Initial denial of right stokes terrorists' beliefs.
After interviewing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for hours without giving him his Miranda warning, federal officials were rescued from their bad judgment by a U.S. magistrate who advised the Boston Marathon bombing suspect of his constitutional rights.
By questioning Tsarnaev at length before he was informed of his right to remain silent and to have an attorney, the FBI gave a victory to America's enemies who argue that our talk of justice masks a willingness to be unjust when we fear our judicial system won't produce the results we want. The delay in telling Tsarnaev of his Miranda rights unnecessarily strengthens their argument.
Let's assume all the damning things about the 19-year-old and his brother, Tamerlan, 26, are true. Let's accept that these brothers, who were born in Chechnya and Kyrgyzstan, respectively, and immigrated here more than a decade ago to escape ethnic and religious persecution, are responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings and the subsequent terror that took the lives of four people and wounded nearly 200 others.
A radical change
Let's stipulate that Tamerlan, who was killed in a shootout with police, dreamed of becoming a member of a U.S. Olympic boxing team, and Dzhokhar, who was wounded and captured, was as friends described, "as American as anybody." Let's accept that radical Islamists turned these men, one a naturalized U.S. citizen and the other a permanent resident, into anti-American jihadists.
If all this is to be believed, then it is fair to assume the goal of these homegrown terrorists was not just to harm us, but also to strike a blow against our system of government.
America's enemies say the democracy that we champion cloaks a U.S. hegemony that coddled dictators such as Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi when it served our purpose and undermined democratically elected governments in places such as Chile and Venezuela when they run counter to our national interests.
An exception to law
The delay in informing Tsarnaev of his rights was an unwarranted stretching of the Supreme Court's Miranda rule exception. In 1984, the top court created an exemption to Miranda in cases when there is an immediate threat to public safety. But two years ago, the FBI in a secret memo told agents they can go further when interrogating terrorism suspects apprehended in this country.
"There may be exceptional cases in which, although all relevant public safety questions have been asked, agents nonetheless conclude that continued unwarned interrogation is necessary to collect valuable and timely intelligence not related to any immediate threat," the memo said.
That wide-ranging exception, which is subject only to Justice Department approval, effectively renders the Miranda ruling moot for suspects in domestic terrorism cases — though in some cases it may be subject to judicial review.
The FBI's supersized application of the Supreme Court's narrow Miranda exception reduces the Constitution's Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination to a pile of empty words. And it causes people around the world to question whether this nation's democratic ideals are etched in stone — or written in sand.
DeWayne Wickham writes on Tuesdays for USA TODAY.
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