The Fifth Amendment, it Weeps

We had a previous ongoing series, titled “Shortest CSI Episode Ever.”  The selfie craze has gone into the criminal world, now, and the criminal stupidity has now gotten out of hand.  The Fifth Amendment, it weeps.

 

Yep, that's a selfie surrounded by weed

As related earlier, the right against self-incrimination goes across common-law jurisdictions (England, Australia, the US).  It was important enough to get in the Bill of Rights.  It is so important that we have an entire body of law based on the Miranda case that goes into the warnings that police have to give to criminals when the arrest them, so they don’t get forced or tricked into incriminating themselves while in custody.  This is a basic and seminal protection needed in an adversarial system of justice where the power of the state is huge as against a single defendant.  A defendant should not be compelled to incriminate himself or herself.  A defendant has the right to not incriminate himself.  He has the right to counsel to advocate on his behalf, so that as an untrained amateur he doesn’t have to stand up to the power of a trained prosecutor and investigators.  We have rights, people. 

But, people, some of us don’t have ability.  Like these two hams – who the Fifth Amendment doesn’t technically apply to, because they live in England – but they have similar protections, just called something different. The Fifth Amendment still weeps at our idiotic brethren across the Pond.

As reported in the Daily Star, as fine as news organization as there is (be warned, some mildly, potentially NSFW photos in the side links, if your boss isn’t cool, but I’m my own boss now, so fark it, it’s all good), Nicholas Waine, 27, is not the sharpest tool in the shed.  He’s definitely a tool, though.  The Daily Star didn’t call him a tool. I just did.  I'm not particularly worried about libel because truth is an absolute defense and here's what the Daily Star reported he did: He took a selife holding two huge handfuls of marijuana, while surrounded by marijuana plants in his grow house.  Not shrewd.  Not shrewd at all.  When police raided the home where he was, they found Waine and two other guys, Jack Yarwood and Wayne Keron sitting around a large tub filled with cocaine.  They got the Waine’s phone and found the pictures of him holding the weed, smiling. 

Then there’s this woman from East Texas, where the Fifth Amendment literally does apply.  The Houston Chronicle reports that Evelyn Hamilton called police in Lufkin to complain about the quality of marijuana that was delivered by her dealer.  Seriously.  She called 911 to make something of a commercial quality complaint.  While that is nominally a civil case for breach of implied warranty of merchantability under the Uniform Commercial Code and not a criminal case anyway, and she would have been violating the rules of 911 by calling into report a civil matter, rather than a criminal emergency, police were happy to take her report, and bust her. 

Potentially reconsidering her 911 call

The Fifth Amendment weeps.  It weeps a slow death not only about the inability of citizens to utilize their rights to be free from self-incrimination, from taking selfies with drugs, and then to call 911 to report that they just bought drugs. It also weeps at the enshrined right to counsel.  Because, at its core, that’s a right to have a just and fair adversarial trial and to be able to stand up to the state. When you take a selfie with weed, or you call in your poor quality weed to 911, you have just thrown out your ability to stand up to the Man in an adversarial trial.  It’s not Shortest Episode of CSI Ever, it’s Shortest Episode of Law and Order Ever, because there’s no trial needed.  You’re done.