Blog of Rights
Suzanne
Ito
05/19/2010
Miranda Rights

Miranda: If it Ain't Broke…

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 3:39pm

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

The next time you sit down to watch your favorite crime show (Law & Order: SVU is mine), think about how often you've heard the words: "You have the right to remain silent…" as the detective/cop whips out the handcuffs and arrests a suspect. That's called the Miranda warning, a requirement enshrined into law by the 1966 Supreme Court decision Miranda v. Arizona. In that decision, the high court determined that suspects must be informed of their Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights "prior to interrogation" if their statements are to be used against them in court.

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04/19/2010

Pork…or Parents?

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 12:24pm

Call us crazy, but given the choice between having parents and having bacon, we think a foster kid would choose the former.

Unfortunately, Contemporary Family Services (CFS), a private company authorized by the state of Maryland to place foster children with families, doesn't agree. CFS has refused a foster care license to Tashima Crudup, a practicing Muslim, because she does not allow pork products in her home. During a home study interview following 50 hours of mandated training for prospective foster parents, CFS representatives also asked Crudup inappropriate, baseless questions, including whether her husband would take a second wife.

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02/26/2010

Congress Drops the Ball on Upgrading Patriot Protections

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 4:07pm

We're sorry to say, but is anyone surprised that Congress has capitulated to post-underpants bomber fear-mongering and passed the three expiring provisions of the Patriot Act without so much as a debate?

Oh, you didn't hear about that?

Wednesday night, the Senate passed a straight one-year extension by voice vote, and last night, the House followed suit.

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09/18/2009

Whose Lawyer? The People's Lawyer.

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 5:36pm

Today a group of former CIA directors sent a letter to President Obama asking him to kill Attorney General Eric Holder's investigation into the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. custody. Clearly these CIA directors have forgotten one key thing: this isn't the president's decision to make.

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09/08/2009
Indefinite Detention

Indefinite Detention Sacrifices Human Dignity

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 5:39pm

Last weekend , NOW on PBS explored indefinite detention in its latest episode, "After Guantánamo." In it, host David Brancaccio interviewed Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, who was tasked with prosecuting Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Guantánamo detainee accused of 9/11-related crimes. In 2004, Couch became the first of six military lawyers to resign from prosecuting the military commissions cases assigned to them because they disagreed with the commissions' flawed system of "justice," which includes using evidence gained through torture and rigging the trials in favor of a conviction.

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07/09/2009

ACLU Seeks to End Bible Censorship at Virginia Jail

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 2:40pm

Imagine being in jail, and you receive a letter from your mother. It says: "Dear Son…" It goes on for a paragraph, and then the rest of it is a big, gaping hole, where prison censors have cut—with scissors—biblical passages that your mom thought you might find comforting during your incarceration. The big hole is followed by: "Love, Mom."

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02/11/2009

Ben Wizner on The Rachel Maddow Show

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 6:03pm

In case you missed it last night, you can catch ACLU attorney Ben Wizner on The Rachel Maddow Show online. Ben talked about Monday's oral arguments in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in the ACLU's second extraordinary rendition case, Mohamed v. Jeppesen. (Listen to the oral arguments here.)

You can learn more about the case here, and catch up on all the pre-and post-hearing coverage here.

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02/11/2009

Newly Unredacted Torture Documents Reveal Deaths, Abuse

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 5:39pm

Back in 2006, we received the heavily redacted Church Report, an investigative report of Department of Defense interrogation operations by Vice Admiral Albert T. Church. Well, in addition to receiving thousands of pages of Criminal Investigation Division reports on detainee deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, we've just received some less-redacted pages from the Church Report—and this is what they were hiding:

Redacted
(click image to enlarge)
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11/06/2008

California's Prop 8 Update

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 3:53pm

Yesterday, the ACLU, along with Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, filed a lawsuit in the California Supreme Court, urging the court to invalidate Prop. 8. (You legal wonks can check out the complaint here.)

We also issued a press release yesterday reminding everyone that California Attorney General Jerry Brown has stated that if Prop. 8 does pass, the state will still honor the marriages of same-sex couples wed between June 16, 2008 and passage of Prop. 8.

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07/02/2008

The Origins of SERE, and Using Torture Even When It Doesn't Work

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 1:39pm

The New York Times' Scott Shane revealed today that the torture and interrogation techniques used at Guantánamo Bay were copied nearly verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study done on interrogation techniques used by the Chinese military during the Korean War against captured American soldiers. Those techniques elicited FALSE confessions—again, no surprise given the many detainees tortured later who admit that they would say anything just to make the torture stop.

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