Forwarded message:
Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 19:03:11 -0800 From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net> Subject: "You have the right to remain silent"
The 5th is meant to apply ONLY to persons being accussed of a crime, it is not nor was it ever meant to protect non-accussed persons from turning over evidence of criminal acts.
So you are saying the police may compel any and all information from someone just so long as that person has not been formally accused of a crime?
If they ask you questions regarding the commission of a crime the 5th will not protect you unless you were involved. The flip side to this that protects this 'hole' from being catastrophic is that you don't have to talk to the police at all unless accussed of a crime. They most certainly can take physical evidence from 3rd parties (ie hostile witnesses) which they believe are involved in some manner with the crime (ie entering your apartment to track the path of a bullet in the hopes of retrieving it). Refusing to answer the questions of the prosecutor while under oath has its own consequences. What really keeps it from getting out of hand is the cost of interviewing and calling all possible witnesses to some crime. Just imagine calling everyone on the floor of a murder as SOP.
The Miranda precedent ("you have the right to remain silent...") establishes that someone under arrest may remain silent. And someone _not_ under arrest is under no obligation to cooperate, unless subpoenaed, right?
As I understand it that is correct.
The latest example being the Ramsey case in Boulder ("Home of PGP"). Much is made of the fact that the Ramseys, not being under arrest, are not required to *say anything* to the police. (Left unanswered is why innocent parents whose daughter has been brutally murdered would choose to say nothing to the police...even I, a skeptic about much that modern cops are involved in, am suspicious of the Ramseys for their noncooperativeness.)
If they are truly innocent, what could they possibly have to say other than "Please find the killer of our daughter" and "We didn't do it." Innocent people have little to say, the guilty need to convince us of their innocence. "Me thinks he protest too much." I have no idea Jim Choate CyberTects ravage@ssz.com