From: ahk@chinet.com   
      
   J.D. Baldwin  wrote:   
   >Louis Epstein  wrote:   
      
   >>>Both counts of witness tampering relate to instructions Robinson   
   >>>relayed to his live-in boyfriend, a transgender man, directing him   
   >>>to delete his text messages and to stay silent if police   
   >>>questioned him.   
      
   >>[...]   
      
   >>Is advising someone to exercise a Miranda right tampering?   
      
   >No. But telling someone "Don't tell the police what you know about me   
   >and the things I have admitted to you" is pretty far afield from what   
   >Miranda dictates[1]. And asking someone to delete existing text   
   >messages is definitely solicitation of evidence destruction, not at   
   >all protected by any constitutional right.   
      
   >[1] You're not talking about "Miranda rights," anyway, there really   
   >    isn't any such thing. Miranda is a court decision that says the   
   >    cops have to give you free legal advice before a "custodial"   
   >    questioning. Your Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights are completely   
   >    independent of, and pre-date, the Miranda decision.   
      
   >    (Which, BTW, wasn't even the point of the Miranda decision. It's a   
   >    bit of a long and weird story, but the affirmation of Miranda in   
   >    Dickerson v. U.S. is the real controlling law. One of the more   
   >    bizarrely nonsensical bits of jurisprudence to come out of the   
   >    Supreme Court, even by Warren Court standards.)   
      
   Miranda is a hell of a lot more than that. It forced the police to   
   acknowledge to both themselves and the detainee that the questioning is   
   taking place in custody, it's not voluntary, and the detainee is not   
   free to leave. None of this blurry line nonsense that the individual   
   isn't free to leave but not formally in custody and rights at arrest   
   therefore don't apply.   
      
   It's a practical decision regardless of whether the Constitution is tue   
   basis for it and it's judicial activism. The cops fucked around way too   
   much prior to Miranda.   
      
   Let's see. Gideon was 1963; Miranda was 1966. I looked it up. But Katz,   
   an unlawful search case and therefore about privacy rights before   
   arrest, wasn't until 1967, so no, the Warren Court wasn't finished with   
   recognizing rights in interactions with police.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)