Essential rights in layman's terms.
Sometimes, we just tend to be at the wrong place and at the wrong time. Getting into a fix is inevitable when we live with crooks, goons, and what have you. Imagine getting yourself into a big mess which you did not really have anything to do with in the first place. It simply looked as if you got caught red-handed. You just had to be in the crime scene the moment the felony was discovered. Worse, police arrives and starts questioning you. What do you do?
I don't know what other countries call theirs, but in my country, we have the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is a set of rights found in the constitution that gives us armor against an oppressive or abusive government. It gives us a guaranty that certain areas of one's life, liberty, and property cannot be messed with by the government's iron hands. So, in the case I mentioned, what does one do?
The moment you are asked questions which you think might implicate you into the crime, you are said to be under custodial investigation. And here, you can invoke the rights reserved for you by the constitution. The Miranda vs. Arizona case has enumerated for us the rights guaranteed by the constitution, it is now recognized as the Miranda doctrine or Miranda rights.
The right to remain silent; just shut up! Don't think you can work your way out of the police by your debating skills. A crime has many elements and what you would say, thinking it has no connection to the offense, can be seen differently by the authorities. Injurious it might seem to the police community, some of them simply have mustered all the possible ways to circumvent a person's words against him. A fish is caught by its mouth.
The right to be informed that anything you say can and will be used against you in court. So again, zip it!
The right to consult with a counsel/lawyer and to have him/her during investigation; don't try to save yourself, get someone who's as manipulative as or more manipulative than the police. I ask myself why lawyers have this reputation. In their defense, I think they just had to adapt to the way the powerful play the game. They might not be as bad as we think, but that's a different story.
The right to be informed that if you cannot afford the services of a lawyer, one will be provided for you. The constitution is ideally for the rights of the accused and that's something praiseworthy. However, sad reality tells us that more often than not, pro bono lawyers cannot fully attend to their clients concerns. Even sadder reality is that most of the people getting involved in crimes and misdemeanors belong to the poor. Or is it simply because the rich can buy their way out of their “missteps”? The point is, poor people who might be innocent after all but ignorant as to their rights end up being handled by pro bono lawyers who, in their small number, are taking on voluminous cases. So now I'm wondering how many of the thousand detainees we have in our jails are actually innocent; and even one innocent soul suffering in those abominable prisons is tragic enough.
The right to have the interrogation stopped the moment you ask for a counsel, even after answering some questions.
The right to have what you said excluded as evidence in court if you were not warned of the rights above mentioned. You can also raise the defense that albeit the rights were said, they were said in a manner not fully understandable to you. It is the duty of the arresting officer to explain these rights in a comprehensible language.
There you have it, rights some of us might not know exist after all; let us not be ignorant of them, it can cost us our liberty, worse, our very lives. Knowing these rights can exculpate us from lifelong trauma. So if you have brothers, cousins, or friends you know are vulnerable into getting into ugly situations, a good advice you can give them is to let them know of their rights. However, the best advice I can give you is simply-stay out of trouble.
A little bit of trivia, our police generated new ids with the Miranda rights written at the back. You might want to have your own copy, or better yet, just memorize them by heart!
