US SUPREME COURT ON MIRANDA WARNING

Miranda Warning;

"You have the right to remain silent. 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 they have been read to you?"

The supreme court of USA IN A 5-4 decision has ruled that suspects must explicitly tell police they want to be silent to invoke Miranda protections during criminal interrogations.

A right to remain silent and a right to a lawyer are the first of the Miranda rights warnings, which police recite to suspects during arrests and interrogations. But the justices said that suspects must tell police they are going to remain silent to stop an interrogation, just as they must tell police that they want a lawyer.

The ruling comes in a case where a suspect, Van Chester Thompkins, remained mostly silent for a three-hour police interrogation before implicating himself in a January 10, 2000, murder in Michigan. He appealed his conviction, saying that he invoked his Miranda right to remain silent by remaining silent.

But justice Anthony Kennedy said that wasn’t enough. "Thompkins did not say that he wanted to remain silent or that he did not want to talk to police," Kennedy said in a statement. "Had he made either of these simple, unambiguous statements, he would have invoked his ’right to cut off questioning.’ Here he did neither, so he did not invoke his right to remain silent."