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Civics 101

Taking the Fifth: When What You Say Could Be Used Against You

Civics 101

NHPR

History, Government, Society & Culture

4.22.6K Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2022

⏱️ 45 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Fifth Amendment's self-incrimination clause says that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." Basically, it means that the government, or law enforcement, can't force you to talk to implicate yourself in a crime. However, what that looks like in practice... is a little more messy.  When do you have a right to remain silent? When do you become a suspect? What does compulsion look like? Can your silence be used against you?  We talk about how the Supreme Court has interpreted these questions, and how to exercise Fifth Amendment right when you are interacting with law enforcement, with Tracey Maclin, a professor of Constitutional law and Constitutional criminal procedure at the University of Florida's Levin School of Law, and Jorge Camacho, a clinical lecturer on law and policing at Yale University, where he is the policy director of the Yale Justice Collaboratory.    CLICK HERE: Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more! To see Civics 101 in book form, check out A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro. Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast, Outside/In - we think you'll love it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

The department was forced to drop the charges because you forgot to read him his Miranda

0:06.4

rights.

0:07.4

What possible reason is there for not doing the only thing you have to do when arresting

0:12.8

someone.

0:14.4

Hannah, name me one thing.

0:16.1

You can count on seeing it just about every movie or TV show that has anything whatsoever

0:22.8

to do with crime.

0:24.5

Bad station coffee.

0:25.5

Or like good cop bad cop, right?

0:28.5

You have the right to remain silent.

0:30.9

Ah ha.

0:31.9

Miranda rights, right?

0:32.9

Yes.

0:33.9

OK, OK.

0:34.9

I did read him his right.

0:35.9

I did a version of that.

0:36.9

Do you even know the Miranda rights?

0:39.9

Yes.

0:40.9

What's the name of that?

0:41.9

What's the name of that?

0:42.9

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

0:43.9

This Miranda warning is the way that most people understand their right under what it's

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