If you’ve been arrested, and the police want to interrogate you, they will tell you that you have the right to remain silent.
How do you assert that right?
One way would be to say something like “I would like to remain silent.” Saying “I want a lawyer” should also stop the questioning.
But today, in Salinas v. Texas, the Supreme Court of the United States held that you do not assert your right to remain silent by remaining silent. If you want to remain silent, you’ll need to be prepared to talk about it.
No one will be surprised that this result came from the Justice least likely to be voted most beloved by those in our nation’s prison systems, Justice Alito.
I’ll get you my little Iranian… and your little dog too.
The sins of the father should not be visited on the son. Honestly, if House Mystal was in Westeros (I think I know what sigil you think I should have), those would be our words. It’s awful when a whole family is shamed for the mistakes of one member. Nobody wants to be in the position of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s crazy uncle.
Thankfully, in civilized societies, we don’t hold children criminally responsible for the crimes of their forebears. That’s pretty much a bedrock principle of modern jurisprudence. Guilt by association might happen in the public sphere (sorry, Jeb Bush — I think everybody knows your brother, President Fredo, should have been passed over), but in the legal sphere, we have a little thing called “due process.”
It’s a constitutional principle Representative Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) had to be reminded of yesterday…
* A bipartisan immigration reform bill made its way through the Senate Judiciary Committee and will head to the Senate floor. Of course, the amendments in support of gay marriage didn’t make it in, but that may be moot soon anyway. [CNN]
* IRS official Lois Lerner may not be very “good at math,” but at least she seems to know the basic principles of constitutional law. She’ll invoke her Fifth Amendment rights before the House Oversight Committee today. [Politico]
* The D.C. Circuit ruled that the top secret Osama bin Laden death photos will remain top secret, but the internet’s desperate cries of “pics or it didn’t happen” will live on in our hearts. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* Attention naysayers: it may be time to face the music. According to the latest Altman Weil survey, most law firm leaders think all of these fun recession-driven changes are here to stay. [Am Law Daily]
* Twenty-two law firms are banding together to fight against fraudulent financial products on a worldwide scale. It’s too bad this legal alliance didn’t exist before the Bernie Madoff scandal. [New York Times]
* It looks like New Jersey may soon be hopping aboard the “pro bono work before bar admission” train. You better hope you get your clinic placements in order, people. [New Jersey Law Journal (sub. req.)]
* The results for the February 2013 bar exam in California are out, and they’re frightening. It’s time to try that acting thing again, because only 41 percent of all test takers passed the exam. [The Recorder]
* Jodi Arias is now begging jurors to allow her to live out the rest of her days in prison. She wants to contribute to society by painting, recycling, and… not slashing additional throats. Lovely. [Fox News]
So yesterday I was flipping between Fox and MSNBC as they continued their battle to see who could be the first to report that the other one was wrong. During the “they made an arrest in the Boston Marathon bombings… oh no they didn’t” kerfuffle, I got sucked into the Megyn Kelly program which devolved into a discussion on whether or not the ALLEGED suspect should be Mirandized when he is caught, or “sent right down to Guantanamo.”
It occurred to me that there are whole throngs of humans out there, Americans, who honestly believe that reading somebody his rights or making sure a suspect has access to a lawyer is deleterious to justice, as opposed to being one of ways we ensure justice is done.
I trust there aren’t any real lawyers out there who believe that rights hurts the administration of justice as if life is one big freaking episode of The Closer….
Earlier this week, Judge William Sylvester, the Colorado state judge presiding over the James Holmes trial, ruled that prosecutors are allowed to apply “truth serum” to Holmes if/when he decides to plead not guilty by way of insanity.
Holmes, you may remember, is the jackhole who allegedly (to the extent he has not yet entered his own plea) murdered 12 people and injured 58 others in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater during the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises. He’s expected to cop an insanity plea, citing a bunch of troubling facts, including the fact that he was obsessed with the Joker, leading him to dye his hair orange, which, when you think about it, undermines his obsession claim since the Joker clearly has green hair.
But the decision to forcibly inject Holmes with so-called “truth serum” to test his insanity claims, not only sounds like a plot device from a really terrible Bond movie (let’s just assume Die Another Day), but it also seems like a genuinely terrible legal ruling….
A college graduate without student loan debt is akin to reading a kind quote about Kim Kardashian in a tabloid—it’s rare.
In the past eight years, student loan debt has nearly tripled to a whopping $1.1 trillion, and in the past 10 years, the percentage of 25-year-olds with such debt has risen from 25% to 43%
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that New York Fed economists warned last month that the burden of student debt could stilt consumer spending by twentysomethings, as well as further hamper the recovery of the housing market and economy.
To get a better idea of what massive student loan debt (we’re talking over $100,000 massive) looks like, we talked to an attorney who graduated with a large student loan debt. We also consulted LearnVest Planning Services CFP® Katie Brewer to see just how their repayment plans stack up.
S. Fischer, 36, Attorney Graduated: 2001
How Much I Borrowed: $100,000
What I Still Owe: $45,000
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
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If you’ve been arrested, and the police want to interrogate you, they will tell you that you have the right to remain silent.
