The case deals with a very specific application of Fifth Amendment protections; if you’re not under arrest and haven’t been read your rights, can the police construe your refusal to answer questions as a sign of your guilt?
Reuters:
Without comment, the court agreed to hear the appeal of Genovevo Salinas, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison for the December 1992 deaths of two brothers in Houston.
Salinas voluntarily answered police questions for about an hour, but he became silent when asked whether shotgun shells found at the crime scene would match a gun found at his home. An officer testified that Salinas demonstrated signs of deception.
Ballistics testing later matched the gun to the casings left at the murder scene.
Salinas was charged in 1993 but evaded arrest until his capture in 2007.
His first trial ended in a mistrial. At his second trial, Texas was able to introduce evidence of his silence in the police station, over his lawyer’s objections.
Salinas’ lawyer argued that his client deserved a Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, even though he had not been under arrest or read his rights under the landmark 1966 decision Miranda v. Arizona.
Last April, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the conviction but noted that federal appeals courts are split as to whether “pre-arrest, pre-Miranda silence is admissible as substantive evidence of guilt.”
Texas opposed the appeal, saying that the protection against compulsory self-incrimination is irrelevant when a suspect is under no compulsion to speak, as Salinas was because he was not under arrest and was speaking voluntarily. It also said that any error was harmless.
The question should be, will allowing this kind of evidence undermine the Fifth Amendment’s iron-clad guarantee against incriminating oneself? The line is sharply drawn between a case like this and one where the subject has actually been arrested and read his Miranda rights. Is there a gray area that the Supreme Court needs to clarify? If there is, I don’t see it.
Still, the idea that the authorities can use your silence in any case against you is unsettling. Whether it is worrisome enough for five justices to rule in Salinas’ favor is another question.
If Mr. Salinas didn’t want to answer questions and was not under arrest, he should have been free to leave. But the fact that the police inferred guilt because of the way Mr. Salinas maintained his silence could be seen as good police work — something the Supreme Court usually keeps in mind when ruling on thorny Fifth Amendment issues.
The assumption on the part of the police that silence is one indicator of probably guilt, it is not probable cause. As I understand our laws, I have an absolute right, with or without “Miranda” having been read to me, not to speak with or cooperate with the police in any way at any time if I so decide. In the Commonwealth of Virgina, my only obligation with respect to the police is to produce an ID upon request. Having done that, and if not arrested on the spot, one may walk away at any time. Also, speaking on subject “A” or answering questions about it does not obligate one to continue and discuss subject “B”. “We’re done here” is a valid statement.
If one is speaking voluntarily one may volunteer to stop speaking. Overturn.
Yes and no – whenever dealing with gov’t authorities, there is *always* the implication of force and coercion, whether or not a formal arrest has taken place.
If he is argued to have begun speaking voluntarily, he would therefore have been within his rights not to speak. If he would have been within his rights not to speak, he ought to be within his rights to stop speaking. His conviction should be overturned.
How many more words will I need to restate this a third time?
His silence is covered by two amendments, first and fifth. If I have a right to free speech, that right also includes not speaking. I’m also wondering about matching shell casings to a shotgun. Sounds like questionable science to me.
Firing pin marks and positioning of the dimple created by the pin. Very few breech faces have perfectly centered firing pin holes.
My general rule is that if it sounds like something a sterotype of a Stuart Star Chamber court would have pulled to get a conviction any which way, and just wanted to justify it to the loyal subject tupes predisposed to give the Crown a blank check, then it probably shouldn’t be done. Basically, this man *functionally* invoked his Fifth Amendment rights the minute he decided to stay silent, and by the Talmud the Supreme Court has given us, what is the standard then on admissability of defendant asserting the Fifth Amendment as evidence of guilt?
As a practical matter, the move is self-defeating for police–people would be well-advised to just never speak to them as a general rule. But…are there not statutes about failure to cooperate with investigations, failures to speak? So, if you allow silence to be used as proof, then what you have said is that if the defendant doesn’t fill out his Fifth Amendment claim at the beginning, in triplicate, he has no Fifth Anendment right. Ever. But, won’t people be then charged with failure to cooperate, as they are not being charged themselves?
Finally, have police ever charged a man being voluntarily questioned, who lies about his complicity, with the charge of given false information? In that case, remember, the man did not lie–he just clammed up. If you allow police to use voluntarily questioning periods as evidence, and allow them to charge for giving information later proved false, and *also* allow the state to enter in silence as evidence, then I forsee a lot of pressure by police for voluntary questioning to mount, with folks being taken in on trivial charges lest they comply.
tupes=types.
Basically, if I were a cop, I would now never actually arrest a man, but would try and get him for “voluntary” questioning about a crime that I will assure him he has absolutely nothing to do with–until I ask him the fatal question. And given the sheer number of trivial laws today, I could get him for something else if he did not “volunteer”–perhaps just failure to cooperate with an investigation.
And once he volunteers, if I can use silence as evidence of guilt, I’ve got him. If he lies, I have an extra charge to throw at him.
Allowing silence as evidence could make the entire Miranda ruling moot.
I would allow silence for probable cause–because that requires additional evidence to be found–and not anything else.
Bingo.
Okay, what moron got the idea that your rights somehow attach upon the police reading a little piece of paper? You have the right to remain silent at all times. Your silence should not be witness against you. Now, police might find your sudden silence indicative but it is neither probable cause or should be admitted at trial.
I see the opposite should this case be upheld. Then the only way to protect yourself from police is to give your name and address, and nothing else in any conversation with police. Could your silence then be construed as guilt?
Not to mention on the federal level and in some states, you can be prosecuted for lying to the police. So how can you not be compelled to be a witness against yourself if you are stuck between being prosecuted for lying or having your silence be used as evidence?
But this could go either way, the SCOTUS hasn’t shown much respect for the 4th amendment so why would they show it for the 5th. As long as it makes the police’s job easier.
Don’t worry. The solons won’t let the Constitution confuse them on this issue.
The lesbians will make their decision based on obama’s brain fart of the day. Breyer will read European law for guidance. Kennedy will flip his usual coin. And Roberts will defer to what his bowels are telling him about his “legacy”.
My opinion? If silence is justifiable cause to be suspicious, why not the lack of silence? Or for that matter, why not owning a gun, or a million other reasons. If our masters want to arrest you, shouldn’t they be able to? After all, they are our betters. They mean well, after all.
Never talk to the police. It’s a video on youtube and is well worth watching. Police know how to get you to say things and even if you are innocent, a slip up on your part that sounds suspicious to them can be taken as a sign that you are involved in the case.
The truth is that even though the 5th says you don’t have to talk, it has taken on the connotation of guilt because of real criminals actually using it and its use in movies and on TV by criminals, so its protective value is countered by that.
The supreme court rules of police interrogation (Once police officers begin asking questions that may implicate involvement in a crime, an interrogation has begun) and custody (generally defined as anytime the police deprive you of your freedom of action in a significant way) will be the two issues before the court. Anything else should be considered novel. Of course, if the news article information is incomplete or in error, who knows what such issues may be.
A person being interviewed by the police no longer has the “exculpatory no” option, a right which had long been recognized by the courts. Brogan v. United States, 522 U.S. 398 (1998), is a United States Supreme Court case that ruled that the Fifth Amendment does not protect the right of those being questioned by law enforcement officials to deny wrongdoing if doing so would be a false statement.* A strict reading of Brogan would seem to require him either to admit guilt or to invoke the 5th Amendment, even though he has not been informed of that right. I believe that the technical term for this is being between a rock and a hard place.
Another problem with Brogan’s elimination of the Exculpatory No is that a plea of Not Guilty at trial would subject the defendant to a further charge of perjury if he is found guilty.
*Wikipedia