What’s next, in order to exercise your freedom of speech, you must remain silent
The US Supreme Court made a very… interesting… ruling yesterday.
From the Washington Post:
The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a criminal suspect must explicitly invoke the right to remain silent during a police interrogation, a decision that dissenting liberal justices said turns the protections of a Miranda warning “upside down.”
It’s a very, very rare instance where I find myself siding firmly with the liberals on the USSC (the losing argument in the 5-4 split), but I’m behind them 100% on this one. A criminal must speak in order to exercise his/her Constitutional freedom to not speak? That’s ridiculous!
Must you remain silent to exercise your freedom of speech?
Must you sell off all of your guns to exercise your freedom to have them?
Must you abandon religion to guarantee your freedom of religion?
Stay away from crowds to engage in the freedom of assembly?
It makes literally no sense. American freedoms are passive. They exist whether or not you know they exist, and you do not have to exercise them in order to retain them. They are inherent freedoms, supposedly given to us by our Creator, and no man may take them away. This is embodied in the idea that you are “innocent until proven guilty”, which forces the government to assume that you are not guilty of anything, and lays 100% of the burden of proof on the government when they seek a conviction of you in the courts of law. You are not required to prove your innocence, the same as you should not be required to speak to tell the authorities that you do not wish to speak.
The Miranda warnings give you the freedom to remain silent. You can ignore that freedom if you wish, but it still exists. If a potential criminal or suspect chooses to remain silent, he/she should be able to sit there, silent, and have that freedom protected. The Miranda rights exist to protect the stupid and the scared from saying something which can be used against them in the courts of law, forcing these people to talk in order to exercise that freedom is a complete 180 degree about face on the logic of the Miranda protections.
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According to NPR reports, legal scholars from both left and right dumped on this loony ruling. The only way around it, for those unlucky or unwise enough to fall into the clutches of the law, is to say up front, “I want to see a lawyer,” and then clam up. Then, of course, you are in the clutches of the lawyers, but, lesser evils, I suppose.