks, don't talk to the police for any reason beyond the extent required by law (check your state requirements).
This judgement sends a very strong message to never talk to the police. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik explains why its a monumentally stupid idea to talk to the cops.
I had a friend who used to police in Queens, NY and he said relations got so bad with the people in some neighborhoods that these people wouldn't say a word to the cops even when someone they knew was killed on their block! Talk about a sick world to live in, but can you really blame them?
A police officer comes running up and asks where the bear went.
Question: Do you tell him, or do you say that you will not talk without a lawyer present?
I've asked people on Reddit similar questions when this video has come up there, and a lot of them say they would not talk without a lawyer, based on the video.
I'm curious how many here feel that way.
and
"Do you know how fast you were going?"
These are probably unlikely concerns, but I can imagine them and I don't like them. If there were other people around then these issues would be mitigated... but I would also feel no pressure to talk to anyone.
Now, if you're smart, you would keep your mouth shut. You're innocent and anything you say can and will be used against you, in the event that the officer doesn't or refuses to believe you. But, according to this case, if you do keep your mouth shut then the officer can now offer as evidence to the court the fact that once he asked you specifically about the location of the baby, you didn't answer.
The prosecutor will then, legally, stand before a jury begging the question "why didn't he just answer the question? Obviously because he is guilty." Now you're the guy last seen with a missing baby who refused to say where the baby was. You're obviously guilty.
I, for one, will never speak to another on duty officer again except to the extent required by law.
Depending on the state and situation, you are required to by law to answer certain questions. I would answer these questions and otherwise ask if I am free to go.
If you have important evidence to solve a crime like that (missing children is a great example), the best thing to do is give your evidence to the police in as anonymous a fashion as possible, and also try to give strong signals that the evidence is credible.
The complaints people have with the system is that it incentivizes silence. I think most people don't advocate "don't talk to the police" because they want to see innocent people harmed (as in your example). It's precisely because they don't want to see innocent people harmed by police whose incentives, frankly, don't match up with "trying to find innocence".
Yes, there is that minor detail of your conscience, but then again, in a society that's so dangerously crazy, that allows the police-judicial complex so much freedom to harm so many innocents, or harmless or most-harmless "clueless" (as used in http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Ex-Cop-Reveals-A...), just how much duty do you owe to those who are not kin or close friends? Given the possible consequences of using my guns in defense of others, no matter how legitimately or legally, I've had to make this decision ahead of time, and it has to be that limited.
As the government gets ever more predatory, I suspect we're getting an education in why various more "primitive" societies are that way, why family, clan and tribe are so very important in them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Azaria_Chamberlain
‘Maybe the dingo ate your ba-by!’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghCTZF61ey0
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements
But I'm still looking for analysis of how talking to the police affects the chance that they won't arrest you at all. If we're interested in P(trouble | talk to police) vs. P(trouble | don't talk to police), this part is just as important.
But then again, does negatively defined law ever work in practice? Sure doesn't seem to in a whole bunch of areas that don't touch on the 1st through 8th Amendments.
Well, for one thing the 9th Amendment doesn't address the problems with the positive rights that most of the other ones establish or acknowledge.
The Federalists' argument was that a government of limited powers could never even do such things. Unfortunately, the subsequent history of "a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce [us to] absolute Despotism...."
I'm not sure how to take the last sentence though. I know who the Continental Congress felt the despot was; who is the despot now?
Quite seriously, re-read the Declaration if you haven't lately, history does tend to repeat itself, for people remain people.
And if this is an absolute despotism then I'll need to know what word to use for what despotism meant when Jefferson wrote those words, so that I can keep my thoughts straight.
A negative definition puts the ball on the other side of the court. "Being searched, where does it say specifically that you have a right to search me?"
Yes, and the framing of this article as being about before-versus-after is misleading.
It's not before-or-after Miranda that matters. It's when you start talking, when you stop talking, what you say when you stop talking, etc. As other commenters have said, you can simplify this decision by never talking to police without your lawyer present.
IANAL. And also I generally answer questions for cops when they ask me.
Does this mean one must actually say "I plead the fifth" to 'claim' one's rights under the fifth amendment?
I don't think it's a great decision, but it's misleading to say "that's not what the constitution says." The constitution doesn't say anything, one way or the other, about the proper way to invoke the right against self-incrimination. It just says that people shall not be "compelled."
If you're under oath, testifying in court, you're expected to give an answer of some form — in fact, you've sworn an oath to do exactly that — so in order to invoke your 5th Amendement right against self-incrimination, you must do so explicitly.
If you're being questioned by the police, even subsequent to an arrest, however, your silence should be sufficient.
Salinas' trouble didn't come from not explicitly invoking his privilege, but from waiving it by starting to talk, and then invoking it by refusing to talk further once the State's line of questioning in the pre-Miranda police interview became relevant to the crime in question.
The moral of the story? "Don't talk to the police. Ever."
Also, IANAL.
Post-arrest silence cannot be used against you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doyle_v._Ohio
Pre-arrest silence can be used against you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenkins_v._Anderson
IANAL
Because, if it's the former, that seems reasonable to me: if I kill someone someone with mens rea, I'm presumably less likely to go to the police about it. Contrariwise, it seems to me that jurisprudence's notional "reasonable person", having killed someone in self-defense, would want to inform the authorities immediately, precisely in order to avoid suspicion.
Based on some quick study, it seems that is indeed what the Court is taking "silence" to mean: that he stabbed a dude, and didn't come forward about it immediately. SCOTUS didn't say that remaining silent in the face of police questioning prior to an arrest is somehow different from doing so afterwards. They said that his "silence" (i.e., not coming forward immediately about having killed someone in "self-defense") is something that the State can bring up in cross examination, in order to impeach his affirmative defense of self-defense.
Again, IANAL, but Jenkins doesn't seem dispositive on the specific question of law at issue in Salinas. Any actual lawyers playing along at home want to tell me where (or whether) I'm wrong?
EDIT: a bunch of clarifications and such.
I guess Salinas is an extension of Jenkins to the somewhat broader circumstances of a suspect not answering direct police questions. While the circumstance of Jenkins are weaker, the actual opinion held that:
"The Fifth Amendment ... is not violated by the use of prearrest silence to impeach a criminal defendant's credibility."
Edit: IANAL.
Likewise Alito says that the Fifth Amendment right must be specifically exercised even before the Miranda warning to have any effect, once you've started speaking. What's the point of the Miranda warning then, if not to remind one of their Constitutional rights?
Even refusing to talk to the cops is no longer enough now, since if you're not under arrest and they are not "compelling" you to speak there's no end to the questions that they can ask you where silence or self-incrimination are the only choices.
If he'd not opened his yap in the first place, this wouldn't even be a thing.
If you confirm your name to a cop after this ruling, have you permanently waived your requirement to be Mirandized?
> The thing we have to get our heads around on a daily basis is that even a small step in the wrong direction is too far when attempting to prevent a slide backwards.
Full letter here: http://peg.gd/3eN (short URL is not a redirect, but in fact a mirror of the email content itself).
If you're ignorant of the basic right, you are definitely ignorant of the case law.
The supreme court just said two things 1. The state has no responsibility to inform people of their rights and thus 2. The ignorant have no rights.
This both sickens and terrifies me.
In the UK we lost the "right to silence" twenty years ago - I remember campaigning to stop the bill. (Don't hire me as a lobbyist)
I think only the PACE reforms which focused police back on real evidence and away from confession and go policing has kept us from an explosion in the courts system.
Bein arrested and interviewed is a massively intimidating thing and just shutting up is almost always the best advice. But if that advice can add years to your sentence you are asking people to make a fine risk assessment at the point most people are just in a head spin.
Not good. Aaron Schwartz had time to think about his fine balancing act. Look how that played out.
Keep the courts a long way away from inferences about why you shut up - write your congressman now. Seriously
.
I think if you are driving a car you are required to produce your driver license on request, but other than that you don't have to answer any questions.
http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/bustcard_eng_20100630.pdf
#1 on the list of your rights:
"You have the right to remain silent. If you wish to exercise that right, say so out loud."
- convicted based on weapon only? Isn't that just an indirect proof?
- 2nd trial after the first one was a mistrial - I thought you can only be tried once?!
- convicted 15 years after it happened - isn't there a time bar?
- the whole miranda business - when they arrested Tsarnaev, they didn't read him his rights and people just assumed he had them anyway. This guy apparently didn't have them until they read it. So, if they don't read them you either have them if they won't read them to you ever or don't have them if they will read them in some unspecified point in the future?
I think I'll just stay out of Texas for a while.
EDIT: also "did not answer when asked if a shotgun he had access to would match up with the murder weapon" what kind of idiotic question is that?! "Excuse me sir, does your weapon match with the murder weapon?" "Yes, it does, officer!"
You can only be tried once, by both a state or subdivision, and the feds, "on the same set of facts", if a verdict of innocence is rendered. In a mistrial, the trial is ended for whatever reason without a verdict of any sort being rendered, generally the judge prematurely ends it because of a procedural issue or the jury deadlocks.
The prohibition against double jeopardy (which the courts have determined does not extend to both a state and a federal prosecution each, e.g. see the Rodney King debacle) is to prevent the authorities from trying you again and again until they get a jury to come to the "right" decision, and this decreases the problem of "the process is the punishment". Also protects you from a better prosecution after you reveal your (successful) defense the first time.