In the year 1992, police officers in Houston found two victims of homicide. The police officers doing investigations related to the homicide were led to Genovevo Salinas. Apparently, Salinas cooperated with the police, accompanying them to the police station where he was held for about one hour under interrogation. At this time, Salinas was not under any form of arrest. Additionally, he had not been made aware of his Miranda rights. Salinas was able to answer all the questions asked by the officers until he was asked whether the shells of the shotgun found at the crime scene matched that which was found at his home. The officer in charge outlined that Salinas remained silent at this point and showed signs of deception. The ballistic analysis done by the investigators revealed that Salinas’s gun matched with the casings which were found at the crime scene. In addition, some witnesses said to the police that Salinas had admitted to committing the crime. In the year 1993, Salinas was charged with the murder of the two victims but he could not be located since he had gone undercover.
Salinas was captured after fifteen years later. His first case ended up as a mistrial. In the second trial, however, the prosecution attempted at introducing evidence where Salinas was silent about the gun casings. At this point, Salinas submitted his objection stating that he could invoke his fifth amendment rights which in essence protected him against self-incrimination whether he was in custody or not. Fast forward, Salinas was found guilty by the trial court and was sentenced to twenty years in jail with an additional fine of five thousand dollars. The Fourteenth Court of Appeal affirmed this sentence adding that the courts which addressed the issue are divided. The Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas also affirmed the ruling.
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The legal arguments, in this case, are whether the self-incrimination clause in the Fifth Amendment protects the defendant when they refuse to answer questions asked by law enforcement before arrest or before being made aware of the Miranda rights. The majority decision was authored by Justice Samuel Alito who announced the judgment for a divided court. Later, Justice Alito was joined by Chief Justice Roberts as well as Justice Kennedy. Their conclusion was that the privileges outlined by the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination did not extend to the defendants who in a way decided to remain silent during questioning by the investigative police.
Further, the long-standing judicial precedent outlined that witnesses who in any way wanted to be protected against self-incrimination were supposed to claim the protection explicitly. The essence of this precedence is to put the government on notice when a defendant is intending to claim this privilege. On the other hand, the government will have the chance to offer immunity to the defendant or to argue that the testimony therein is not self-incriminating.
In this principle, plurality asserted two major exceptions. First, the criminal, in this case, has no obligations to stand trial for them to explicitly claim this privilege. Secondly, one can only fail to claim this privilege if they were coerced by the government. However, the opinion did decline to extend such exceptions in this case of which cannot be explained why such happened. Amidst all the speculations, the court reiterated that the Fifth Amendment does not establish a situation where one has complete rights to remain silent but only provides a guarantee that the criminal defendant might not be forced to testify against themselves (Mansour, 2016). This, in essence, means that as long as the police do not deprive the defendants the opportunity to claim the Fifth Amendment privilege, there are no constitutional violations.
The dissenting opinion was written by Justice Stephen Breyer argues that silence outlined by Salinas was sufficient enough to claim the Fifth Amendment privilege. Additionally, he outlined that the decision of the majority raised significant issues pertaining to uneducated defendants who in one way or the other might not know the explicit language which is necessary for the protection of their rights. Joining in the dissent were Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Ruth Ginsburg.
Following the majority and dissenting opinions, I would rule that Salinas was guilty of the crime. Due to the simple fact that Salinas was silent during questioning and was not under arrest as well, this could not be used against him in the trial court. Salinas, on the other hand, did not file a complaint regarding the use of his silence. In order to claim the Fifth Amendment privileges, one has to explicitly say something to indicate that the show of silence is a claim of the Fifth Amendment right. In this case, Salinas did not explicitly say a word to outline his claim of the Fifth Amendment right thus could not be protected by the same.
Reference
Mansour, L. (2016). The Sound of Silence: Evidentiary Analyses of Precustodial Silence in Light of Salinas V. Texas. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology , 105 (1), 271–295.
