Miranda Decision

A man found guilty nine years ago of slaying an Oxnard mother of four has had his conviction overturned by a federal court because he wasn't advised of his Miranda rights. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals also noted that Ventura County Sheriff's Sgt. Michael Barnes, who spoke with the murder suspect in this case, often failed to advise suspects of their rights.

A state prosecutor said Wednesday that he has appealed a ruling in the case of an Oxnard man whose murder conviction was overturned last month by a federal court that found he had not been advised of his Miranda rights. In his petition, Deputy Atty. Gen. Scott A. Taryle asks that an 11-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reconsider the case of Frederick Lee Jackson, who was convicted in 1995 of raping and murdering Genoveva Gonzales, 30, an Oxnard mother of four.

The police need not always warn a teenage crime suspect of his rights before formally questioning him, the Supreme Court said Tuesday. The 5-4 ruling gives police a bit more leeway to question suspects without warning them of their Miranda rights, and it says that a suspect's youth is not reason enough to treat him with more caution. The decision upholds the second-degree murder conviction of a Los Angeles County man who was 17 at the time of the crime.

The Supreme Court narrowly upheld the Miranda warnings Monday, ruling that police officers may not use confessions that they have obtained by questioning suspects first and warning them of their right to remain silent afterward. In a 5-4 decision, the high court called the police tactic a deliberate effort to skirt the Miranda decision. They threw out a Missouri woman's confession to plotting to cover up the death of her disabled child by setting her mobile home on fire.

The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday that it would take up the Bush administration's plea to limit the well-known Miranda ruling and allow the use of evidence that is found after police fail to fully warn a suspect of his right to remain silent. The new case, to be heard in the fall, could affect everyday encounters between police and crime suspects and witnesses. Since the Supreme Court's 1966 decision in Miranda vs.

Oliverio Martinez hadn't yet heard the news about his case, but that was no surprise. He lives a world away from the marble chambers of the U.S. Supreme Court. He doesn't have a phone, or even a bathroom. With his father, Oliverio Sr., he resides in a dark, cramped trailer about the size of a suburban walk-in closet, a dilapidated tin box outside Camarillo beside the strawberry fields he had worked for the better part of 20 years. Martinez, 35, is blind and paralyzed.

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.

In a ruling laced with words like "misconduct" and "unconscionable," the California Supreme Court made it clear Monday that it would no longer tolerate the practice of some California police agencies of deliberately ignoring a suspect's right to remain silent. In doing so, the justices overturned the conviction of a Tulare County man who had been convicted of strangling to death a 69-year-old man who had given him a home.

Just three years after the Supreme Court affirmed its landmark Miranda decision, the rule that police must warn crime suspects of their "right to remain silent" is in danger of being effectively repealed, longtime defenders of the decision say. This week, the justices are scheduled to hear three cases -- from Colorado, Missouri and Nebraska -- that will determine whether there is a penalty when police fail to warn suspects of their rights before questioning them.

Government lawyers Tuesday urged the Supreme Court to give the police more freedom to question suspects without first warning them of their right to remain silent, and most of the justices sounded as though they were inclined to do so. "Miranda does not require officers to give the warnings," said Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. "It is a conditional thing." If an officer warns a suspect of his rights, and the suspect talks, his words may be used against him in court.