The Justice Dept. Hates Lawyers As Much As The Rest Of Us

The 9/11 Conspiracies. Chemtrails. Obama's birth certificate. The North American Union. The moon landing "hoax". The 2008 Sichuan earthquake caused by geoclimatic control devices. RFID tracking chips. The Illuminati. The Parallax Corporation. Sleeper cells against which Jack Bauer is our only hope. Elvis & JFK fighting a soul-sucking mummy somewhere in the deep south.

Any American busy cherry-picking factoids to fit their carefully-tailored blueprint of metareality might want to stop and smell the Sixth Amendment going up in flames.

Tell it to the judge:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a long-standing ruling that stopped police from initiating questions unless a defendant's lawyer was present, a move that will make it easier for prosecutors to interrogate suspects.

The high court, in a 5-4 ruling, overturned the 1986 Michigan v. Jackson ruling, which said police may not initiate questioning of a defendant who has a lawyer or has asked for one unless the attorney is present. The Michigan ruling applied even to defendants who agreed to talk to the authorities without their lawyers.

Lest I neglect to mention: this is the ruling the Obama administration requested. Though anyone who honestly expected "change" is probably too naive to be considered a Responsible Voter, Obama's quiet continuation of some of Bush's most profane policies is an electrode to the nutsack of anyone who thought civilisation could at least collapse with its dignity intact. But now, not only does America not care how certain information was procured from foreign captives and "enemy combatants", it could give a fuck how its own citizens are left to fend at hands of criminal inquisitors.

As Crooks & Liars pointed out, "criminals are rarely intelligent and they're often easily coerced. You know that bit on cop shows where they use a copy machine as a 'lie detector'?"



"Some cops actually do that."

Any fan of prime-time cop dramas is familiar with arsenal of mind games & psych-outs detectives can deploy against witnesses & suspects. The one bulwark against this bullying was always to lawyer up - "I want my attorney." But now those four words are as ineffective a protection as any other four words strung together in an interrogation; you might as well be saying, "More braised cuttlefish, please." Whether a suspect or a defendant, just in for a chat or being charged with a crime, you are at the mercy of the police in the room and whatever means they see fit to ply you with, from semantic sleight-of-hand to physical intimidation - just like the lads down in Gitmo. However "unjustified" it may be (in the words of Justice Scalia's decision) "to presume that a defendant's consent to police-initiated interrogation was involuntary or coerced", there is absolutely no guarantee that it wasn't.