In the aftermath of the apprehension of the suspect of the Boston bombings, much ado was made about whether or not Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be read his Miranda warning.
The Miranda warning is a reading of the rights arrested citizens have before being taken in or questioned by the police force, FBI, etc. It informs you of the safeguards that have been put in place to protect you from injustices to which law enforcement entities can subject you.
An important point: as was brilliantly put by The Atlantic, a failure to Mirandize Tsarnaev is not in and of itself a violation of his rights. However, when you fail to Mirandize him and then use his statements in front of a court of law under the public safety exception, you run into problems.
The FBI interrogated Tsarnaev for 16 hours before informing him of his Miranda rights and now is attempting to get the court to admit his statements under the public safety clause. Even if that request is denied, they will still go ahead with the trial, as the amount of evidence they have against him is insurmountable even without a statement of guilt from him.
What is problematic in this is the precedent it sets. Essentially, legislators and law enforcement are seeking to go around the systems and protections we have in place in order to expedite Tsarnaev’s conviction. Our judicial system is powerful enough to convict Tsarnaev by itself, through normal legal channels.
But of course, some of the hotter heads among the GOP are seeking to ship Tsarnaev off to Guantanamo, to classify him as an enemy combatant and to torture him until he admits to an affiliation with al-Qaeda that most likely does not exist.
Here’s a valid question. Where was this during the case of James Holmes? James Holmes killed more people than Tsarnaev. His house was booby-trapped with explosives, and yet he was read his Miranda rights without as much as a peep from anyone.
The answer comes from the American public’s view of what constitutes a terrorist. If it was simply someone who commits atrocities that take the lives of many people, Holmes would be a terrorist as well. No, to many Americans, “Muslim” and “terrorist” are one and the same.
That’s why Holmes was a troubled young man with mental issues, while Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were enemy combatants on foreign soil.
What’s even more troubling is that our elected officials, those who are supposed to be more informed than us, are playing right into the same trap. So what we have is a vicious trap in which our officials put in place state-sponsored Islamophobia, where the only difference between a bullied sufferer of mental illness and a heartless terrorist is his religious affiliation.
We, as American people, suffer from being too susceptible to _ethos_ and _pathos_ and not enough to _logos_. It’s difficult to break from the mold when you’re ingrained in a society that encourages discrimination by race, by sexual orientation, by religion. It’s even more difficult when our media sources only encourage these behaviors.
However, I believe former President Clinton was correct when he said, “There is nothing wrong in America that can’t be fixed with what is right in America.” It’ll just take a little work.
