Note: Met Ann Wright. Not a terrorist.
Bloomberg Businessweek(Updates with quotes from opinions starting in third paragraph.)
By Greg Stohr
June 1 (Bloomberg) -- Criminal suspects must explicitly invoke their right to remain silent to force police to stop questioning, a divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled.
The 5-4 decision upholds the Michigan murder conviction of a man who sat silent throughout most of a three-hour interrogation by police. The ruling blunts the force of the landmark 1966 Miranda v. Arizona decision, which required police to inform suspects of their rights.
“A requirement of an unambiguous invocation of Miranda rights results in an objective inquiry that avoids difficulties of proof and provides guidance to officers on how to proceed in the face of ambiguity,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority.
The ruling divided the court along what have become familiar lines, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joining Kennedy in the majority.
“Today’s decision turns Miranda upside down,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent. “Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent -- which, counterintuitively, requires them to speak.”
Justices Stephen Breyer, John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined Sotomayor in dissent.
Right Waived
The majority also ruled that the suspect, Van Chester Thompkins, waived his right to remain silent when he answered a question two hours and 45 minutes into the interrogation.
A police detective at that point asked, “Do you pray to God to forgive you for shooting that boy down?” Thompkins answered, “Yes” and looked away.
Thompkins was convicted of murdering Samuel Morris outside a mall in Southfield, Michigan, in 2000. Another victim was wounded in the shooting.
Thompkins was sentenced to life in prison and appealed on several grounds, arguing that prosecutors shouldn’t have been permitted to use the statements he made to police during questioning.
The Supreme Court in 1994 ruled that the suspects must be unambiguous when they invoke their right to an attorney. The majority today said the latest ruling was a logical next step.
“Thompkins did not say that he wanted to remain silent or that he did not want to talk with the police,” Kennedy wrote. “Had he made either of these simple, unambiguous statements, he would have invoked his right to cut off questioning.”
Sotomayor said that, in contrast to the right-to-counsel context, suspects might be confused about what they need to do to invoke their right to be silent.
“Advising a suspect that he has a ‘right to remain silent’ is unlikely to convey that he must speak (and must do so in some particular fashion) to ensure the right will be protected,” she wrote.
The case is Berghuis v. Thompkins, 08-1470.
--Editors: Laurie Asseo, Brigitte Greenberg.
To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net.
For OpEdNews: Rob Kall - Writer I am a Jew and I am outraged and ashamed by the acts Israel has perpetrated. I am not a self hating Jew, not an anti-semite, as some religious extremist Jews have accused me and other Jews who criticize Israel.Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and site architect of OpEdNews.com, Host of the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show (WNJC 1360 AM), President of Futurehealth, Inc, (more...)
Times OnlineTurkey demanded today that Israel be punished for yesterday’s bungled commando raid on a flotilla of ships taking humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who interrupted a trip to Chile after the killings, told MPs from his ruling Justice and Development Party that “dry statements of condemnation” were not enough and Turkey demanded “results”.
“The insolent, irresponsible and impudent attack by Israel, which went against law and trampled human honour underfoot, must definitely be punished,” Mr Erdogan said.
“Nobody should test Turkey’s patience. Turkey’s enmity is as violent as its friendship is valuable. Losing Turkey’s friendship is a cost all on its own.”
Up to 40 Britons were on board the flotilla of ships, the Foreign Secretary said today, as eye-witnesses spoke of being beaten and shot at with rubber bullets during the raid.
At least nine activists, most of them Turks, were killed and one Briton injured in the pre-dawn raid in international waters, when Israeli commandos rapelled from helicopters on to the fleet of ships.
The first activists to be released claimed today that the soldiers had beaten passengers and used electric shocks to subdue them, but Israeli officials insisted that they had opened fire only after coming under attack from activists on the lead vessel, the Mavi Marmara.
William Hague said that "as far as we can tell" there were 31 British passengers and 11 British passport holders taking part in the aid mission when it came under attack.
"They have been detained, they are in a prison in southern Israel," Mr Hague said. "We expect them to be deported very quickly."
One of the British nationals has already been deported, he said, but added that others may not have identified themselves or destroyed their documents making it difficult to be precise about numbers.
British consular officials were meeting with those in detention and working hard to make sure they had "proper access" to their families, he added.
It was confirmed earlier that one Briton, Ahsan Shamruk, was injured in the attack and had received medical treatment.
Paveen Yaqub, 39, is among the Britons being held. She is a council worker from Huddersfield and was on board Mavi Marmara, the lead boat in the flotilla.
The last message Ms Yaqub wrote on her Facebook yesterday began: “Something has kicked off; I gotta run up deck.” Minutes later she added: “We are now surrounded by Israeli warships with helicopters circulating and following the convoy of ships heading for Gaza still. “We will not be stopping unless we are forcibly made to do so.”
Noreen Sheikh-Latif, a friend from Slaithwaite, said she was “extremely worried" about Ms Yaqub whom she regarded “as a sister”. She told the Liverpool Daily Post: “We were in contact with Paveen until two or three hours before the boat went under siege and nobody has heard from her since."
After 12 hours of negotiations that stretched into the early hours, the UN Security Council issued a statement demanding an “impartial” investigation of the deaths and condemning the “acts” that led to it.
Thanks to blocking action from the Americans, Israel’s closest ally, the presidential statement was notably weaker, however, than that drafted by Turkey, the Palestinians and Arab states, which had called for condemnation “in the strongest terms” and an independent international inquiry.
The pro-Palestinian groups which organised the flotilla said that they would send more ships with humanitarian supplies for the besieged Gaza Strip, but Israel warned it will halt any new bid to breach its blockade of the Hamas-run territory.
The crisis has provided Britain’s coalition Government with its first foreign policy challenge. Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, called on Israel today to lift its “unjustifiable and untenable” blockade of the Gaza Strip.
“Whilst, of course, Israel has every right to defend itself and its citizens from any attack, it must now move towards lifting the blockade in Gaza as soon as possible,” he said.
Downing Street said that David Cameron had spoken by telephone to Binyamin Netanyahu to deplore the heavy loss of life and to urge him to ensure there was no repeat of yesterday’s events.
There was further confirmation of the attacks from President Medvedev of Russia, who said that the loss of lives was “absolutely unjustified,” while the European Union President Herman Van Rompuy called the events “inexplicable”.
Israel is still holding hundreds of activists detained in the raid but the first few deported said that the Israeli commandos had beaten passengers and used electric shocks during the assault.
Nilufer Cetin, a Turkish activists who hid with her baby in the bathroom of her cabin aboard the Mavi Marmara, told reporters she believed there were 11 dead.
“The ship turned into a lake of blood,” Mr Cetin told reporters in Istanbul after Israeli officials decided to deport her and her child.
She said Israeli vessels “harassed” the flotilla for two hours on Sunday night and then returned at around 4am yesterday, firing warning shots and telling the ships to turn back.
“When the Mavi Marmara continued on its course the harassment turned into an attack. They used smoke bombs followed by gas canisters. They started to descend onto the ship with helicopters,” she said, calling the clashes that then erupted “extremely bad and brutal.”
“I was one of the first victims to be released because I had a child,” she told reporters, but “they confiscated everything, our telephones, laptops are all gone.” Her husband - the ship’s engineer - was still being held by Israeli authorities.
Some 400 Turkish activists were on the six-ship flotilla, along with more than 30 Greeks and people of some 20 other nations including Germany, the United States and Russia. It had been trying to break the three-year blockade of Gaza imposed by Israel after the Hamas takeover.
“Suddenly from everywhere we saw inflatables coming at us, and within seconds fully equipped commandos came up on the boat,” said Dimitris Gielalis who had been aboard the Sfendoni and was one of six Greek activists returned home this morning.
“They came up and used plastic bullets, we had beatings, we had electric shocks, any method we can think of, they used,” he said.
He said the boat’s captain was beaten for refusing to leave the wheel, and had sustained non-life-threatening injuries, while a cameraman filming the raid was hit with a rifle butt in the eye,” he said. “Of course we weren’t prepared for a situation of war.”
The returning Greeks said those still in custody were refusing to sign papers demanded by Israeli authorities.
“During their interrogation, many of them were badly beaten in front of us,” said Aris Papadokostopoulos, who was aboard the Free Mediterranean traveling behind the Turkish ship and carrying mainly Greek and Swedish activists.
ReutersThe decision, urged by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas against whom the embargo has been directed, prompted dozens of people to race to the crossing point in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, although the gates remained closed.
Officials in Egypt and Gaza said the crossing would open on Wednesday until further notice -- a step seen as an attempt by Cairo to deflect criticism of its role in imposing the blockade.
Rafah is the only point on Gaza's borders not controlled by Israel. Cairo, coordinating with Israel, has opened it only sparingly since Hamas seized control of Gaza three years ago.
A permanent opening of the crossing, which runs across a stretch of desert frontier riddled by hundreds of smuggling tunnels, would be a major boost for Hamas and a blow to efforts by Israel and its Western allies to cripple the Islamists.
However, a full, permanent opening is seen as unlikely.
Cairo fears such a move would allow Israel to wash its hands of any responsibility for the territory, which the Jewish state captured from Egypt in the 1967 Middle East war and which the Palestinians want to become part of their future state.
Cairo, which made peace with Israel in 1979, also has strained relations with Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, Egypt's biggest opposition group.
"UNLIMITED TIME"
The Interior Ministry run by Hamas since it seized control of Gaza from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007 said in a statement: "Rafah crossing is open every day from 9 a.m. (0600 GMT) to 7 p.m."
An Egyptian security source told Reuters: "Egypt opened its border with the Gaza Strip on Tuesday to allow humanitarian and medical aid to enter the Strip.
"The border will remain open for an unlimited time," the source said, letting Palestinians enter and leave Egypt.
Aid convoys, to which Egypt has in the past given limited access, would be able to use the crossing, subject to following Cairo's limitation that only food and medical supplies go in.
"Hard materials" -- apparently including concrete and steel which Gazans want to repair damage from an Israeli offensive last year -- would have to go via Israel, the Egyptian source said.
Israel has made clear since it halted a Turkish-backed, Gaza-bound aid convoy at sea on Monday that it will not ease its embargo.
The deaths of nine activists when commandos stormed a Turkish ship in international waters have unleashed a widespread furor over Israel's move. United Nations officials have demanded an end to the blockade, which has impoverished the 1.5 million people of the Gaza Strip. Israel's main ally the United States has been more cautious in its response to the incident.
After Israel withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, the European Union placed monitors at the Rafah crossing to reassure Israel that weapons would not reach Gaza from Egypt. That system of surveillance collapsed, and the blockade was tightened, when Hamas seized full control of Gaza in 2007.
Earlier on Tuesday, Hamas's Syrian-based leader Khaled Meshaal said: "We call on our brothers in Egypt to use this historic moment to open Rafah crossing. Egypt is able to do this and that would indeed be a real response to Israel's actions."
(Additional reporting by Yusri Mohamed in Port Said, Edmund Blair in Cairo and Tom Perry in Ramallah; writing by Alastair Macdonald in Jerusalem; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Does the United States reflect your values?United Nations » Israel faced heavy criticism in an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council on Monday in response to its deadly attack on an aid flotilla trying to breach the Gaza blockade, but attempts to issue a formal statement stalled after the United States rejected the strong condemnation sought by Turkey.
Turkey proposed a statement that would condemn Israel for violating international law, demand a U.N. investigation and demand that Israel prosecute those responsible for the raid and pay compensation to the victims. It also called for the end of the blockade.
The Obama administration refused to endorse a statement that singled out Israel, and proposed a broader condemnation of the violence that would include the assault of the Israeli commandos as they landed on the deck of the ship.
While condemnation of Israel in the Security Council is not uncommon, the criticism at the emergency session by Turkey and Lebanon was notable for both its vehemence and for the broad array of countries demanding an independent investigation into the decision to fire on civilians in what they described as a humanitarian mission.
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey, whose country's once close relations with Israel have deteriorated markedly since Israel's invasion of Gaza in 2008, called the attack "tantamount to banditry and piracy; it is murder conducted by a state."
Press TV
Irish TimesPAMELA NEWENHAM
Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin has called on Israel to allow Irish humanitarian ship, the MV Rachel Corrie, pass through its military blockade of Gaza.
The cargo vessel is ploughing ahead with its attempt to deliver aid to Gaza despite yesterday’s deadly attack by the Israeli navy on a Gaza-bound flotilla.
The Israeli army has warned that it will be stopped if it attempts to enter Israeli waters.
The Rachel Corrie, which has five Irish nationals and five Malaysians aboard, is due to arrive in Gazan waters over the coming days, a spokeswoman for the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign said. It became separated from the main aid flotilla after being delayed for 48 hours in Malta due to logistical reasons, and is currently off the coast of Libya.
Mr Martin, who called Israeli Ambassador Dr Zion Evrony to account yesterday, said the boat should be allowed through peacefully.
“The Rachel Corrie, the Irish ship on which citizens of Ireland are on ... can be shadowed in, but unimpeded, given what has happened and the need to diffuse the situation rapidly and allow them to discharge their goods,” he said.
Mr Martin said Israel was also obliged to respect its international obligations under the Vienna Convention and ensure Irish citizens have access to full consular support. He also expressed his condolences to the Turkish government and the families of the people killed when Israeli commandos raided the Turkish registered Mavi Marmara aid ship in international waters as it travelled from Cyprus, killing nine people.
The Government has called for a full independent international inquiry, preferably under the auspices of the United Nations.
Five Irish campaigners - including leading activists Dr Fintan Lane and Fiachra Ó Luain - are being held in the Be’er Sheva detention camp, from where they face deportation. Dr Lane and Mr Ó Luain were on board Free Gaza boat Challenger 1 which was boarded by Israeli forces.
Mr Ó Luain’s father, Joseph Bangert, said he supported his son’s actions. "He marches to a different drummer than most of us,” he told RTÉ today. “I’m sure he is sticking it to them. I think they have a Trojan horse on their hands".
Two Irish people, including activist Shane Dillon, have been deported and are expected at Dublin airport late tonight. The Irish ambassador in Tel Aviv was given permission to meet Mr Dillon at Ben Gurion Airport before his departure. It is understood Mr Dillon said he was treated well. Officials have been waiting to see the other detained Irish citizens during the day.
Nobel laureate Maireád Corrigan-Maguire, former UN assistant secretary general Denis Halliday, film maker Fiona Thompson and husband and wife Derek and Jenny Graham are the Irish nationals on board the Rachel Corrie.
Speaking from the ship today, Mr Graham said the vessel was carrying educational materials, construction materials, medical equipment and some toys. “Everything aboard has been inspected in Ireland,” he said. “We would hope to have safe passage through.”
Ms Maguire said none of the aid ships carry arms and are "purely humanitarian". She said it was necessary for the vessel to complete its mission to assure the people of Gaza the world does care. “Could you imagine if that happened to the 1.5 million people in Northern Ireland? The world would be absolutely crying out that this stop immediately."
Free Gaza Movement activist Greta Berlin, who is based in Cyprus, said the group wanted to break Israel's blockade of Gaza. "Our mission has not changed and this is not going to be the last flotilla."
However, an Israeli marine lieutenant, who was not identified, told Israel's army radio his unit was prepared to block the Rachel Corrie. "We as a unit are studying, and we will carry out professional investigations to reach conclusions," the lieutenant said, referring to yesterday's confrontation. "And we will also be ready for the Rachel Corrie ," he added.
Fine Gael foreign affairs spokesman Billy Timmins and Labour’s Michael D Higgins today called for the safe passage of the vessel, while Sinn Féin Dáil leader CaoimhghÃn Ó Caoláin called on Taoiseach Brian Cowen to initiate a trade boycott of Israel at national and EU level.
(AFP) – 9 hours ago TEHRAN — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday that Iran has precise information that Israel plans to launch a "massive attack" on Gaza in the wake of its deadly raid on an aid flotilla.
"We have precise information it has planned a massive attack against Gaza to make up for its past defeats," Ahmadinejad said in a public speech in the western Iranian city of Ilam that was broadcast live on state television.
"I warn you that if this time you commit a crime against any place, against Gaza, the storm of regional nations' fury will uproot you," he said.
The hardliner, who has repeatedly infuriated the world by his anti-Israeli tirades, also lashed out at countries which he said "backed the Zionist regime."
"This time if you back the crimes of the Zionist regime, the anger of regional nations ... will not just be limited to the borders of Palestine, but will also put on trial you and those who are accomplices in the crime," he said to cheering crowds.
Ahmadinejad criticised Washington for adopting a "weak stance" against Israel for its deadly raid on the Gaza aid flotilla.
"The US government has adopted a very weak and biased position. Instead of condemning, it has spoken vaguely and sought to evade taking a stance," he said, while some European countries had adopted a "good" stand.
On Monday, Israeli commandos raided an aid flotilla in international waters of the Mediterranean headed to Gaza that left at least nine pro-Palestinian activists dead, according to the Israeli army.
The attack on the flotilla has triggered a fresh wave of tirades from Ahmadinejad against Israel.
The animosity between the Islamic republic and the Jewish state has worsened under Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly said Tehran's arch-foe is "doomed to be wiped off the map."
Israel, for its part, has consistently demanded strong action against Iran for pursuing its controversial nuclear programme and has not ruled out a military strike.
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