Quote:
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But popular misconceptions notwithstanding, the Fifth Amendment guarantees that no one may be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself ”; it does not establish an unqualified “right to remain silent.”
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As SamNavy points out, doesn't the standard Miranda warning say, "You have a right to remain silent?
This decision seems to be saying that right commences only when an officer reads it to a suspect, but IMHO that's not how "rights" work. I either have the right or I don't. The fact that an officer is -- at some point in the proceedings -- required to
remind me that I have the right doesn't make it not a right until he has reminded me.