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Bush says you have no right to remain silent: Supremes to hear Miranda challenge
Posted on Monday, November 25 @ 10:13:08 EST
Ruling in Oxnard case could reinterpret landmark decision on rights during police questioning. White House backs a change.
By David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times
Now this does not sound all that bad until you consider the facts in the case which clearly show that its not about the case at all but about taking away our protection from the police. Again they want to do this so ‘terrorists” don’t escape justice. I’ve attached the whole article because its in the subscription only section.
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Two officers, Andrew Salinas and Maria Pena, had stopped to question a man they suspected, wrongly it turned out, of selling drugs. When they heard a squeaky bike approach in the dark, they called for the rider to stop.
Martinez dismounted and put his hands over his head. In a leather sheath on a waist band, he carried a long knife that he used to cut strawberries.
When the officer patted him down and grabbed for the knife, Martinez tried to run. Salinas tackled him and tried to handcuff him. As they struggled on the ground, the officer called out that the man had a huge knife. Pena moved closer and fired.
One bullet struck Martinez near the left eye and exited behind his right eye. A second hit his spine. Three more shots hit his legs.
When patrol supervisor Sgt. Ben Chavez arrived, a handcuffed Martinez lay bleeding on the ground. Once Martinez was loaded into an ambulance, Chavez climbed in with a tape recorder in hand.
On and off for the next 45 minutes in the ambulance and at the hospital, he repeatedly asked the gravely wounded man to admit he had grabbed the officer's gun and provoked the struggle. In agony, Martinez is heard screaming in pain and saying he is choking and dying.
"OK. You're dying. But tell me why you were fighting with the police?" Chavez asks. "Did you want to kill the police or what?" he continues. One officer had said Martinez tried to grab his gun.
In the emergency room, Chavez continued to press Martinez to tell him what happened.
"Why did you run from the police?" Chavez is heard to say over the sounds of nurses and doctors.
"Did you get his gun? ... Did you to try to shoot the police?"
Martinez in a low voice responds: "I don't know.... I don't know."
Lawyers for Martinez say he panicked when the officer tried to tackle him, but they say he did not grab the officer's gun.
In the emergency room, he is heard asking Chavez several times to leave him alone. "I don't want to say anything anymore."
"No? You don't want to say what happened?" the sergeant continues.
"It's hurting a lot. Please!" Martinez implores, his words trailing off into agonized screams. Undaunted, Chavez resumes. "Well, if you're going to die, tell me what happened."
Silence came only when pain medication took hold, and Martinez faded into unconsciousness.
"Sgt. Chavez doggedly pursued a statement by Martinez despite being asked to leave the emergency room several times," wrote Judge Richard Tallman. "A reasonable officer, questioning a suspect who had been shot five times by the police and then arrested, who had not received Miranda warnings and who was receiving medical treatment for excruciating, life-threatening injuries ... would have known that persistent interrogation of the suspect despite repeated requests to stop violated the suspect's 5th and 14th Amendment right to be free from coercive interrogation."
For Martinez, the slow-moving legal battle has proven to be a new type of agony. Now 34, he lives with his father in a one-room trailer on a farm field in Oxnard. He is in a wheelchair and wears dark glasses, covering his missing eye.
Bush administration lawyers have sided with the police in the case. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Dec. 4.