Reading The Boston Bomber His Miranda Rights

The reading of the Miranda warnings to the Boston jihadist by a magistrate who waltzed into the hospital with a public defender during the interrogation led the bomber to immediately lawyer and clam up. FBI sources indicate they were still in the midst of questioning that was yielding valuable intelligence. They were surprised when their interrogation was called off. I would remind anyone engaging in histrionics over Miranda being delayed that the Miranda rights have no significant support in the history of the privilege or in the language of the Fifth Amendment. That which was devised in the Miranda v. Arizona ruling has a judicially created "public safety exception" allowing for questioning without the reading of rights. The precise contours of that exemption remain undefined. If this contrived exception to a now sacrosanct yet originally concocted rule is to exist, and the Boston atrocity demonstrates that it should, the circumstances to which it applies must be more clearly defined. There is no reason the DOJ should be invoking it and then suddenly removing it while the FBI is under the impression they are allowed more time to delay the made up privilege.

Formally watering down an invented right in cases such as mass and potentially international Islamist terrorism is not scandalous. It is common sense. Tweet