Editorial: Supreme Court should uphold Miranda rights

As guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution,
“no person … shall be compelled in any criminal case to be
a witness against himself.” But this protection will prove
largely moot if a suspects’ right to silence during police
interrogation is revoked in the case of Chavez v. Martinez.

The case involves an Oxnard man, Oliverio Martinez, who
continuously voiced his desire to remain silent after he was
involved in scuffle with police, which resulted in Martinez
receiving gun shots that left him blind and paralyzed. Police tried
to squeeze a confession out of him even as he fell into
unconsciousness in the emergency room. Martinez’ attorneys
say this violated his Miranda rights ““ which guarantee him
the right, among others, to remain silent during police
interrogation, and which must be read by the police to people upon
arrest.

Opponents of the Miranda decision have long claimed that the
Fifth Amendment, from which the Miranda rights are derived, only
applies in court ““ not to attempts to gather evidence ““
and say it has hindered police efforts to capture criminals. They
also assert coercive police questioning, which the Miranda decision
was designed to protect against, is not forbidden by the
Constitution.

While it is almost certainly true that removing restrictions on
police powers would result in a higher number of suspects being
prosecuted, the assumption that it would do so without unfairly
convicting innocents of crimes they did not commit is dubious.
Whether a suspect is innocent or guilty, the fact is police will
conduct their questioning in much the same way ““ using
intimidation and quick wits to try to extract condemning
information. Without the right to remain silent, innocents could be
hounded or outwitted into making a statement that will later be
misused to convict them in court.

Even if suspects are not forced to testify against themselves in
court, their words outside it could lead to being witnesses against
themselves. Police are allowed to cite reports, including witness
statements, as evidence, meaning suspects could indirectly become
witnesses against themselves if they are not guaranteed the right
to silence. It has been suggested that suspects could refuse to
allow their statements to be used in a court of law, but this would
defeat the purpose of expanding police powers. If the statements
cannot be used in court, there is no reason to allow officers to
coerce or force suspects to make them in the first place.

It is much more likely that eliminating the Miranda rights would
result in unchecked police authority over suspects and the
potential for them to forge convictions. This has been done even
with the Miranda protections in place, as evidenced by the Rampart
corruption scandal in the Los Angeles Police Department, in which
three police officers were found guilty of fabricating
evidence.

This risk is especially high in cases where suspects speak
little or no English, have little education or are for some reason
not aware of what they are saying. Non-English speaking immigrants
could foreseeably be led to confess to almost anything without
their knowledge ““ especially if they are not informed of
their right to an attorney.

While suspects’ rights during questioning are not
explicitly protected by the Fifth Amendment, to suggest checks on
police powers are implicit within it flies in the face not just of
the Fifth Amendment but the Constitution as a whole, which is
designed to guarantee individual liberties and limit the
state’s ability to manipulate them.

It is more important for the Supreme Court to protect the rights
that the constitution leaves ambiguous than the ones it clearly
states ““ it did this successfully in its Miranda ruling and
should uphold it here.