Posted by
flagwaver on Wednesday, May 05, 2010 11:39:29 AM
I am no fan of Obama, and certainly not of Eric Holder, but when there is credit due then honesty has to prevail. So in the case of the attempted Times Square bombing, I have to say good work on questioning the suspect the way it was done. The use of questioning before Miranda was well done, and seemingly well thought out by the people doing the questioning.
Glenn Beck's ravings about the man not being properly Mirandized notwithstanding, the DoJ made a brilliant move in their questioning of the suspect. While Beck may feel that the questioning violated the rights of the suspect, because of his citizenship, actually the feds may have stretched the law...but they did not necessarily violate anyone's rights.
What the feds did, and Glenn "Mr. Constitution" Beck should have known about this, was use the public safety exception to Miranda to conduct the initial questioning. The public safety exception allows law enforcement to question a suspect sans Miranda if they are dealing with a situation where the public is in imminent danger because of the actions of the suspect. The feds are likely to argue that because they had traced the bomb to the suspect they were afraid that there could be another attack coming and they needed to prevent it. The only problem that they might face is that the courts might rule that the exception did not apply because of the time period between the attempted bombing and the arrest.
But what strikes me as brilliant about this is that Holder's DoJ has read the tea leaves and put themselves in a pretty good spot, no matter what happens. They are looking at a Supreme Court that would likely uphold their actions if the case ever got that far, and even if they were to lose a court challenge it would not wreck their prosecution. They were able to gather enough information to convict this guy without any information obtained in the pre-Miranda questioning, and if that information leads to any other cells in the country it can be used against them since their rights were not at issue. Futher, their later Mirandized questioning got them a confession that is totally admissible in court, so they are covered. That was a pretty slick piece of lawyering from a group that I have been pretty well convinced couldn't tell their butts from a hole in the ground.
So in this instance, I have to give some serious kudos to Attorney General Holder and the DoJ. Well played gentlemen, well played.