“…you have the right to an attorney…”
That line out of the commonly-known Miranda warning won’t be in there much longer if the Obama administration has their way. I noted this back on Thursday but didn’t have much of a chance to comment until now. The case in question is Michigan v. Jackson which was appealed to the Supreme Court in 1986. In that case, the Court ruled that police were not allowed to initiate questioning of a suspect who has asked for a lawyer until that lawyer is present. The administration’s position is that the Court should overturn that ruling.
The justices could decide as early as Friday whether they want to hear arguments on the issue as they wrestle with an ongoing case from Louisiana that involves police questioning of an indigent defendant that led to a murder confession and a death sentence.
The Justice Department, in a brief signed by Solicitor General Elena Kagan, said the 1986 decision “serves no real purpose” and offers only “meager benefits.” The government said defendants who don’t wish to talk to police don’t have to and that officers must respect that decision. But it said there is no reason a defendant who wants to should not be able to respond to officers’ questions.
At the same time, the administration acknowledges that the decision “only occasionally prevents federal prosecutors from obtaining appropriate convictions.”
Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air wrote on this on Friday saying that the only outlet covering this was a British paper. Apparently he missed the Fox News story I’ve linked. His primary complaint, however, is spot on:
Can you imagine what the outcry over this would have been had President John McCain, or for that matter President George W. Bush, had tried this? Newspapers around the nation would have decried his assault on civil liberties. PFAW and the ACLU would have staged rallies in every American city, and they would have called Bush, McCain, or any other Republican a fascist for denying legal counsel to people under police questioning. We’d have an endless line of appearances on television news programs from people who got coerced into false confessions after having been denied counsel.
Indeed. The story I’ve linked speaks of how “disappointed” civil-rights groups are but there’s been precious little they’ve had to say on the matter. Were this happening just 6 months ago, it would’ve been “outraged” not “disappointed” and there’d be an endless litany from the media instead of just this 1 story.
It’s almost as though all that concern about people’s civil rights were just political smokescreens. Hmmm.
