Morons in the News: Scalia is an Idiot

[struggle4progress]

While you weren't paying attention...
Posted by Klep on May. 27, 2009 16:31 UTC

... I'm going to talk about Montejo v. Louisiana, a case the Supreme Court ruled on yesterday. At issue before the court was a precedent established 23 years ago in the case Michigan v. Jackson, in which the court ruled that police cannot question a defendant who has or has requested counsel without that counsel being present. This is an important check on police power, to prevent them from badgering a suspect into waiving his or her rights. Under Jackson, by saying "I want to speak to a lawyer," that ends the interview and the police are not allowed to pursue any further questioning until you have an attorney present.

Yesterday the court overturned Jackson in a 5-4 decision, saying that it was too easy on criminals, and in a profound display of naivete, idiocy, or malice, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that "There is little if any chance that a defendant will be badgered into waiving his right to have counsel present during interrogation."

That is stupid, and self-evidently so. The facts of the very case before the court, Montejo v. Louisiana, involve exactly that happening: the police pressured Montejo into talking with them without his appointed counsel present. If not for the situation Justice Scalia dismissed as happening so rarely as to be inconsequential, there wouldn't have been a case before the court on which they could rule.

The intellectual dishonesty with which the majority ruled on this decision speaks to how far to the right the court has shifted ... http://beta.morons.org/tally-ho/article/read/8072

[pdxmom]

1. Too easy on criminals? Isn't that a ruling involving feelings? Or maybe

it's empathy with the victims? Either way, these are what activist judges actually look like.

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. scalia is a dangerous SOB. After this ruling, the chances of being badgered

into waving your right to have counsel present is about 100%. One can only hope that scalia or one of his relations is put into that situation one day.

[lk9550]

3. Yep

And an utter tool.