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Excerpts from pages 170-173
Suspects will continue to come to the attention of the
police and show up, willingly or not, in America’s
interrogation rooms. Once there, knowing no better
regardless of any warnings, many will incriminate
themselves directly into jail, and the privilege against
self-incrimination will be trumped by the certainty of
self-incarceration. Although most police interrogators
are more interested in doing the job than clearing the
docket, some will want the confession badly enough to
ignore the Supreme Court’s rules about warning suspects.
In time, those who make the rules and fund police
protection will prevail, and the entire American police
force will be comprised of professionals; everyone in
the interrogation rooms will be college educated, highly
trained, and respectful of America’s right to remain
silent.
To what extent that right should be respected when
applied to non-Americans, however, is an entirely
different question. The devastation wreaked upon New
York City and, psychologically, on the rest of the
nation on September 11, 2001, understandably created a
need for changes in the ways we prosecute foreign
criminals such as the al Qaeda terrorists. What we see
as a constitutional right for ourselves may have to be
withheld from those who would take all rights away by
terror and violence rather than by the due process of
the democratic system. We would do well to remember,
however, that, if in the effort to solve the problems
Miranda has posed to law enforcement, we return to
the days when law enforcement was silent on the rights
of suspects, be they homegrown simple thieves or
foreign-trained terrorists, then the hate-America
campaign will have obtained one of its objectives. These
people seek to destroy democracy itself and replace it
with a radically fundamental theocracy run by their God,
not their government.
The good news: Technology will provide some solutions.
In time, the same kinds of monitoring devices that have
modernized courtrooms may become standard equipment in
interrogation rooms. Video cameras have already
revolutionized many aspects of police surveillance and
arrest procedures, providing evidence that can often be
more convincing than eyewitness accounts (isolated
occurrences such as the Rodney King affair
notwithstanding). Some day, video cameras in the
interrogation room will provide evidence of similar
verisimilitude and serve to monitor the conduct of
suspect and interrogator.
Regardless of whether or not improved methods for
gathering evidence will serve to condemn or exonerate,
people will, through some natural compulsion perhaps,
continue to unburden their souls in the misguided belief
that confessing to their crimes will set them free of
the law just as surely as confessing their sins can
clear their consciences. Such confessions, if they
comply with the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, will be
admissible and will remain a valuable tool for finding
the truth, but they will not be the only evidence
offered at trial. And unwarned confessions will more
easily remain in the prosecutor’s briefcase - unless and
until the defendant tries, once again, to talk himself
into jail by taking the witness stand.
The right to remain silent should never be rescinded in
the interests of national security or on the strength of
any other reason. It is a fundamental value in American
society, one that distinguishes us, for no other
government recognizes the right of its citizens to tell
government officials “no” and make them abide by it.
Whether we choose silence or choose to confess is not
really the point. Knowing that we can choose one
or the other is the point. In upholding this right, we
license our government to protect all of us, innocent
and guilty alike. In knowing that we have the right to
say “no,” we will, as a nation, stand the test of time.
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