Explosion at Boston Marathon II

Well, yeah, but this guy isn't that dumb anyway, is he?

 

Public safety exception: Bad guy breaks into a house and assaults a victim in the home with a gun. Police are called and find guy in a residential neighborhood. Police chase bad guy and bad guy throws his weapon away. Police catch guy and immediately ask: "Where's the gun?" badguy says "I threw it over a fence in the yard over there, (Pointing to a nearby house)." Police retrieve the weapon and his statement can be used against him because a loaded gun lying in a yard or street where some kid can pick it up is a good reason to delay reading his rights and him refusing to waive his rights.

With this guy, if they (law enforcement) immediately asked him are there any other bombs, that would be a good reason to delay reading his rights. Asking him who his co-conspirators are? Did he have help making the bombs etc are not public safety exceptions.
Public safety, simply, is whether the general public would be imminently harmed if police did not make inquiries prior to Miranda. Badguy can always tell police he won't talk.

 

Somebody on NPR yesterday had a different take: Left to his own devices, DT won't want to implicate others. It's in the government's interest to get him lawyered up now, so someone is telling him, "Kid, they've got you nailed 14 ways from Sunday. Your only shot at any break is talking. Let me lever what you know."

 

Given that the police were aware that the kidnapers were indeed the terrorists it further calls into question how they could have been so haphazard in apprehending them. Essentially it came down to 5 or 6 Watertown cops. Where were all the cops
from Boston? Did they get lost on way to Watertown? # 2 should have never been able to escape for another day.

By the time Boston Police, State Police, Watertown Police, Transit Police and other officers confronted the Tsarnaevs early Friday morning after a Watertown officer spotted the stolen SUV, “we already knew these guys had admitted to killing three civilians and a police officer, and that they were prepared to kill many others,” the senior official said.

According to the official, the bombers repeatedly told the carjack victim that they were going to New York, which is why they used his ATM card at various locations: they needed cash for the trip.

Investigators are trying to determine if the brothers had either friends or co-conspirators in New York. But the haphazard, ill-planned escape has many investigators skeptical that there were other radical Islamists involved in the brothers’ attack.

 

BTW: this is a very limited and seldom used exception. And questioning him at the hospital hours after arrest probably is not a public safety exception. Additionally, since he was hiding in a boat for hours on end before capture, and he threw all his bombs at police already and abandoned the car with he was using to get away from the police and his weapons and other property were recovered from the boat where he was arrested probably reduces the public safety exception to a losing government argument.

 

Heard a lawyer explaining it on CNN the other day.

Basically, its supposed to cover a cop who says something like "Do you have any weapons on you?"; etc. as he's taking down and securing a suspect but before he's read him his rights.

The Justice Department basically made the 48 hour thing up on the fly. It's not in the statute.

That said, it'd be interesting to see if the Feds made the argument that he wasn't technically in custody until they actually charged him. Rather he was in protective custody at the hospital over the weekend. It's not like the guy was going to be physically able to leave anyway.

 

Thanks for the explanations.
The extended delay is what threw me off.

 

So aside from his admissions to the carjacking victim, the police have nothing, so far.

Law enforcement certainly look like dufuses (dufi ?). Can't find 2 amateurs who stayed in the area. Missed and couldn't capture a guy in a stolen car on the biggest manhunt since the UniBomber. He hid right under their noses in Watertown. If they didn't throw IEDs (IUDs?) at the cops while being chased there'd be no evidence that they possessed bombs, ever. Dumbski and Dumbski Jr outwitted Mass State Police, Boston PD, ATF, FBI and NSA.

No wonder they couldn't foresee 9-11, the fall of of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Shah of Iran, the TET Offensive or the Wall Street Bubble.

 

If its Jeffery Tobin, ignore everything he says. He's a clown

 

Wow. Strongly disagree.

 

Well that and Heyabbott's explanation sounds a lot like the one from Tobin - assuming that's who I heard.

I guess Heyabbott's a clown too.

 

He writes well, but I find his legal analysis to be superficial, at best. I don't mean that he simplifies things for the masses, but that he seems to have a limited grasp of the real issues surrounding criminal law, even constitutional criminal procedure. I've read many of his New Yorker pieces on the Supreme Court and their rulings and come away thinking there's no way this guy is a lawyer, let alone professor.

And while Dershowitz is extraordinarily well versed in the law, he is so biased, that I cannot abide his conclusions.