Will the Marathon Bomber Be Read His Miranda Rights?
Interesting, if slightly hysterical, piece on the erosion of Miranda under Holder and the Obama administration. The piece simply presupposes that he won't be read his rights, and goes from there... But the main point of the piece is that Holder's DoJ has pushed an expansive conception of the public safety exception to Miranda. The suspect might very well not be read his rights. And that's worthy of attention.
posted by Winston Smith at
8:08 AM
3 Comments:
Hi Winston,
I don't claim to be any kind of expert, but my initial, amateurish opinion is that the invocation of the public safety exception to Miranda is appropriate in this instance.
These guys were carrying around, and had possibly planted, all kinds of explosive devices in and around Boston. If the need to find those explosives doesn't constitute exigent circumstances, I don't know what does.
Just MHO.
Also, the public exception clause has a 48 hour time limit from the time of apprehension(talking points memo had a good article on this recently). My understanding is that he must be read his rights at that point. And if he's still unconscious...this might be moot point.
I would also add Winston that as long as the gov doesn't care that any non-Mirandized statements can't be used at trial, it shouldn't make any difference whether he was Mirandized or not. So if they feel they have adequate other evidence to convict, the fact that the statements are not admissable might not matter.
Furthermore IANAL, but my understanding is that any evidence gleaned from interviewing the suspect may also be admissable later if the gov could prove that it would have eventually found that evidence anyway. e.g. "inevitable discovery"
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