Back in April, I wrote about the Obama administration’s efforts to weaken defendant’s rights by allowing police to question suspects without their lawyers present, even after they requested to speak with their lawyers.
Personally, I think stopping the questioning until a lawyer is present is a good thing. There are some folks who just don’t understand what is going on and need someone educated in legal issues to help guide them through the whole thing.
Well, the Supreme Court did it. They “overturned its 1986 opinion in a Michigan case, which forbade the police from interrogating a defendant once he invoked his right to counsel at an arraignment or a similar proceeding,” and for the first time, I find myself siding with the liberals over the conservatives:
That 1986 ruling has not only proved “unworkable,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority, but its “marginal benefits are dwarfed by its substantial costs” in that some guilty defendants go free. Justice Scalia was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
In an angry dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the 1986 decision, said that contrary to the majority’s assertion, that decision protected “a fundamental right that the court now dishonors.”
I am really at a loss. I understand the point that if they don’t want to talk, they don’t have to talk, but what about the folks who don’t understand what is going on? What about the people who are slow, or uneducated?
I would love for someone to explain this to me. How is this a good thing?
