You have the right to have an attorney present at your trial. If you cannot afford a lawyer, the court will appoint one for you. " Officer Hunter's line is really puzzling. The criminal suspect still has the right to remain silent and refuse the police officer's interrogation. Wouldn't this suspect be arrested in vain? In real life, if Officer Hunter did not instigate this paragraph to the suspect lines, or only said the first two sentences, and was too tired to mention the last two sentences, then the suspect may have been arrested in vain. The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution stipulates: No one shall be coerced in any criminal case. Self-incrimination. Under this constitutional provision, anyone has the right to remain silent and refuse to provide evidence that may be used against them, whether in a police station, a courtroom, or a congressional hearing. Someone may ask. Is that wrong? Since they have the right to remain silent, why did Monica Lewinsky and Clinton recruit them? That’s what happened. According to American law, sometimes the government or Congress provides a person with money in exchange for him or others. In the Clinton "Zippergate" case, in order to obtain Lewinsky's true confession to prosecute Clinton, the special prosecutor gave her this immunity. Faced with Lewinsky's confession and the stain on her dress, Clinton had no choice but to resort to the tactic of trying to get into trouble and playing legal terminology games, claiming that he and Lewinsky only had an "inappropriate relationship" to avoid going to the federal grand jury. The serious legal consequences of perjury. However, if the criminal suspect's confession is purely forced to incriminate himself, then this confession cannot be used as criminal evidence in court. In 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miranda v. Arizona. (Mirandav. Arizona) case made a far-reaching ruling, which has become one of the most important criminal rulings in the United States in this century. In 1963, a 23-year-old unemployed young man named Ernesto. Ernesto Miranda was arrested in Arizona on suspicion of raping and kidnapping women. Before the interrogation, the police officers did not tell Miranda that he had the right to remain silent and not to admit guilt. He was not well educated and had never heard of anything like the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. After two hours of interrogation, Miranda admitted the crime and signed the confession. Later in court, the prosecutor presented Miranda's confession to the jury as important evidence against him. Miranda's lawyer insisted that Miranda's confession was invalid under the Constitution. In the end, the jury ruled against Miranda. Guilty, the judge sentenced Miranda to twenty years in prison. The case was later appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately overturned the district court's decision on the grounds that the police officer did not inform Miranda of his highest constitutional rights before interrogation. In its ruling, the court reiterated to the police the rules for interrogating suspects: first, suspects are informed in advance of their right to remain silent; second, suspects are informed in advance that their confessions may be used to prosecute and try them; and third, suspects have the right to have a lawyer. Be present at the trial. Fourth, if the suspect cannot afford a lawyer, the court will appoint one for him free of charge. These provisions became known as the Miranda Rules. The first three articles of the Miranda Rules are related to the Miranda case, and the fourth article of the Rules, that is, if the suspect cannot afford a defense lawyer, the court shall appoint a lawyer for him free of charge, is based on the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1963 Another important ruling. The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution stipulates that the defendant has the right to have a lawyer defend him when tried in court. As we all know, money is not everything; but hiring a lawyer for defense is absolutely impossible without money. For more than a hundred years, this constitutional amendment has actually only protected the human rights of the wealthy. It was not until 1932 that the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Powell v. Alabama that courts should provide free defense attorneys to poor defendants charged with capital crimes. In 1963, the Supreme Court ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that both federal and state courts should provide free defense attorneys to poor defendants charged with felonies. In 1961, a middle-aged poor man named Clarence Earl Gideon was arrested in Florida on suspicion of breaking into a billiards parlor and was accused of stealing some coins from a vending machine. and canned drinks.

Gideon was too poor to afford a lawyer. Although he insisted that he was innocent, he was sentenced to five years in prison. While serving his sentence in prison, Gideon used the prison library to study law on his own and wrote a "Pauper's Complaint" to the Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, complaining about his grievances and claiming that he had been deprived of money due to poverty. Constitutional right to counsel. This guy used a lot of newly learned legal terminology in his petition, and it was well-founded and clear. All nine justices of the Supreme Court unanimously approved his petition. In its ruling, the Supreme Court emphasized that “in criminal courts, lawyers are a necessity and not a luxury.” Gideon was released from prison and retried. This time a free defense attorney was appointed by the court, and the final verdict was an acquittal. As soon as this case came out, there were thousands of inmates in prisons across the United States. Most of them were later released because they also had no lawyers to defend them when they were tried. Speaking of prisoners in prison, here is a true story. We apologize for the anonymity of the person’s real name. A mainland scholar studying in the United States became a U.S. citizen a few years ago. This guy lost a lawsuit and was sentenced to either a $1,500 fine or five days in jail. This man was the kind of man who was very fond of spending money. He also heard that prisoners in American prisons were treated like uncles, so he chose to spend five days in a prison. Five days later, he was released from prison and several friends came to visit him. When they met, they saw that this man looked haggard and disheveled. Everyone was shocked and asked if he had been mistreated in prison. Don't be afraid to tell him. We will go to the court to complain. This man replied that the treatment in prison was not as good as he imagined, but it was acceptable. You could read books, watch TV, have a gym, and even a table tennis table. The troublesome thing is that the three meals are all Western food, including pan-fried steak, cheese-smoked fish, salami, ham sandwiches, pizza, etc. If I didn't pay attention, I thought I was being detained at Maxim's Restaurant in Beijing. Eating Western food every meal was really miserable. I felt anxious on the first day, uncomfortable on the second day, miserable on the third day, extremely painful on the fourth day, and for the last meal on the fifth day, I simply went on a hunger strike. . The inmate asked, "Why don't you eat or drink?" After learning the reason, the inmate said with a bad smile, "You are really a dummy." Before you, there was also an Asian incarcerated here. That guy was not used to eating Western food and went on a hunger strike after his first meal. Later, the prison officials ordered him meals from a Chinese restaurant every day, such as kung pao chicken and fish-flavored shredded pork. The inmate finally cursed: "Oh my god, that smells so damn good!" After hearing this, my friends almost burst out laughing. While laughing, people couldn't help but sigh that the American prison and legal system are nothing more than child's play. The impression given by American law is that the human rights of criminals seem to be more important than the human rights of victims; protecting bad people seems to take priority over protecting good people; and rules and regulations for the police seem to be more important than laws and regulations against criminals. many. Those defense lawyers who are confused about right and wrong are good at exploiting loopholes in the law; coupled with the highly controversial jury system, the American judicial system has often become a laughing stock around the world. Since the 1960s, as the violent crime problem in the United States has become increasingly serious, the vast majority of Americans hope that the government will take extraordinary measures to crack down on violent crime severely and quickly. But the U.S. Supreme Court seems to turn a blind eye, turn a deaf ear, and even do the opposite. Is there something wrong with all the justices in the Supreme Court? You are right, there are indeed problems with several liberal justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, and the problems are far-reaching. Deep in American history and culture lies a distrust of government and an extreme fear of judges and police officers abusing their power. People who are familiar with history know that the ancestors of Americans suffered from the persecution of feudal autocracy on the European continent. After they ran away from home and came to the New World, they could no longer tolerate the autocratic government that was riding high on the people's heads and acted like the British. The king's army began to fight. The world of the United States was created by the founding president, George Washington. But the long-term peace and stability of the United States was thought out by the third president Thomas Jefferson and the fourth president James Madison. Thomas Jefferson presided over the drafting of the far-reaching Declaration of Independence, and James Madison is known as the "Father of the American Constitution." What is a constitution? To explain it in a crude way, the constitution is the law that governs the government. Why should we control the government? Because officials and police in the government have power. And power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

To put it bluntly, because they hold great power, government officials and police officers may all be potential bad guys and corrupt elements, and are potential "organized crime groups." Therefore, the law should first control the officials and police in the government, and then the criminals in society. To strengthen the rule of law, we first need to institutionally restrict the power and behavior of government officials and police. Human history has proven that the government and the police are definitely much more capable of doing bad things than criminals in society. Nazi Germany massacred six million Jews without any effort; China's anti-rightist movement expanded from 1957 to the 10-year turmoil of the Revolution, and the people who were caught in a mountain of injustice, falsehoods, wrongful convictions, and political persecution were not paying attention. As many as 100 million people, and social progress and economic development have also suffered unprecedented and terrible damage. Back then, in order to solve the problem institutionally, the U.S. Constitution passed in 1787 stipulated many basic principles to restrain the government, such as natural human rights, popular sovereignty, limited government, separation of three powers and checks and balances, rule of law rather than rule of men, and civilian control. Military, representative system, federalism, etc. However, from an operability perspective, many of these principles are illusory. For example, without freedom of speech, press freedom and press supervision, the separation of powers will still be difficult to prevent corruption such as officials protecting each other and abusing power for personal gain. A government with natural human rights and limited powers can talk about it and make a lot of noise. However, if the careerists and corrupt officials in the ruling party abuse their power, secretly collude with the police, prosecutors and judges, fabricate a bunch of charges, and imprison the people in power. The leaders of the opposition parties and the ordinary people who accuse the government are thrown into black jails, tortured to extract confessions, secret trials, and brutal persecution. You have nothing to do with it. In a word, if there are no protections for civil liberties and rights, all the high-profile and good words in the Constitution will be in vain. The founding fathers of the United States were certainly aware of the shortcomings in the Constitution at that time. In 1791, the founding fathers added ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution in one go, guaranteeing citizens’ freedom of speech, publication, assembly, petition, and religion, allowing ordinary people to possess weapons, and stipulating that no one should be forced to incriminate himself or be convicted of the same crime. No one shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. The defendant shall have the right to a speedy, open and fair trial and to be defended by a lawyer. Criminal cases and civil suits whose value exceeds a certain limit shall be heard by a jury. They shall be tried in groups, and citizens shall not be subject to unreasonable searches and detentions, and prisoners shall not be subjected to cruel punishment. The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution are collectively known as the Bill of Rights. The core of the Bill of Rights is to use power to check and balance power, use power to limit power, and use methods to protect citizens' freedom of speech and press and protect citizens from official abuses and judicial corruption. It gradually establishes the power of press supervision and civil rights, checks, balances and constraints. The official power of the government forms the separation and mutual checks and balances of the five powers of legislation, law enforcement, judiciary, news supervision and civil rights. This carefully designed structure of checks and balances effectively curbs the abuse of power by the government. Of course, the U.S. Constitution only protected the human rights of white people and wealthy people at the time. But no matter what, it allowed some people to become democratic first, and American society gradually embarked on the path of modern democracy. What is modern democracy? Modern democracy is to limit government power and protect citizens' human rights. Without limited government and protection of human rights, democratic elections are just in name. Nazi Germany was a political power established through referendums and democratic elections, but its government was a fascist government with autocratic dictatorship, unlimited power, bullying the weak by the strong, and arbitrarily trampling on the human rights of citizens. This kind of democracy was a false democracy covered by the ballot box, or It is said to be a kind of tyranny with elections. In today's China, if we want to build the rule of law in a down-to-earth manner, instead of being obsessed with direct elections at the township and county levels, it is better to limit and supervise the power of township and county governments to do whatever they want and protect the legal rights of poor people in rural towns and cities. The real thing. The township and county-level governments' illegitimate treatment of farmers is actually an illegal deprivation of farmers' property rights. In urban economic reforms, due to the lack of supporting political reforms, the central government's reform measures to decentralize power and benefit actually gave power with almost no restrictions and supervision to local princes, corrupt officials and business owners. Once absolute power is in hand, it is difficult to avoid corruption. As the biggest victims and the most determined opponents of corruption, ordinary people are basically at the mercy of others and have nowhere to redress their grievances. To be honest, the Chinese people as a whole have no longer a right to exist.

Protecting the human rights of citizens, supervising and limiting the official power of the government, preventing the powerful few from abusing their power, taking bribes and perverting the law, and curbing the rising unemployment and crime wave, the disparity between the rich and the poor, and judicial corruption have become issues faced by Chinese society. the biggest challenge. In Western countries, like the United States, not only the rights of citizens but also the rights of defendants have been written into the constitution. However, the president, Congress and government officials stand in the dock with fear all day long, and are criticized by the news media and the public. I'm afraid this is the only one who accuses and criticizes. In today's American society, official power is weak, civil rights are strong, and the news media is super powerful. The power of government officials is very limited, while ordinary people have many freedoms and rights. The news media controls everything, and the power of the police is strictly restricted by law. Severe restrictions on police powers are no accident. The law enforcement and judicial system in the United States involves police, prosecutors, lawyers, judges, witnesses, juries, etc. Among them, the police are considered to be the least qualified, the most difficult to supervise, and the most prone to law enforcement violations and misbehavior. In any country, the police, corrupt officials and the underworld are always inextricably linked. The police and criminals have always been one family. All large-scale drug smuggling, money laundering and bribery, corruption and perversion of law, as well as robbery and murder are indispensable for high-level police backgrounds. Darkness and crime within the police are usually much more serious than crime in society, and they cause much greater damage to social order and judicial justice. In addition, there are more than 200 million guns hidden among civilians in the United States, making police work full of danger. The police have been dealing with criminals for many years, and it is difficult to change their emotional and irrational behaviors such as using violence to treat violence, repaying evil with evil, excessive use of force, and ignoring due legal procedures. Therefore, despite strict regulations, U.S. police violations of laws and disciplines and abuse of power still occur from time to time. However, the judicial system should be rational and authoritative. In order to maintain the authority and fairness of the law and prevent the police from abusing their power, the American judicial system focuses on strict governance and policing, suppressing evil with good, reporting complaints directly, presuming innocence, and protecting human rights. Judicial procedures first strictly regulate the behavior of the police and prosecutors. Due legal procedures must be strictly followed in detecting cases, collecting criminal evidence, and detaining suspects. If there are loopholes in the legal procedures of the police, once the loopholes are taken advantage of by lawyers in court, they can only watch the suspects get away easily despite the overwhelming evidence, which will make the people who gather around to watch the fun feel even more uncomfortable. The child is in pain. According to U.S. law, even if a criminal is ultimately convicted and imprisoned, his rights to food, sleep, communication, entertainment, etc. are still protected, and he can be fed and fed well in prison. Someone has made three calculations. First, the poverty line in the United States is set when the annual income of a family of four is less than $16,600. Americans, who account for about 12% of the total population of the United States, live in below the poverty line. Second, excluding welfare subsidies and medical insurance, the annual salary of a U.S. second lieutenant officer who graduated from West Point Military Academy is US$35,000. Third, if you include benefits such as security guards, medical insurance, and gymnasiums, each prisoner in a U.S. prison costs U.S. taxpayers $30,000 a year. Naturally, there is a problem here. American law claims to protect the freedom and human rights of citizens, but in judicial practice it incidentally protects the freedom and human rights of bad people, which in turn damages the freedom and human rights of good people, at least the good people. Right to exist. What to do? This question may be difficult to explain in a few words. First of all, if the government and police are allowed to violate the law and ignore due legal procedures and systems, then the freedom and human rights of good people will eventually be harmed even more. The phenomenon of lawyers taking advantage of legal loopholes is not terrible, because its premise is to recognize the law and challenge the law within the framework of judicial procedures. What is really scary is failure to obey the law, violating the law when enforcing the law, substituting power for the law, and lawlessness. Loopholes in laws and regulations can be repaired through due legal procedures, but once the loopholes of failure to comply with the law and violation of law enforcement are opened, it is difficult to close even if you want, and will eventually destroy the dam of democracy and the rule of law. Secondly, everyone is equal before the law. In fact, if the human rights of criminals and bad people are not protected, it will be difficult to protect the human rights of good people. Because the line between good guys and bad guys is not always clear, good guys can also become criminals and bad guys because they break the law or are framed. During the Wenge turmoil, heads of state, government ministers, marshals, generals, and academic leaders all became gangsters and bad guys who lost all rights overnight, and could only be trampled on like shit. Therefore, in order to protect the head of state, government ministers and kind-hearted people from unwarranted persecution, the law should protect the freedom and human rights of all people.

Thirdly, using regulations such as Miranda rules to limit and supervise the power of law enforcement officers does indirectly protect the rights of some bad guys and allows some real criminals to take the opportunity to escape the law. However, if we look at it from a broader perspective, the law protects the legitimate rights of the defendant, limits the power of law enforcers, allows ordinary people to not fear retaliation from the government and the police, and prevents government law enforcement from breaking the law, corruption and perversion of the law, power-for-money transactions, and police and banditry. Collusion, judicial corruption, and arbitrary oppression of poor people are the best protection for the freedom and human rights of good people. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (Jr.) famously said: "The crime of a criminal escaping justice is much less serious than the illegal behavior of the government." Finally, there are no crimes in the world. There are laws and systems that are flawless and perfect. Just like the market economy is not a panacea that can cure all diseases without any side effects, democracy and the rule of law and the protection of human rights are not the road to heaven on earth for human society. They only prevent human society from falling into autocracy and corruption. It’s just a protective dam for hell on earth. Democracy and the rule of law cannot guarantee the best in everything; it can only prevent the worst from happening. To paraphrase Churchill, democracy and the rule of law are just the less bad political systems of human society. People just choose the lesser of two evils. Playing with democracy and the rule of law and protecting human rights requires paying a huge price. The population of the United States only accounts for 5% of the world's population, but 75% of the world's practicing lawyers are in the United States, and the money is spent like water in the sea. The California government and O. J． Simpson's "Dream Lawyer Team" tried their best, costing taxpayers more than eight million dollars over more than a year, but in the end they still failed to defeat Simpson. In the American judicial system, there are so many rules that favor suspects and defense lawyers, and light sentences for serious crimes have become commonplace. Although there are very few unjust, false and erroneous cases, there are indeed many fish that slip through the net, and it is very difficult for law enforcement agencies. Let’s just talk about the Miranda Rules. After they were officially promulgated that year, it caused great difficulties for the police to solve cases. Police stations across the United States complained, but they did not dare not to comply with them. Some police officers were not very smart. After catching the suspect in a hurry, they could no longer think of the Miranda rules. There was no prompter nearby, so they had to look up to the sky and sigh, scolding the Supreme Court justices for sitting down and talking. Lord of back pain. According to statistics, before the Miranda Rules were introduced, the detection rate of criminal cases in the United States was generally around 60 to 70 percent. In the decades since the Miranda Rules were introduced, the detection rate has dropped to around 40 to 50 percent. . It is generally believed that the Miranda Rules actually put handcuffs on the police and protect the human rights of criminals, and that there will be an unstoppable wave of crime in American society. The U.S. Congress has held multiple hearings to extensively listen to the voices of the police, legal authorities and the public, and to study clever ways to deal with Miranda rules. In accordance with the law of separation of powers and mutual checks and balances, the U.S. Congress, together with the states, can use constitutional amendments to overturn the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. U.S. Senator Sam Ervin once proposed a bill to add a new constitutional amendment to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the Miranda v. Arizona case. The bill died because it did not receive the support of a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress. According to U.S. law, even if it is passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate, it still needs the approval of more than three-quarters of the state legislatures to take effect. Hedong in thirty years and Hexi in forty years. No one expected that since the early 1990s, the criminal crime rate in the United States has dropped significantly for six consecutive years. Among them, the vicious criminal crime rate in New York City miraculously dropped by 54%. Although criminal suspects cannot be beaten or interrogated, and the food and treatment in prisons are getting better and better, there are fewer and fewer prisoners who are willing to stay in prison and enjoy freedom and human rights. People generally attribute these to the strong growth of the economy, the decline in inflation and unemployment, the improvement of the social welfare security system, the strengthening of the police force, the increase in prisons, the increase in penalties for habitual offenders, etc., which have nothing to do with the Miranda rules. relation. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees free speech. You have every right to say that there is no connection at all; you certainly have the right to say that there may be some connection; and you have the absolute right to remain silent.