Miranda and interrogation procedures

Terry Karney is one of those throwing fits over the recent court ruling on one's rights under the Fifth Amendment: "And the US slips further from being civilised"

The US, so I find out today, just, effectively, did away with Miranda.
....
Kennedy said, writing for the majority (guess who they were), "If Thompkins wanted to remain silent, he could have said nothing in response to [the detective's] questions, or he could have unambiguously invoked his Miranda rights and ended the interrogation." He also said, ""the interrogation was conducted in a standard-size room in the middle of the afternoon," conditions that weren't inherently coercive."

Right. A standard room, three cops, three hours. Not allowed to leave and told anything he says will be used against him. He stands mute, for three hours, and responds to a "gotcha" question.

I've always said the thing to tell a cop, when he wants to talk to you about anything more than what you saw, when he arrives to the scene of an event you witnessed is, "I'll be glad to talk to you when my lawyer gets here."

All the more so now.

I've posted other commentary, and I think Karney is indulging in another of his Two Minute Hate sessions. But it's interesting to read this in light of his writings elsewhere:

In Illinois he championed (and got passed) legislation requiring the videotaping of all police interrogations connected to murder investigations.

He could have followed the Bush path, and said, "Oh, this is horrid. It's terrible that rogue cops do bad things, but we don't condone it. When we find out about it, we will punish them."

He didn't. He worked to change the way things were done in a way which increased transparency, and encouraged both good behavior, and faith in the system.

Consider a bill into which Obama clearly put his heart and soul. The problem he wanted to address was that too many confessions, rather than being voluntary, were coerced -- by beating the daylights out of the accused.

Obama proposed requiring that interrogations and confessions be videotaped.

This seemed likely to stop the beatings, but the bill itself aroused immediate opposition. There were Republicans who were automatically tough on crime and Democrats who feared being thought soft on crime. There were death penalty abolitionists, some of whom worried that Obama's bill, by preventing the execution of innocents, would deprive them of their best argument. Vigorous opposition came from the police, too many of whom had become accustomed to using muscle to "solve" crimes. And the incoming governor, Rod Blagojevich, announced that he was against it.

Obama had his work cut out for him.

At this point, it occurred to me we might have a common interest:

Unfortunately, my experience with the taping of interrogations – even audiotaping – is that the police are perfectly capable of becoming technologically inept. In the case of my adopted nephew, his "confession" disappeared after the police uploaded it to the computer. By the time his lawyer wanted a copy of it, it was nowhere to be found.

No one was terribly concerned about it. Obviously, the importance of recording interrogations is vastly overrated.</irony>

And a comment on this post, I amplified:

You may be interested in the case I mention in this comment, of my "adopted nephew".

He has a court hearing today, resulting from rape charges. The only evidence of his guilt, or that a crime occurred, is the confession he was badgered into giving after hours of interrogation.

Terry seems to have followed the following logic:

Torture is not nice.
Therefore
Anything not nice is torture.

In any event, since Terry defines as "torture" and "beyond the pale"

Here is my definition. You will (because you have already) disagree.

It's very simple.

Any physical or mental coercion.

Full stop. Any.

Obviously, he and everyone who agrees with him must agree my "adopted nephew" was "tortured". At the very least, the confession should be thrown out. So, presumably, should the cop who interrogated him. The Glendale Police Department should be held to account for either failing to prevent "torture", or for promoting it.

I have a feeling, though, that Terry and those who agree with him only object to "torture" if President Bush is in charge.