Word: squeals
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...organized crime, whose members well know their rights, but will simply end the present hypocrisy of hiding the Constitution from the squeal room's main customers-the poor, the ignorant and the mentally limited...
Trial by Police. Clearly, the critical confrontation today is often reached in the station-house "squeal room," where police "make" cases by eliciting presumably voluntary confessions. Although the Fifth Amendment bars the use of any confession that police extract by even the most subtle threats or promises, and though no American need answer a single police question, those facts are generally unknown to the vast majority of arrested Americans-the poor in pocket, mind or spirit. For the Fifth Amendment does not automatically command police to inform anyone of his rights; the suspect himself must know those rights in order...
...defendant later recants, forcing courts to determine the voluntariness of his confession. The issue becomes a "swearing contest" between the scruffy confessor and three or four detectives who swear they never coerced him. Understandably, most judges and juries prefer to believe policemen; indeed, judges overlook trickery in the squeal room that would shock them in the courtroom...
...Hogan made the Fifth Amendment binding on states. A week later Escobedo reversed Danny's conviction after he had spent 4½ years in prison-and moved the Constitution, and lawyers, into the police station. The court made it clear that criminal prosecutions actually start in the squeal room. To bar legal aid at that crucial stage, it ruled, "would make the trial no more than an appeal from the interrogation...
Salutary Influence. If properly revived, argues Goldberg, "misprision of felony would be a very salutary influence in our distressed society." Obviously, it would raise problems. How serious an offense would require disclosure? Would it involve mere suspicion as well as knowledge? Would close friends or relatives be obliged to squeal on one another? Goldberg himself feels that the offense should be limited to serious crimes, "perhaps only serious crimes against the person." All Americans, he says, "are familiar with their legal duty to report serious traffic accidents to the police. It is about time we consider violent assault on persons...