<story><title>Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights?</title><url>http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/04/dzhokhar_tsarnaev_and_miranda_rights_the_public_safety_exception_and_terrorism.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pyre</author><text>They are also getting away with it because the torture isn&apos;t of the &quot;strap electrodes to his genitals&quot; variety, which most people would immediately reject. Stuff like &quot;loud music,&quot; &quot;putting a holy book in a toilet,&quot; or &quot;make him think he&apos;s drowning,&quot; don&apos;t evoke the same sort of immediate reaction. If the administration were openly performing at &quot;Inquisition&quot; levels of torture, there would be massive public outcry.</text></item><item><author>mtgx</author><text>That&apos;s some really twisted mental gymnastics there. Torture is bad, because it&apos;s torture. It doesn&apos;t matter if you&apos;re a criminal or a human-monkey. How can they get away with it for so long? At least they didn&apos;t say torture is legal &quot;because he&apos;s not a white guy&quot;, but their logic here is not that far off from that.</text></item><item><author>lbarrow</author><text>Being read your Miranda rights also serves as an explicit acknowledgement by the state that you have those rights. Most of the time, this isn&apos;t really important, but in this case it would have served a very important purpose.&lt;p&gt;The Bush administration systematically created a legal netherworld for people they captured on suspicion of terrorism -- people usually referred to as &quot;enemy combatants&quot;. They weren&apos;t arrested per se, so they weren&apos;t entitled to a trial, lawyers, or even the basic rights we associate with a criminal trial such as protection against self-incrimination (i.e. the right to remain silent). On the other hand, the administration argued they weren&apos;t prisoners of war either, so the Geneva Convention didn&apos;t apply to them.&lt;p&gt;By defining enemy combatants in this negative way -- in terms of what they are &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; -- the Bush administration pushed enemy combatant status into a grey area where no pre-existing legal rules seemed to apply. That&apos;s how they argued that torture was legal: they said that laws prohibiting torture only applied to prisoners of war or people charged with crimes, and that because enemy combatants weren&apos;t either of those things, they could legally be tortured.&lt;p&gt;If they had read this guy his Miranda rights, the Obama administration would have made it clear that they would treat his future as a police matter and that they were rejecting the enemy combatant framework in this case. They failed to do that, and I think it&apos;s a wasted opportunity.&lt;p&gt;(By the way, when justifying drone strikes and the courtroom procedures at Guantanamo Bay, the Obama administration has continued the enemy combatant framework that Bush&apos;s lawyers established.)</text></item><item><author>hncommenter13</author><text>You shouldn&apos;t care.  Because not reading someone under arrest the Miranda warning is constitutionally irrelevant in and of itself.  It only acquires relevance if the government seeks to have the statements admitted at trial.&lt;p&gt;Discussing the similar case of Faisal Shahzad, who attempted to bomb Times Square, Orin Kerr, a law professor who is an expert on the 4th Amendment wrote:&lt;p&gt;&quot;Importantly, though, it would not have violated Shahzad’s constitutional rights to not read him his Miranda rights. A lot of people assume that the police are required to read a suspect his rights when he is arrested. That is, they assume that one of a person’s rights is the right to be read their rights. It often happens that way on Law &amp;#38; Order, but that’s not what the law actually requires. Under Chavez v. Martinez, 538 U.S. 760 (2003), it is lawful for the police to not read a suspect his Miranda rights, interrogate him, and then obtain a statement that would be inadmissible in court. Chavez holds that a person’s constitutional rights are violated only if the prosecution tries to have the statement admitted in court. See id. at 772-73. Indeed, the prosecution is even allowed to admit any physical evidence discovered as a fruit of the statement obtained in violation of Miranda — only the actual statement is excluded. See United States v. Patane, 542 U.S. 630 (2004). So while it may sound weird, it turns out that obtaining a statement outside Miranda but not admitting it in court is lawful.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Oops, link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.volokh.com/2010/05/05/shahzad-and-miranda-rights/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.volokh.com/2010/05/05/shahzad-and-miranda-rights/&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thomasz</author><text>I fail to see the difference between &quot;waterboarding&quot; and  &quot;strap electrodes to his genitals&quot; torture.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights?</title><url>http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/04/dzhokhar_tsarnaev_and_miranda_rights_the_public_safety_exception_and_terrorism.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pyre</author><text>They are also getting away with it because the torture isn&apos;t of the &quot;strap electrodes to his genitals&quot; variety, which most people would immediately reject. Stuff like &quot;loud music,&quot; &quot;putting a holy book in a toilet,&quot; or &quot;make him think he&apos;s drowning,&quot; don&apos;t evoke the same sort of immediate reaction. If the administration were openly performing at &quot;Inquisition&quot; levels of torture, there would be massive public outcry.</text></item><item><author>mtgx</author><text>That&apos;s some really twisted mental gymnastics there. Torture is bad, because it&apos;s torture. It doesn&apos;t matter if you&apos;re a criminal or a human-monkey. How can they get away with it for so long? At least they didn&apos;t say torture is legal &quot;because he&apos;s not a white guy&quot;, but their logic here is not that far off from that.</text></item><item><author>lbarrow</author><text>Being read your Miranda rights also serves as an explicit acknowledgement by the state that you have those rights. Most of the time, this isn&apos;t really important, but in this case it would have served a very important purpose.&lt;p&gt;The Bush administration systematically created a legal netherworld for people they captured on suspicion of terrorism -- people usually referred to as &quot;enemy combatants&quot;. They weren&apos;t arrested per se, so they weren&apos;t entitled to a trial, lawyers, or even the basic rights we associate with a criminal trial such as protection against self-incrimination (i.e. the right to remain silent). On the other hand, the administration argued they weren&apos;t prisoners of war either, so the Geneva Convention didn&apos;t apply to them.&lt;p&gt;By defining enemy combatants in this negative way -- in terms of what they are &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; -- the Bush administration pushed enemy combatant status into a grey area where no pre-existing legal rules seemed to apply. That&apos;s how they argued that torture was legal: they said that laws prohibiting torture only applied to prisoners of war or people charged with crimes, and that because enemy combatants weren&apos;t either of those things, they could legally be tortured.&lt;p&gt;If they had read this guy his Miranda rights, the Obama administration would have made it clear that they would treat his future as a police matter and that they were rejecting the enemy combatant framework in this case. They failed to do that, and I think it&apos;s a wasted opportunity.&lt;p&gt;(By the way, when justifying drone strikes and the courtroom procedures at Guantanamo Bay, the Obama administration has continued the enemy combatant framework that Bush&apos;s lawyers established.)</text></item><item><author>hncommenter13</author><text>You shouldn&apos;t care.  Because not reading someone under arrest the Miranda warning is constitutionally irrelevant in and of itself.  It only acquires relevance if the government seeks to have the statements admitted at trial.&lt;p&gt;Discussing the similar case of Faisal Shahzad, who attempted to bomb Times Square, Orin Kerr, a law professor who is an expert on the 4th Amendment wrote:&lt;p&gt;&quot;Importantly, though, it would not have violated Shahzad’s constitutional rights to not read him his Miranda rights. A lot of people assume that the police are required to read a suspect his rights when he is arrested. That is, they assume that one of a person’s rights is the right to be read their rights. It often happens that way on Law &amp;#38; Order, but that’s not what the law actually requires. Under Chavez v. Martinez, 538 U.S. 760 (2003), it is lawful for the police to not read a suspect his Miranda rights, interrogate him, and then obtain a statement that would be inadmissible in court. Chavez holds that a person’s constitutional rights are violated only if the prosecution tries to have the statement admitted in court. See id. at 772-73. Indeed, the prosecution is even allowed to admit any physical evidence discovered as a fruit of the statement obtained in violation of Miranda — only the actual statement is excluded. See United States v. Patane, 542 U.S. 630 (2004). So while it may sound weird, it turns out that obtaining a statement outside Miranda but not admitting it in court is lawful.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Oops, link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.volokh.com/2010/05/05/shahzad-and-miranda-rights/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.volokh.com/2010/05/05/shahzad-and-miranda-rights/&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lbarrow</author><text>On the other hand they openly talked about extreme sleep deprivation (a few hours a week for months on end) and &quot;walling&quot;, which is where you throw someone into a wall over and over.</text></comment>