In an America, where Black citizens especially have legitimate concerns when interacting with law enforcement, the U.S. Supreme Court has added to those fears after its latest ruling.
The high court has struck a blow against an individual’s protection against self-incrimination by prohibiting sanctions against police officers who fail to read a suspect their Miranda rights.
The Justices voted on Thursday, June 23, to limit the ability to enforce those rights, noting that suspects who aren’t warned about their right to remain silent can no longer sue an officer under federal civil rights laws.
Further, the opinion noted that even if the evidence is obtained by cops when they fail to read Miranda rights, an individual can’t use that in a potential criminal trial.
The court declared that the Miranda warning still protects a constitutional right, but the notice itself is not a right that would trigger the ability to bring a civil lawsuit.
“Another day, another horrific set of politically-motivated opinions from the GOP-packed Supreme Court,” tweeted Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
“Miranda rights hanging by a thread while a 110-year old gun control law is struck down. #ExpandTheCourt, or are we just surrendering?”
Brett Max Kaufman, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said in a statement that the decision “widens the gap between the guarantees found in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the people’s ability to hold government officials accountable for violating them.”
Kaufman vowed that the ACLU would “keep fighting to make sure our country lives up to the Constitution’s guarantees.”
“This morning SCOTUS destroyed our Miranda rights and struck down a New York law requiring cause to conceal and carry a gun,” tweeted Democratic Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York.
“Just 6 people are destroying our democracy.”
The significance of this right cannot be overstated—throughout much of our country’s history, especially during the Jim Crow era, many false confessions were coerced from suspects via illegal methods, which oftentimes meant violence. But in 1966, the high court took steps to eliminate this problem with their landmark ruling in Miranda v. Arizona, “which required the police to warn suspects that they have the right to remain silent and to access to an attorney.”
In the case at hand, Terence Tekoh was a hospital worker, “who was accused of sexually assaulting an immobilized female patient at a local hospital in 2014.” Carlos Vega, a sheriff deputy for Los Angeles County questioned Tekoh, but had failed to read him his rights as required by the precedent of Miranda v. Arizona. While Tekoh ultimately did confess to the crime, he was tried and acquitted – even after the introduction of his confession at trial. He then filed suit against the officer under Section 1983 of federal law.
Lower courts were split on the issue of “whether the warning given to criminal suspects before they talk to authorities…is a constitutional right or something less important and less defined,” and thus the case rose up to the level of the Supreme Court.
