The public safety exception strikes me as equivalent to the enemy combatant exception - a way to just skirt civil liberties when it seems relevant.
Bear in mind that for his trial (if he doesn't plead guilty) they'll have victim witness testimony from a person who says he saw the suspect perform a bag drop shortly before the bag exploded and blew his legs off; abundant photographic evidence, with probably more to come; whatever forensic evidence they found at the brothers' shared home; and all sorts of other information gathered in the days before he was found and captured. There'll be camera footage from the 7-11 that they held up, testimony from the person they carjacked (to whom they apparently admitted that they were the bombers), forensic evidence from the car, vast amounts of ballistics evidence...I could go on and on.
There is no way that his conviction is going to be pendant on what he says before being mirandized, and the public safety exception is about as justified here as it could ever possibly be - far more so than that in Quarles. That was a guy who allegedly had had a gun and was wearing an empty holster when caught. True, abandoned guns can be dangerous. A bumper variety pack of bombs, which it appears this suspect had and employed on multiple occasions in the last few days, presents a substantially greater risk to public safety.
Assuming that they have arrested the correct person
If the man the police have arrested is indeed
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the man implicated in the
bombings...If I was sure they had arrested the right guy and that he was guilty of all those things, I wouldn't have put the 'assuming...' in there at all, but just stated what came after as fact.
They didn't hold up the 7-11.
http://www.wbur.org/2013/04/15/live-blog-multiple-explosions...
| a way to just skirt civil liberties when
| it seems relevant
Also, as @anigbrowl says, this isn't going to be a case where the majority of evidence comes from the suspect's Miranda-less statements.
Edit: I will admit that this could hurt the suspect's eventual defense. Even if the statements aren't necessary to the prosecution's case, making them admissible in court could limit explanations put forth by the defendant.
Although creative writers love to put law enforcement characters on the horns of dilemmas like this because it makes for great drama, in real life the PIE does not get invoked that often because law enforcement doesn't want to risk blowing a case on it. Here, we're not balancing the public interest against all the rights of the suspect, but against his right to given notice of his legal situation. He could still clam up, ask for a lawyer, have one provided for him if he can't hire one etc., but the difference is that they're entitled under the PIE to ask him for information about outstanding risk factors (and only that) instead of giving him an advisory.
I'm guessing a bit here, but I have a hunch that if he said 'look, I set off those bombs on Monday, I feel terrible...' the interrogating officer would actually respond by saying 'we can discuss that later, now I just want to know about whether there are other bombs or weapons,' both because that's the actual priority and to avoid later legal challenges to do with 'fruits of the poisonous tree,' a colloquial term for improperly acquired evidence.
That's why I dislike statements like "party1's rights trump party2's rights." In reality, it's a balance, and that probably means that reasonable people can disagree on where exactly the balance point should be placed.
Jesus this is scary thinking. You're saying the rights of a suspect go out the window when we can contrive a situation where you think other people's rights are more important?
My 'right' to murder someone is taken away by the law because it is deemed that the right of the other person to stay alive is more important.
In this case, the only right that is being taken away is the right to be informed (or reminded) of your rights prior to interrogation. He still retains his right to remain silent, he just isn't specifically told about it by police. The purpose being to allow a line of questioning that would help to eliminate the risk to the general public (in this case accomplices, hidden bombs, ties to terrorist organizations, etc). If they use this as an excuse to ask him questions that clearly aren't going to help resolve the "risk to the general public," I'm sure his defense attorney will have a field day with it.
It is a normal and sane that a society scrutinise those cases, to make sure the exceptional stays exceptional and not the first step down a slippery slope.
There is an argument for fear in this case. The amount of exception done for terrorism "seems" quite big, compared to, for example, the cases of proven criminal let go for technical reason. Yet, there does not "seem" to be the same amount of exception to avoid due process in the name of public safety.
Also, other exception, like arresting money instead of the people in case of the war on drug. It has been proven many time that this quite clever exception, has been widely abused.
(disclaimer: "seem" between quotes because lack of hard data, and skills to find them. Would be interesting to have them though.)
They're not ways of skirting civil liberties. They are ways of defining the contours of their protections.