Can police use your silence against you? Supreme Court to decide.

The Supreme Court is reviewing a case in which a Texas man's silence while voluntarily answering police questions was presented as evidence at trial. His murder conviction was upheld on appeal.

By Warren Richey,?Staff writer / January 11, 2013

The US Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether prosecutors can use an individual?s refusal to answer police questions as evidence of guilt at a subsequent trial if the silence came prior to being taken into police custody.

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While the high court has long held that criminal suspects who are in police custody have a Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, the court has never decided whether a similar right protects interactions with police prior to an arrest.

Suspects are routinely advised in Miranda warnings that they have a right to remain silent. That right stems from the Fifth Amendment protection against being compelled to provide evidence against oneself at trial.

But it is not clear whether the same protection applies to statements made to police at the earliest stages of an investigation.

The issue arises in a 1992 Texas double murder case involving a man who was voluntarily answering a series of questions by police at a police station but then refused to answer when officers posed a specific query: whether his shotgun would match shells recovered at the scene of the killings.

Confronted with that question, Genovevo Salinas responded with silence.

At his trial, the prosecutor sought to use Mr. Salinas?s silence as evidence of guilt. The prosecutor told the jury: ?You know, if you asked somebody ? there is a murder in New York City, is your gun going to match up [with] the murder in New York City?...? An innocent person is going to say: What are you talking about? I didn?t do that. I wasn?t there. He [Salinas] didn?t respond that way. He didn?t say: No, it?s not going to match up.?

The jury convicted Salinas of the double murder. The conviction was upheld on appeal.

In urging the US Supreme Court to hear Salinas?s case, his lawyers noted that federal appeals courts and state supreme courts are sharply divided over the issue.

Ten courts have ruled that the Fifth Amendment right to silence in the face of police questioning extends to pre-arrest contacts, while nine other courts have ruled that there is no such protection before someone is in police custody or given Miranda warnings.

?The need to resolve this conflict is manifest,? Stanford Law Professor Jeffrey Fisher wrote in his brief on behalf of Salinas.

?There can be no serious dispute that the question whether the Fifth Amendment protects pre-arrest, pre-Miranda silence in the face of law enforcement questioning is extremely important,? he wrote.

?Police officers and other law enforcement agents across the country attempt to conduct such questioning on a daily basis ? approaching everyone from suspects of common street crime to high-ranking executives of Fortune 500 companies.

?Many of these investigations turn into prosecutions and, like this case, eventually proceed to trial,? he said.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/u7kmaf8IGvM/Can-police-use-your-silence-against-you-Supreme-Court-to-decide

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