The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled 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.”
The court ruled 5-4 that a Michigan defendant who incriminated himself in a fatal shooting after nearly three hours of questioning thus gave up his right to silence, and the statement could be used against him at trial.
“Where the prosecution shows that a Miranda warning was given and that it was understood by the accused, an accused’s uncoerced statement establishes an implied waiver of the right to remain silent,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court’s conservatives.
In the case, suspect Van Chester Thompkins remained mostly silent for three hours of interrogation after reading and being told of his rights to remain silent and have an attorney. He neither acknowledged that he was willing to talk nor indicated that he wanted questioning to stop.
But detectives persisted in what one called mostly a “monologue” until asking Thompkins if he believed in God. When asked, “Do you pray to God to forgive you for shooting that boy down?” Thompkins looked away and answered, “Yes.” The statement was used against him, and he was convicted of killing Samuel Morris outside a strip mall in Southfield, Mich.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit said Thompkins’s silence for two hours and 45 minutes of the interrogation “offered a clear and unequivocal message to the officers: Thompkins did not wish to waive his rights.”
Kennedy said it was not clear enough.
“If Thompkins wanted to remain silent, he could have said nothing in response to (the detective’s) questions, or he could have unambiguously involved his Miranda rights and ended the interrogation,” wrote Kennedy, who was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. “The fact that Thompkins made a statement about three hours after receiving a Miranda warning does not overcome the fact that he engaged in a course of conduct indicating waiver.”
Kennedy said the court’s new rule was an extension of the logic in a previous case that said a suspect must affirmatively assert his right to counsel.
But Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused the majority of casting aside judicial restraint and creating a rule that marks “a substantial retreat from the protection against compelled self-incrimination” that Miranda established more than 40 years ago.
“Today’s decision turns Miranda upside down,” Sotomayor wrote. “Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent, which, counterintuitively, requires them to speak.”
More decisions from the bench
Other court action Tuesday:
• Immunity law: The Supreme Court unanimously held that a former Somali official could not use the federal foreign sovereign immunity law to protect himself from a lawsuit filed in a U.S. court by alleged Somali victims of persecution.
• Sex offenders: The justices ruled, in a 6-3 vote, that a federal law requiring sex offenders to register with authorities when they move to another state does not apply to people who moved before the law took effect.
• Student doctors: The court agreed to decide whether student doctors are students or employees when it comes to collecting Social Security taxes, a question worth $700 million annually to the retirement system.
• Appeal rejected: Justices nixed an appeal from a federal death-row inmate who said his death sentence should have been thrown out because of a juror’s misconduct — which included calls to five news organizations and 71 calls to two fellow jurors, despite repeated warnings from the judge not to discuss the case with anyone.
• Appeal denied: Justices turned down an appeal from an Ohio death-row inmate, convicted of killing three people, who raised questions about witness testimony against him and said the courts never heard evidence that included the boast of another man who said he was going to carry out the killings.
• Human waste: The court stayed out of the dispute over a measure approved by voters in agricultural Kern County, Calif., that is intended to stop treated human waste, generated in the Los Angeles area, from being applied as fertilizer on farms in Kern County. The Associated Press
