Fifth Amendment, RIP?

A writer at the Atlantic thinks we've been slowly losing our 5th Amendment rights:

What everyone must understand is that American politics doesn't work the way you'd think it would. Most people presume that government officials would never willfully withhold penicillin from men with syphilis just to see what would happen if the disease went untreated. It seems unlikely that officers would coerce enlisted men into exposing themselves to debilitating nerve gas. Few expected that President Obama would preside over the persecution of an NSA whistle-blower, or presume the guilt of all military-aged males killed by U.S. drone strikes. But it all happened.

He's specifically referring to a provision in the reauthorization of the National Defense Authorization Act - now being considered in a conference committee - to allow for the indefinite detention of American citizens suspected of terrorism, without proof or due process. You can't defend yourself of the charges.

He points out that with the exception of one journalist at the New York Times, and a small handful of others - no one is covering this story.

Eminent Domain in Freeport

Here's a interesting take on a recent dispute in Freeport regarding eminent domain, which if one of the governor's emergency issues.

Two Bits on Compelled Testimony

Two stories from Grits for Breakfast raise questions about 4th and 5th Amendment issues.

The first concerns neuroscience's increased ability to map brain activity and the role it might play in criminal proceedings. Is a scan compelled testimony? Can a search warrant be issued for a brain scan?

The second concerns false confessions and whether they are coerced or persuaded.

In a land with no 5th Amendment:

from 3quarks daily comes a story from Poland about the law of lustration, something I was not aware of until now. Lustration is a form of purification, in this case anyone affiliated with the communist regime, must confess it. Some risk losing their jobs if they did, all face it if they refuse to fess up.

The commentators trace this law to Catholicism, and it does have a wiff of the inquisition about it. Though the inquisition aquired a negative reputation for obvious reasons, the purpose of the process was to actually find the truth behind whatever case was brought forward. Our is an adversarial system where two sides of an argument compete to influence an impartial group of citizens.

At the heart of the adversarial system lies the notion that freedom includes the ability to not have to incriminate yourself. The inquisitorial system does not. You have to lay out what happened, or you can be held accountable.

My question is this, though we are conditioned to believe that our judicial system is better than those of other countries, do we secretly long for the truth promised by an inquisition? So much of our criticisms of the legal process focus on crafty lawyers, idiotic juries, and dishonest defendants pleading the 5th Amendment that I strongly believe that a majority of Americans could be persuaded to change it all if given the chance. Our commitment to individual rights is rather thin.

Am I off base?