Damn It, Jim! I'm a Doctor, Not an Engineer...

I acknowledge few, if any, persons who have a more reverent admiration, profound respect, or awestruck adoration of this great nation's Founding Fathers than my own.  Aside from my own mother, I am challenged to think of anyone whose slandered honor would inflame my passions to the point where my reasonable, ordinary, law-abiding self would be induced to do violence to my fellow man.  That said, the Founders made one catastrophic mistake: after laying out a revolutionary (if flawed) framework for a nation, they retired (slash died) and left the actual implementation of that plan to lesser men.  The result has been a marvel of engineering...less from the subsequent additions' contribution to America's greatness, but more so from the fact that those contributions have yet to compromise the integrity of the Founders' marvelous skeleton.  Allow me to illustrate my point by dispelling a few commonly-held misperceptions regarding American criminal procedure.


First of all, imagine yourself getting arrested.  Is Officer Friendly reading you your rights?  "You have the right to remain silent.  If you waive this right, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.  You have the right to an attorney.  If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you.  Do you understand these rights as I've read them to you?"  If he is, he is probably lying to you.  


Now permit me to direct your attention to the Bill of Rights, specifically the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments.  Certainly the First Amendment guarantees any person in America the right to free speech, which includes the right not to speak.  On the other hand, a person doing so while being questioned by police does so at his own peril.  First of all, in a very real sense, police officers operate as agents of the state empowered to use forcible means to achieve their ends; antagonizing them unnecessarily is thus a hobby in which reasonable folks typically decline to partake.  From a more philosophical perspective, the Fifth Amendment provides only that

No person...shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...

Subsequent judicial decisions have clarified that this protection against self-incrimination applies only to testimonial statements made during interrogations by state agents while the person in question is in custody...so if the cops ask for your name, just tell them.


But more importantly (to the future employment of my fellow soul-wanting beings), consider the Sixth Amendment.  Our Forefathers had the foresight to provide that 

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right...to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense. 

For those of you who think you speak and/or understand English, allow me to enlighten you.  When a lawyer sees that the accused in "all" criminal prosecutions is entitled to the assistance of counsel, he understands that "all criminal prosecutions" does not actually include all criminal prosecutions.  Suppose a person much like myself were indicted for a crime.  As I reside in California, let us choose a realistic example, and call the crime "constructive jaywalking," which consists of walking anywhere in the public thoroughfare that a police officer deems unscrupulous, punishable by $10 Billion in fines and Eleventy-thousand hours of community service.  As it turns out, I have no right to be provided a public attorney for my defense (although I probably have claims to overturn the statute).

On the other hand, let us say I had been charged with, say, "blogging silliness regarding the law too late at night," which is punishable by 15 minutes detention in the county jail.  Alas, I still have no right to an attorney provided at the public's expense.  However, once I am convicted and sentenced to my detention,  I suddenly inherit that right!  As luck (and/or the brilliance of judicial decisions since the founding of our nation, I leave it to you to decide) would have it, the right to assistance of counsel afforded at public expense is predicated upon being sentenced to confinement to a government facility...but is not acquired until that sentence is imposed.  So while I don't have the right to an attorney during the trial, once I am convicted I get the right to have had an attorney during the trial, and thus my sentence can be appealed and overturned.  Evidently no lawyer has ever seen a horse cart.