TrendGrowing calls for rethinking Miranda rights for terrorism suspects

Faial Shahzad, accused Times Square bomber // Source: guim.co.uk

In 1984, the Supreme Court ruled that even if a suspect has not been read his rights, self-incriminating statements can be admitted at trial if investigators asked questions “reasonably prompted by a concern for public safety.” This has become known as the public-safety exception to Miranda, or, more colloquially, the ticking-bomb scenario.

Better understand the scope of the attempted Times Square car-bomb attack, investigators used the interrogation flexibility to coax information from suspect Faisal Shahzad, who also continued to answer questions after being Mirandized. Shahzad has not appeared before a judge yet because he has waived that right and is still talking.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the failed underwear bomber who tried to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day, was interrogated for fifty minutes before he was Mirandized. Then he stopped talking, but resumed cooperation after visits from his family, officials said.

Since the arrest of Faisal Shazad, a naturalized American citizen, more and more legislators and officials have raised the question of whether or not Miranda rights should be suspended for terrorism suspects.

• Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) and Representative Peter King (R-New York) argued that Shazad should not be granted his Miranda rights
• Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) suggested that terror suspects ought to be completely stripped of their rights, including Miranda, whether or not they have been convicted of a crime.
• McCain and Lieberman introduced a bill two months ago called the Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act of 2010 that permits the president to detain, without trial, citizens suspected of terrorism. Even better, the president gets to decide, on a case-by-case basis, what constitutes terrorism.
• Senate candidate Jane Norton, a Republican from Colorado, told the Colorado Independent on 6 May: “If they treat him like a criminal, rather than a terrorist, I think that’s wrong…. You don’t keep America safe by reading terrorists their Miranda rights.”
• Attorney General Eric Holder, in an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” on 9 May, indicated that the court-protected Miranda rights and the process afforded them do not necessarily reflect the unique set of circumstances relevant to national safety concerns, post-9/11. “The [Miranda] system we have in place has proven to be effective,” Holder tells host Jake Tapper. “I think we also want to look and determine whether we have the necessary flexibility — whether we have a system that deals with situations that agents now confront. … We’re now dealing with international terrorism. … I think we have to give serious consideration to at least modifying that public-safety exception [to the Miranda protections]. And that’s one of the things that I think we’re going to be reaching out to Congress, to come up with a proposal that is both constitutional, but that is also relevant to our times and the threats that we now face.”

The debate will only intensify. Stay tuned.