perverse--
–adjective
- willfully determined or disposed to go counter to what is expected or desired; contrary.
Miranda warning--typically:
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?
Most everyone is vaguely familiar with the purpose of the Miranda warning, though, unless they are agents of law enforcement, they probably don't have it memorized. What most people very likely don't consider, is to whom this warning is addressed. Does it matter? Certainly, if it's to have its proper effect.
The Wikipedia entry
The Miranda warnings were mandated by the 1966 United States Supreme Court decision in the case of Miranda v. Arizona as a means of protecting a criminal suspect's Fifth Amendment right to avoid coercive self-incrimination
explains the purpose quite clearly. It's to protect a person suspected of having committed a crime from being forced to provide evidence against him or herself while being questioned. Who might be applying this force isn't mentioned and that's actually quite consistent with the whole panoply of a person's rights enumerated in the Constitution. Because, it's supposed to be understood that the whole document aims to prescribe and proscribe the behavior of our agents of government, including law enforcement. Except, that understanding seems to regularly missed, even by members of the Supreme Court.
Perhaps the misnamed "Bill of Rights" is the origin of the confusion. By focusing on the ultimate objective--i.e. that no person's or organizations's (press and establishment of religion) rights are violated by the agents of government--the obligations of the potential violators are downplayed, if not entirely left out. Moreover, as some of the framers might have properly feared, the enumeration of some rights (those most likely to be violated by the state) has given rise to the conclusion that only those specifically referred to in the Constitution actually exist. Worse still, the designation of the enumeration as a "Bill of Rights," rather than a list of specific prohibitions, has created the impression in some minds that what are clearly assumed to be god-given or natural human rights are special benefits or privileges which the Constitution provides to citizens of the United States. And that other persons need not apply.
Indeed, it was only just recently, in the Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that it was affirmed that the restrictions on our agents of government apply regardless of the nationality or legal status of the persons with whom they interact--a reality that's apparently still not understood by those who argue that foreigners, especially individuals suspected of terroristic acts, are not entitled to have their rights protected.
Of course, that the ordinary man on the street is confused is not surprising since the Department of Justice under the previous administration argued just that. And, in point of fact, there seems to be a widespread misconception in the whole law enforcement community that, for example, the rights specified in the Fifth Amendment only kick in AFTER a person has been arrested and taken into custody. So that any information a person can be tricked or cajoled into providing while they are simply detained is fair to employ as evidence in support of any suspicion previously formed.
Indeed, it seems fair to suggest that the designation of military captives, as well as individuals routinely rounded up by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), as "detainees" is also aimed at avoiding the obligation to respect the human rights of individuals, if and when they are properly arrested and charged. In other words, the Bush administration adopted a strategy that's consistent with a widespread perception that individual rights are not only derived from the Constitution but have to be triggered by an arrest to even exist. Which is really perverse.
Many people are left wondering, and rightly so, why only criminal suspects have rights, as the previous scenario makes it appear. They're right to wonder, because that interpretation is essentially false. What's true is that everyone has certain inalienable rights, which the agents of government are obligated to respect, even when a persons is suspected of having committed a criminal act.
So, really, although agents of law enforcement read or recite the "warning" to individuals they've taken into custody, it's actually addressed to themselves, to remind them that their efforts to contain and seek punishment for an individual suspected of criminal behavior are going to be nullified by any failure to respect that individual's rights. In other words, along with the presumption of individual rights, there's a realization, given voice in the amendments to the Constitution, that agents of the state are going to be tempted to ignore some rights, especially in stressful situations, and the prospect of failing in their assigned responsibilities is supposed to act as a deterrent. That's the point of the warning. The failure to understand that probably accounts for the conviction that having "given" the warning frees the agents of law enforcement from these restrictions, and the recurring efforts by courts to assert that restrictions are not overcome by a failure to comprehend on the part of the arrestee.
Is that a welcome message? Apparently not. Which is why our agents of law enforcement not only needed to be specifically reminded and ordered to repeat the verbal admonition, but still try to evade its strictures by delaying arrests and, rather routinely, refusing to admit that an arrest is their eventual objective.
Why do they do that? Probably because that's what their supervisors and trainers advise--in the interest of validating their suspicions of criminal behavior by extracting admissions of some wrong-doing, instead of acting on complaints, doing investigations and collecting evidence ahead of time. Also, arresting suspects, especially ones that fit preconceived notions, is easier than collecting evidence. Not to mention that nobody keeps track of how many arrests and charges are dismissed as bogus.
There are no negative consequences for lazy agents of law enforcement, as long as the presumption that they are acting in good faith--i.e. in accordance with their training and not in the furtherance of a personal unlawful motive. Which is actually the position that's going to be reinforced, if the perpetrators of physical assault and abuse against military detainees on Guantanamo in the interest of extracting confessions, instead of gathering evidence of crime, aren't called to account and charged with deprivation of rights under color of law. The prohibition against using extracted evidence in a trial is, obviously, not sufficient to insure that the obligation to respect human rights will be met even under the most adverse conditions, when it counts most.
Sometimes it takes an extreme example to make a point. When millions of people are falsely arrested and then let go, it's an inconvenience that leaves the victims grateful that the experience wasn't worse. It wasn't until the same attitude of arresting first and asking questions later was applied to people who couldn't be let go where they were detained that the perversity of the system became apparent. And still most people don't realize that they have rights, regardless of whether there's an opportunity or need to assert them; that whenever their rights to life, liberty and security aren't respected by an agent of government, there's a crime in progress. It's called "deprivation of rights under color of law."