High Court to Hear Miranda Challenge

Under a post-Civil War law, city and state officials, including police officers, can be sued in federal court if they violate a person's rights under the U.S. Constitution.

A federal judge in Los Angeles cleared Martinez's case to go before a jury.

Oxnard's lawyers said the allegations against Chavez should be dismissed because the patrol supervisor was merely trying to learn what had happened. U.S. District Judge Florence Cooper disagreed and said his questioning suggested he had sought to obtain an admission from Martinez that would clear the two officers.

In the past, the Supreme Court has said police cannot be sued unless they violate "clearly established" rights.

Before the case could be tried, Oxnard's lawyers appealed on behalf of Chavez saying he had violated no clearly established right. (Under California law, cities and counties are responsible for paying money verdicts against their officers.)

But the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Oxnard's appeal and said the facts as alleged, if proved at a trial, would justify holding Chavez and the city liable.

The 9th Circuit judges said the rule against coercive police interrogation had been established decades before the Miranda decision of 1966.

"Sgt. Chavez doggedly pursued a statement by Martinez despite being asked to leave the emergency room several times," wrote Judge Richard Tallman. "A reasonable officer, questioning a suspect who had been shot five times by the police and then arrested, who had not received Miranda warnings and who was receiving medical treatment for excruciating, life-threatening injuries ... would have known that persistent interrogation of the suspect despite repeated requests to stop violated the suspect's 5th and 14th Amendment right to be free from coercive interrogation."

The Miranda decision grew out of the 5th Amendment, which says no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." This has long been known as the right against self-incrimination.

The Supreme Court in the 1950s and '60s struggled in a series of cases to decide whether a person's confessions to the police had been voluntary or compelled. Often, a suspect claimed to have been beaten, but the police denied it. In one case, five members of a Los Angeles family had been held in jail for more than a week before one of them talked.