More BS. That is the knee jerk response of many people but it is based on a lack of knowledge in the legal system.
Read Legal Commentary: The Fifth Amendment Rights Of The Innocent at FindLaw.com
supreme.findlaw.com
Why the Innocent Need Fifth Amendment Rights
As a matter of logic, innocent people can place themselves at risk of self-incrimination for crimes that they did not commit.
Often, for example, more than one person may have had a motive to kill the victim in a homicide case, even when only one person has actually killed him. Forcing one of the innocent people to testify about her motive in such a case would, of course, represent compelled self-incrimination.
Why, then, is the notion that criminal procedural protections are not available to the innocent still so widespread? Perhaps it is in part because the most frequent avenue for litigating Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights is the motion to suppress evidence in a criminal trial — which is brought to keep damaging and often-reliable incriminating evidence away from the jury.
When the police search a suspect's home without a warrant, the guns and fingerprints they find are no less damning than they would be if proper procedures had been followed. Yet the evidence is suppressed.
Similarly, when police force a suspect to say where a body is buried, the fact that the body is, indeed, present at the confessed location is no less revealing than it would be absent the coercion. Yet the coerced statement, as well as all evidence derived from it, are suppressed.
No wonder people perceive these provisions as protecting only the guilty, and specifically, as protecting them from their just punishment. The appearance is deceptive, however. Suppression motions ideally function as a deterrent to police misconduct, and the innocent benefit as much as the guilty from the resulting drop in misconduct.
Still, this argument may make the innocent seem like incidental beneficiaries of rights that are primarily targeted to, and exercised by, the guilty. But that is really not the case. As I have argued elsewhere, the primary purpose of the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures is to protect the privacy of innocent people. Accordingly, it is the
guilty whose benefit from these provisions is incidental — an unfortunate cost of protecting the innocent.
For example, the threshold finding of probable cause that enables a magistrate to issue a warrant under the Fourth Amendment, is a finding that corresponds to the likelihood that a suspect is guilty. Probable cause, in other words, correlates with guilt, and that correlation is deliberate.
The Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination might seem more guilt-oriented on its face. It embraces the notion that in a civilized society, people should not be made the instruments of their own criminal convictions, however well-deserved.
What could be more uncivilized, however, than an innocent person being forced to participate in a process that makes her look as though she has committed a crime when she has not? As the Supreme Court said in Reiner, "one of the Fifth Amendment's 'basic functions . . . is to protect innocent men . . . "who otherwise might be ensnared . . . ."
The public reasonably resents the notion that our Constitution deliberately protects the privacy and freedom of those who prey on their fellow citizens. That notion is, fortunately, incorrect. But as long as those who champion criminal procedural protections insist that these protections are primarily for the benefit of those engaged in criminal behavior, they endanger the viability of these rights — for they provide the public with little reason to accept or honor them.
For such rights to survive, it is
essential that innocent people be aware of them, exercise them, and appreciate their value as elements of a free society. The Supreme Court's announcement that innocent people are entitled to Fifth Amendment protection is a positive step in that direction.
