WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court narrowed the right against self-incrimination Tuesday, ruling that police and government investigators can force an unwilling person to talk, as long as those admissions are not used to prosecute them.
The 6-3 opinion undercuts the well-known Miranda warnings, in which officers tell individuals of their right to remain silent. It appears to allow more aggressive police questioning of reluctant witnesses in the hope of obtaining evidence. While a person's words cannot be used against him or her in court, evidence can be.
Tuesday's decision also could prove useful to the government in the war on terrorism. The FBI agents who fanned out around the country after the terrorist attacks in New York and at the Pentagon mostly wanted information, not criminal convictions.
Most immediately, however, the decision throws out part of a lawsuit brought on behalf of a gravely wounded farm worker in Oxnard who was questioned in a hospital emergency room by a police supervisor.
The officers who shot Oliverio Martinez in the face and back can be sued for using excessive force, and possibly for "outrageous conduct" at the hospital, the court said. But the justices ruled that the police supervisor who repeatedly questioned Martinez did not violate his 5th Amendment rights in doing so.
Civil libertarians worried that the decision signals a retreat from the Miranda rulings of the past. Already, the court has agreed to hear three Miranda cases in the fall, one testing whether police can deliberately violate the right to remain silent.
"When the court handed down Miranda [in 1966], it set out clear lines. When you crossed the line, you violated the constitutional right," said Charles Weisselberg, a UC Berkeley law professor. "Now Miranda has become something else -- a rule of evidence, but not a constitutional right. I fear that means it will have less respect from police, judges and the criminal justice system."
Police advocates applauded the ruling.
"This is a good win for the law enforcement community," said Charles L. Hobson of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento. "It will be the rare case where an officer is ever held liable for questioning. This shows that Miranda is just about excluding evidence at a trial," he said, not about setting constitutional rules for questioning.
Since December, when the court took up the farm worker's case, the justices have been reconsidering the reach of the Miranda decision and the right against self-incrimination.
