Case Study 3: Confessions and Admissions after a Request for a Lawyer
According to the Fifth Amendment, in the U.S constitution, the defendant is protected from being constrained to be a witness against self in a criminal case. Therefore invoking of the Fifth Amendment by the defendant allows him to have the privilege of declining to answer the questions where the answers might implicate him (Duignan 2013). The defendants thus are able to evade the penalty for having proclaimed the privilege and thus they cannot be compelled to become witnesses in their own case. Therefore this case relates to the Fifth Amendment since the suspect proclaimed his privilege by failing to become a witness of his own crime when he was asked questions that would have incriminated him.
Edward rule refers to the rule that is used to disallow police officers from beginning a cross-examination of a suspect who has requested for a lawyer before a lawyer is provided to him/her (Del 2014). This applies to our case since the suspect went through the same scenario as that of Edward. However, the police officer in this case started the interrogation but when the suspect requested for a lawyer he was arrested and the officer stopped the questioning.
The officers’ actions were not acceptable since the confession of the suspect was voluntarily after the police officers compelled him to confess thus incriminating himself even when his lawyer had not arrived. However it seems like he did not have knowledge on his rights. According to the law in the Fifth Amendment, confession must be voluntary as well as constitute a well knowing and aptitude waiver of a known right or a privilege (Duignan2013). The fact that the laws were read to him twice shows that he did not have a knowhow on his right.
References
Del, C. R. V. (2014). Criminal procedure: Law and practice.
Duignan, B. (2013). The U.S. Constitution and constitutional law. New York: Britannica Educational Pub. in association with Rosen Educational Services.
