Forced Blood Draw DWI Case Dismissed – Judge Rules Evidence Obtained Improperly

The Right To Remain Silent?

WASHINGTON (AP) — You have the right to remain silent, but only if you tell the police that you’re remaining silent.

You have a right to a lawyer — before, during and after questioning, even though the police don’t have to tell you exactly when the lawyer can be with you. If you can’t afford a lawyer, one will be provided to you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you, which, by the way, are only good for the next two weeks?

The Supreme Court made major revisions to the now familiar Miranda warnings this year. The rulings will change the ways police, lawyers and criminal suspects interact amid what experts call an attempt to pull back some of the rights that Americans have become used to over recent decades.

The high court has made clear it’s not going to eliminate the requirement that police officers give suspects a Miranda warning, so it is tinkering around the edges, said Jeffrey L. Fisher, co-chair of the amicus committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

“It’s death by a thousand cuts,” Fisher said. “For the past 20-25 years, as the court has turned more conservative on law and order issues, it has been whittling away at Miranda and doing everything it can to ease the admissibility of confessions that police wriggle out of suspects.”

The court placed limits on the so-called Miranda rights three times during the just-ended session. Experts viewed the large number of rulings as a statistical aberration, rather than a full-fledged attempt to get rid of the famous 1966 decision. The original ruling emerged from police questioning of Ernesto Miranda in a rape and kidnapping case in Phoenix. It required officers to tell suspects taken into custody that they have the right to remain silent and to have a lawyer represent them, even if they can’t afford one.

The court’s three decisions “indicate a desire to prune back the rules somewhat,” Kent Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a victims’ rights group. “But I don’t think any overruling of Miranda is in the near future. I think that controversy is pretty much dead.”

The Supreme Court in 2000 upheld the requirement that the Miranda warning be read to criminal suspects.

This year’s Supreme Court decisions did not mandate changes in the wording of Miranda warnings read by arresting police officers. The most common version is now familiar to most Americans, thanks to television police shows: “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?”

However, the court did approve one state version of the Miranda warnings that did not specifically inform suspects that they had a right to have a lawyer present during their police questioning.

The Miranda warning used in parts of Florida told suspects: “You have the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any of our questions. If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer, one will be appointed for you without cost and before any questioning. You have the right to use any of these rights at any time you want during this interview.”

Lawyers — and the Florida Supreme Court — said that didn’t make clear that lawyers can be present as the police are doing their questioning. But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing the 7-2 majority decision, said all the required information was there.

“Nothing in the words used indicated that counsel’s presence would be restricted after the questioning commenced,” Ginsburg said. “Instead, the warning communicated that the right to counsel carried forward to and through the interrogation.”

The next day, the court unanimously limited how long Miranda rights are valid.

The high court said for the first time that a suspect’s request for a lawyer is good for only 14 days after the person is released from police custody. The 9-0 ruling pulled back from an earlier decision that said that police must halt all questioning for all time if a suspect asks for a lawyer.

Police can now attempt to question a suspect who asked for a lawyer — once the person has been released from custody for at least two weeks — without violating the person’s constitutional rights and without having to repeat the Miranda warning.

“In our judgment, 14 days will provide plenty of time for the suspect to get reacclimated to his normal life, to consult with friends and counsel and to shake off any residual coercive effects of his prior custody,” said Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion.

And finally, the court’s conservatives used their 5-4 advantage to rule that suspects must break their silence and tell police they are going to remain quiet if they want to invoke their “right to remain silent” and stop an interrogation, just as they must tell police that they want a lawyer.

All the criminal suspect needs to say is he or she is remaining silent, wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy. “Had he made either of these simple, unambiguous statements, he would have invoked his ‘right to cut off questioning.’ Here he did neither, so he did not invoke his right to remain silent.”

But Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the majority’s decision “turns Miranda upside down.”

“Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent — which counter intuitively requires them to speak,” she said. “At the same time, suspects will be legally presumed to have waived their rights even if they have given no clear expression of their intent to do so.”

Police officers will look at these decisions and incorporate them into their training, said James Pasco of the National Fraternal Order of Police. “Officers are expected to adapt to changes required by the Supreme Court,” Pasco said. “This will be no different.”

But Fisher thinks the court’s Miranda decisions will make it easier for police to get confessions out of people who don’t want to confess. “Those decisions open up ways for cops to work around Miranda,” Fisher said.

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Bell generates big money from towing cars; resident demands investigation

Some community activists in Bell are demanding an independent investigation into complaints that Bell police unfairly towed and impounded cars.

According to Bell budget documents reviewed by The Times on Monday, the city generated at least $652,000 in revenue related to towing cars last fiscal year, which ended June 30.

The vast majority of that sum — $574,000 — was from what the document described as “unlicensed driver release” revenues. It’s unclear exactly where that money came from.

But some Bell residents have complained that police officers have pulled over motorists and towed away their vehicles if the drivers don’t have licenses. Bell has a large immigrant population, including many illegal immigrants.

Residents have also complained about police being too aggressive about towing parked cars.

The city documents show that revenue from the “unlicensed driver release” fee has increased in recent years. In fiscal 2004-05, the fee generated about $450,000.

The documents also make reference to a DUI “cost recovery” generating nearly $447,000 last fiscal year. But it’s unclear whether that revenue was generated by organized DUI checkpoints or routine police patrols. The issue of DUI checkpoints and illegal immigrants has been an issue throughout the state.

People without driver’s licenses often have their cars confiscated, even if they are not drunk. In neighboring Maywood, checkpoints and aggressive towing of parked cars have been an issue in the past.

Cristina Garcia, a member of the Bell Assn. to Stop the Abuse, said that the city’s fees are too high and that an outside entity should look into them. Residents are “paying up to $500 in towing and storage fees,” Garcia said. “The impound is something in the range of $350 and the towing is $150.”

A former Bell police officer, who filed a wrongful dismissal suit against the city last week, complained to city leaders in 2009 that the Police Department was towing cars to generate revenues. James Corcoran wrote in a letter to an attorney for the city that he could not, “in good faith, support our departmental vehicle impound policy.”

“The majority of the vehicles seized by this department are not, in my opinion, a danger to the community care function. I do agree that, should a vehicle qualify as a danger, the impound is justified,” he wrote. The documents were included in allegations he made to state and local officials.

K-9 PTSD? Some vets say dogs stressed by war, too

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. – Gina was a playful 2-year-old German shepherd when she went to Iraq as a highly trained bomb-sniffing dog with the military, conducting door-to-door searches and witnessing all sorts of noisy explosions.

She returned home to Colorado cowering and fearful. When her handlers tried to take her into a building, she would stiffen her legs and resist. Once inside, she would tuck her tail beneath her body and slink along the floor. She would hide under furniture or in a corner to avoid people.

A military veterinarian diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder — a condition that some experts say can afflict dogs just like it does humans.

“She showed all the symptoms and she had all the signs,” said Master Sgt. Eric Haynes, the kennel master at Peterson Air Force Base. “She was terrified of everybody and it was obviously a condition that led her down that road.”

A year later, Gina is on the mend. Frequent walks among friendly people and a gradual reintroduction to the noises of military life have begun to overcome her fears, Haynes said.

Haynes describes her progress as “outstanding.”

“Pretty fabulous, actually,” added Staff Sgt. Melinda Miller, who’s been Gina’s handler since May. “She makes me look pretty good.”

PTSD is well-documented among American servicemen and women returning from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but its existence in animals is less clear-cut. Some veterinarians say animals do experience it, or a version of it.

“There is a condition in dogs which is almost precisely the same, if not precisely the same, as PTSD in humans,” said Nicholas Dodman, head of the animal behavior program at Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine.

But some veterinarians dislike applying the diagnosis to animals, thinking it demeans servicemen and women, Dodman said. He added that he means no offense to military personnel when he uses the term.

Jack Saul, a psychologist on the faculty at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, said PTSD is a diagnosis developed for humans, not dogs.

“That’s not to say that animals can’t be traumatized. It sounds like this dog was traumatized from the experience of extreme stress and fear,” Saul said. “That causes an alteration in the animal’s nervous system similar to an alteration of the nervous system in humans.”

The military defines PTSD as a condition that develops after a life-threatening trauma. Victims suffer three types of experiences long afterward, even in a safe environment. They repeatedly re-experience the trauma in nightmares or vivid memories. They avoid situations or feelings that remind them of the event, and they feel keyed up all the time.

When Gina returned to Peterson last year after her six-month deployment in Iraq, she was no longer the “great little pup” Haynes remembered.

She had been assigned to an Army unit, and her job was to search for explosives after soldiers entered a house. The troops sometimes used noisy, blinding “flash-bang” grenades and kicked down doors, Haynes said, and Gina was once in a convoy when another vehicle was hit by an improvised bomb.

Back home at Peterson, Gina wanted nothing to do with people.

“She’d withdrawn from society as a whole,” Haynes said.

Haynes, who has worked with more than 100 dogs in 12 years as a handler and kennel master, said he has seen other dogs rattled by trauma, but none as badly as Gina.

Haynes and other handlers coaxed Gina on walks, sending someone ahead to pass out treats for bystanders to give her. They got her over her fear of walking through doors by stationing someone she knew on the other side to reward her with pats and play. They eased her farther into buildings with the same technique.

“She started learning that everyone wasn’t trying to get her,” Haynes said. “She began acting more social again.”

On a sunny afternoon last week, Gina dashed across her training yard, jumping over obstacles on command and deftly pushing a ball with her forelegs and chest. On a visit to a store on base, she trotted calmly down the aisles and sat quietly when a woman bent to pet her.

“She’s such a lovable dog,” Miller said, describing how the 61-pound Gina will lie in her lap. “I could literally hold this dog like a baby.”

But Haynes said they’re careful not to let their affection interfere with good training. Treating Gina like a human — for example, comforting her when she’s frightened — can leave her thinking that her handler is pleased when she’s afraid.

“She’s just gorgeous and I love her, but you also have to balance it with — you have to do what’s right,” he said.

Gina has resumed some of her duties, searching cars for explosives at Peterson or other nearby military facilities. Eventually, she may be able to return to the kind of hazardous duty she did in Iraq, but that’s at least a year away, Haynes said.

“We’re not planning on doing it anytime in the near future because obviously, we don’t want to mess up everything we’ve already fixed,” he said.

Dodman said he doubts Gina can recover completely.

“It’s a fact that fears once learned are never unlearned,” Dodman said. “The best thing you can do is apply new learning, which is what (Gina’s handlers are) doing,” he said.

Haynes acknowledged that’s a concern, and although he hopes Gina recovers 100 percent he doesn’t know if she will.

“Anytime someone has that much fear about anything, then obviously it will be hard just to get it fixed,” he said.

“But, I mean, we don’t really have many other options,” Haynes said. “You can’t really give up on them. They’re your partner.”

Obama calls black people ‘a mongrel people’

Rick Moran

Barry’s turn on “The View” daytime show evinced some interesting comments from the president, including his anthropological observation that African Americans were “a mongrel people.

Sam Youngman writing in The Hill:

When asked about his background, which includes a black father and white mother, Obama said of African-Americans: “We are sort of a mongrel people.”
“I mean we’re all kinds of mixed up,” Obama said. “That’s actually true of white people as well, but we just know more about it.”

What did the president mean? Mr. Youngman covers for Obama’s little gaffe by explaining what he really was trying to say:

The president’s remarks were directed at the roots of all Americans. The definition of mongrel as an adjective is defined as “of mixed breed, nature, or origin,” according to dictionary.com.

Obama did not appear to be making an inflammatory remark with his statement and the audience appeared to receive it in the light-hearted manner that often accompanies interviews on morning talk shows.

Well, gee Sam. Thanks for that convoluted, twisted, forced explanation as well as your interpretation of audience reaction:

The president was referring to the fact that there are very few “pure” members of the African race in America. Nearly 300 years of mixing black and white, largely as a result of the “freedom of the slave quarters” granted the master of the plantation – a legacy of rape – most African Americans are of mixed race. His comment about white Americans as mongrels is problematic and more of a stretch

The laughter sounds more nervous than mirthful. And what about his statement that “That’s actually true of white people as well, but we just know more about it…?”

I think it would come as something of a surprise to Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and other racialists that they are “a mongrel people.” And the idea that African Americans are more aware of this is unproved.

Despite Youngman’s spin, he can’t hide a definite gaffe made by the president – one that will be discussed in the days ahead.