Supreme Court: Speak up to shut up with Miranda right

As police grilled him about a 2000 fatal shooting in Michigan, Van Chester Thompkins remained virtually silent for nearly three hours until one of the officers asked him about God.

"Do you pray to God to forgive you for shooting that boy down?" the officer asked Thompkins, according to court documents.

Thompkins' answer was unequivocal: "Yes."

Prosecutors used that single incriminating statement against Thompkins, who was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. He subsequently argued that his silence throughout the interrogation should have indicated to police that he was invoking his Miranda rights against self-incrimination.

The court shot down Thompkins' argument in a narrow ruling Tuesday that essentially said simply remaining silent is far different from invoking the Miranda rights to remain silent.

"Thompkins did not invoke his right to remain silent and stop the questioning," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion. "The police, moreover, were not required to obtain a waiver of Thompkins' right to remain silent before interrogating him."

Justice Kennedy, a frequent swing vote on the court, was joined in his opinion by the four members of the court's conservative wing — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a blistering dissent that the high court's decision is at odds with precedents in other Miranda cases that put the burden on prosecutors to prove that defendants have waived their rights. She wrote that the ruling also creates an odd paradox for criminal suspects.

"Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent — which, counterintuitively, requires them to speak," she wrote. "At the same time, suspects will be legally presumed to have waived their rights even if they have given no clear expression of their intent to do so."

Justice Sotomayor's dissent was joined by the other three members of the court's liberal wing — Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens.