Posted on 12/01/2002 10:44:59 AM PST by Sub-Driver
US Supreme Court Could Make Miranda Warnings Thing of the Past By Linda Deutsch The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) - For five years, Oliverio Martinez has been blind and paralyzed as the result of a police shooting. Now he is at the center of a U.S. Supreme Court case that could determine whether decades of restraints on police interrogations should be discarded. The blanket requirement for a Miranda warning to all suspects that they have the right to remain silent could end up in the rubbish bin of legal history if the court concludes police were justified in aggressively questioning the gravely wounded Martinez while he screamed in agony.
"I am dying! ... What are you doing to me?" Martinez is heard screaming on a recording of the persistent interrogation by police Sgt. Ben Chavez in Oxnard, a city of 182,000 about 60 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
"If you are going to die, tell me what happened," the officer said. He continued the questioning in an ambulance and an emergency room while Martinez pleaded for treatment. At times, he left the room to allow medical personnel to work, but he returned and continued pressing for answers.
No Miranda warning was given.
A ruling that minimizes defendants' rights would be useful to the administration, which supports Oxnard's appeal, in its questioning of terrorism suspects, experts said.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a federal judge that the confession was coerced and cannot be used as evidence against Martinez in his excessive-force civil case against the city. It said Chavez should have known that questioning a man who had been shot five times, was crying out for treatment and had been given no Miranda warning was a violation of his constitutional rights.
Oxnard appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Justice Department filed a friend-of-the-court brief along with police organizations and the conservative Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.
They contend that unfettered police questioning is allowable so long as the information obtained from a suspect is not used against that person in court.
Opponents of the government position say a ruling diluting the Miranda protections would be another nail in the coffin of individual rights sacrificed in the interest of rooting out terrorists.
"This is a case to be concerned about," said Charles Weisselberg, a University of California, Berkeley, law professor. "To see the (U.S.) solicitor general arguing that there's no right to be free from coercive interrogation is pretty aggressive."
On Nov. 28, 1997, Martinez, a farm worker, was riding his bicycle through a field where police were questioning a man suspected of selling drugs. The police ordered Martinez to stop. When an officer found a sheathed knife in his waistband, they scuffled and the officer's partner, perceiving that Martinez was reaching for the officer's gun, shot him five times, in the eyes, spine and legs.
Chavez eventually got an acknowledgment from Martinez that he did grab for the officer's gun. But Martinez's lawyers said that statement was coerced and is inadmissible in the damage case that Martinez filed.
Martinez was never charged with a crime.
The Oxnard appeal argues that the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination applies only at a criminal trial and the 14th Amendment guarantee of due process of law is violated only if the questioning of a suspect is so excessive that it "shocks the conscience" of the community.
Martinez is represented by R. Samuel Paz, a frequent critic of police practices.
"I think it will turn on whether the court is going to stand up and say what it said before," Paz said, "that the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments protect people, and that we do have rights that extend beyond having a coerced confession admitted into a criminal case."
Martinez, 34, blind and paraplegic, lives in a one-room trailer in a remote rural area, tended by his father.
"It's tragic," said Alan E. Wisotsky, the lawyer for the city of Oxnard, "but you can't look at it from a philanthropic standpoint. He tried to kill police officers or they thought he was trying to kill them .... Does the tape (of the interrogation) sound bad? Yes, the guy is in agony. But the questioning was to get at the truth."
The Miranda warning takes its name from the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in a 1966 case involving the use of a confession in the rape prosecution of Ernesto Miranda.
"A generation of Americans has grown up since 1966 confident that, if brought to the police station for questioning, we have the right to remain silent, that the police will warn us of that right and, above all, that they will respect its exercise," said a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Martinez by the American Civil Liberties Union and California Attorneys for Criminal Justice.
"... If petitioners' theory of the Fifth Amendment is correct, then the public's confidence has been misplaced for all these decades and is about to be shattered," it said.
Then please point out where Constitutional rights were violated by this questioning.
Then please point out where Constitutional rights were violated by this questioning.
You, sir, are correct. When I re-read the 8th Amendment, there is no prohibition against a torturous interrogation, so long as it is not punishment imposed by a court.
That cop could have started gouging out the eyes of the subject, and not violated his constitutional rights. You can threaten to castrate children, beat him to a bloody pulp, or any other type of interrogation. Personally, I like hot cigar embers against the face, or holding the subject's head under water for 60 seconds at a time. Guns to the head are nice, if you want to escape the middle ages. Contemplate "the rack."
As long as the cops do it, and not the courts, it squares with the Bill of Rights, provided the cops did not attempt to search or seize any property.
The 9th circuit opinion on this in in conflict with all other circuits.
Yes, the 9th has a reputation of being a bit loony. In this case they may be wrong because the 5th Amendment only applies to criminal cases, and this was civil.
This opens Pandora's Box. Can agents of the state torture someone to provide evidence contrary to the tortured's basis of a civil claim against the state?
The 9th says no - all others say yes.
Mr Martinez would prefer that the jurors not know that he grabed the gun from the holster of the officer and then aimed it at the officer. He was then shot by the second officer. If the jurors know this fact, Martinez and his lawyer will have to find another "big bucks" case.
Mr Martinez would prefer that the jurors not know that he grabed the gun from the holster of the officer and then aimed it at the officer. He was then shot by the second officer. If the jurors know this fact, Martinez and his lawyer will have to find another "big bucks" case.
We don't know that other than the word of the officer (of course he is going to say Martinez reached for his gun) and the coerced testimony of Mr. Martinez. Had it not been for the coersion, we have a case of he said/he said.
Let's say the cops raid my house at 2am looking for a marajuana leaf. They spend 4 hours destroying everything I have worked my entire life creating. Suddenly, they realize that their paid informant said 456 Franklin St, not 456 Francis Drive. Oops, their bad.
I file suit to recover $100K in damages. The case looks good, so Sgt. Barbrady shows up in the middle of the night and kidnaps me and my son. On camera he gets me to admit that I had a mj leaf in the house, because off camera he is holding a razor to my son's testicles. We go to court and my "confession" is upheld because it is a civil trial. My assertion that the cops were coercing a confession is not supported by any evidence, other than my testimony. Given that I am a self-confessed doper, who believes me?
Had Mr. Martinez not been interrogated when he was delirious with pain, blood loss, loss of eyesight, and the fear that he was going to die, and was interrogated in the presence of his lawyer, I doubt the "confession" would have been obtained. In criminal cases this is called "fruit of the poison tree." I do not know if illegally obtained evidence applies to civil trials.
It doesn't sound like torture to me. People in pain are questioned all the time. The medics questioned him, was that torture?
Ask yourself "how this can be abused?" At what point do you have to read his rights? At the point of interrogation, a civil trial had not been established. It is reasonable to assume the cop was moving toward criminal evidence. Why the Miranda rights were not read is beyond me.
If you read this article, GWB and Ashcroft want the suspect's rights diminished, because they can conduct the phantom War on Terrorism without Constitutional oversight.
Keep in mind where this is going. I shudder to think the liberals were correct all along in the Pubbies wanting to trash our rights in the name of government power.
In reading this piece I am getting the feeling that the Miranda Rights are so ingrained now that we assume that they were always Constitutional Rights.
The Miranda Rights got here by legal proxy through the SCOTUS and now they may leave us via the same route.
The bottom line, is that only criminals have anything to fear from this reversal and return to "traditional values". Maybe in a few years we can leave our doors unlocked again.
You have completely misrepresented this case. No one says that torture is acceptable. In this case, there is no allegation of torture - only that the officer interrogated the plaintiff without reading him his rights. No circuit claims that torture is acceptable - where do you get such complete nonsense?
No, you misunderstand the case as well. The issue is whether or not the violation of Miranda was itself something that results in a cause of action in a civil lawsuit against the officer. The issue is not whether or not what the plaintiff said was admissable.
You have completely misrepresented this case. No one says that torture is acceptable. In this case, there is no allegation of torture - only that the officer interrogated the plaintiff without reading him his rights.
Actually, you are correct. I believe the suit is over the damages, and Martinez seeks to get evidence contrary to his case thrown out based upon criminal law.
When I first read this, based upon the timing of the interrogation, it looked as if Chavez was the cop that shot Martinez. My bad.
Either way, this discussion has devolved into a discussion on whether or not the state can coerce a confession or evidence in a civil matter. The GWB administration seems to have taken an interest in the matter to shelve some rights for the War on Terrorism.
It is not a huge leap to think that an obsequious court would allow for the state to "beat a confession" out of a prospective terrorist, drug dealer, or even a tax cheat. I believe most of world history has had such an arrangement. It is my fear this could be the first step on the way toward coerced confessions. No circuit claims that torture is acceptable - where do you get such complete nonsense?
I was responding to the premise of post #25. I was assuming the poster was correct. Perhaps he is not.
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