<http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/30/1610234> *****
***** May 29, 2003 The 5th Amendment itself breaks under hostile questioning (Note: this entry posted by Bob Harris)
In 1997, Oxnard police thought farm worker Oliverio Martinez [@ <http://www.latimes.com/la-na-martinez28may28,1,4065216.story>] was a drug suspect. He was never charged with any crime, but in the scuffle of arrest they shot him 5 times, leaving him partially blinded and paralyzed.
While Martinez writhed in agony, believing he was about to die, patrol supervisor Ben Chavez climbed into his ambulance and began a hostile interrogation which continued all the way into the emergency room -- all with no lawyer present -- in what Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has called "the functional equivalent of an attempt to obtain an involuntary confession from a prisoner by torturous methods:"
Martinez: "I don't want to say anything anymore." Chavez: "No?" Martinez: "I want them to treat me, it hurts a lot, please." Chavez: "You don't want to tell what happened with you over there?" Martinez: "I don't want to die, I don't want to die." Chavez: "Well, if you are going to die, tell me what happened, and right now you think you are going to die?" Martinez: "No." Chavez: "No, do you think you are going to die?" Martinez: "Aren't you going to treat me or what?" Chavez: "Look, think you are going to die, that's all I want to know, if you think you are going to die? Right now, do you think you are going to die?"
And so on, for about 45 minutes. Again, all with no lawyer present -- and with the clear implication that life and death were bargaining tools in the interrogation.
However, the Supreme Court's majority has ruled [@ <http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030527/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_police_questioning_6>], in an opinion written by Clarence Thomas, that Martinez' constitutional rights were not violated, torturing the 5th Amendment itself until it admitted that, in Thomas' words, "Martinez was never made to be a 'witness' against himself... because his statements were never admitted as testimony against him in a criminal case... the Self-Incrimination Clause simply cannot support the 9th Circuit's view that the mere use of compulsive questioning... violates the Constitution."
The Court says the victim can still sue in civil court (by only a 5-4 margin, believe it or not), but let's keep our eye on the ball here [@ <http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/02pdf/01-1444.pdf>]. To paraphrase -- and I invite you to download the ruling here and read it yourself -- because Martinez was innocent, his constitutional rights don't apply, and anyway, coercive questioning is, in fact, A-OK as a constitutional matter.
Every innocent person reading this should be gravely concerned.
<http://www.thismodernworld.com/weblog/mtarchives/week_2003_05_25.html#000677> *****