The defense
I’m no Jeffrey Toobin, but it seems to be that, at least by the old rules, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev would have a good legal case in his defense. The suspect spoke at length to investigators, reportedly confessing to multiple crimes, before he was read his Miranda Rights. When a judge finally ordered that he be Mirandized, he immediately stopped talking.So how can his confession be admissible if this Constitutionally-protected right had been denied to him? This is very established court precedent. In the cases of both Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph, there were no delays in notifying the suspects of their Miranda Rights, and the Rudolph arrest even took place post 9/11, so our new-fangled and very-suspect rules would have even applied, no? There might still be an insurmountable case against Tsarnaev if a confession had to be thrown out, but could the 19-year-old not conceivably attempt to pin the motivations of his actions on his brother as a domineering personality over his life? If a jury agreed that he had been forced to go along, even to some extent, isn’t it even conceivable that one day he could walk as a free man?
Of course this would not be an issue if Tsarnaev was being held as an enemy combatant, but he wasn’t, and he shouldn’t be. The authorities are able to use that “public safety” exception to justify an interrogation prior to Mirandizing a suspect, but 16 hours of questions? And all of them after authorities had made a public announcement that there was no longer a threat to public safety? I wish I was this guy’s lawyer.
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If Clarence Darrow were alive, he would have been banging on the door of the infirmary trying to get between Tsarnaev and his interrogators. Democracy’s great defender would often take the hopeless cases, especially if there was a chance to save the accused from a sentence of death.
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ESPN is really only interested these days in its own manufactured stories. First case in point of how they create their own spectacle was revisited last week with their breathless, marathon coverage of the NFL Draft, an annual event that had almost no cultural meaning until ESPN began feeding it steroids.
Now today comes the first currently-active player in the history of any of the four major North American team sports coming out of the closet, and ESPN buries the story under a garbage pile of news about Tim Tebow, the New York Jets' fifth-string quarterback.
The NBA’s Jason Collins announces he’s gay-- to ESPN's media rival Sports Illustrated -- on a day when the Jets cut loose the “superstar” quarterback that ESPN independently manufactured. It's no contest what the lead would be.
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I’ve begun teaching my Kenyan-born fiancé about the resplendent game of baseball. But I’m not going to tell her about the designated hitter until it becomes absolutely necessary.
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I'm taking this week off for my annual trip to New Orleans. The advance word is that the situation in America's most culturally-significant city remains, as ever, desperate but not serious.
I ain't gonna let nobody play me cheap, and I got 50 cents more than I'm gonna keep. Laissez le bon temps rouler!
posted by CM @ 9:03 PM
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