The Bible, Interrogation and the Supreme Court's Miranda Rights

by Michael Hoffman

Copyright ©2010 

The report this week of the Supreme Court's June 1 decision in Berghuis v. Thompkins, on the interpretation of the 1966 Miranda ruling (Arizona v. Miranda) is an interesting one.

In 2000, an accused murderer, Van Chester Thompkins, was silent for nearly three hours while being interrogated by the police concerning the killing of young Samuel Morris in Southfield, Michigan. He only finally answered when one of the detectives asked him, "Do you pray to God to forgive you for shooting that boy down?" At this the murderer, who still had a conscience, broke down and answered that he did pray thus, thereby confessing his guilt. Thompkins was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Some sectors of our society view this police interrogation and its result (the gaining of evidence against the murderer and his eventual conviction) as entrapment. "Defense" attorneys sought to have the conviction overturned on the basis that the interrogation violated the accused man's Miranda right to silence. They appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.

We note that the accused consented to be present at the interrogation and, as a result of the interrogation, his conscience was pricked and he was moved to confess his crime.

On the materialist/humanist plane, his supposed legal defenders view these two developments as a severe liability. How wrong they are: without confession there can be no forgiveness.

We are all for the right to silence, which Jesus established for us by being silent in the presence of his accusers. But Jesus was innocent and the man in question was guilty, and had Mr. Thompkins gone on to repentance he would be bound for heaven now, whatever his sentence on earth.

The world does not see it that way, however. In their rank materialism, all that matters to the worldly is the condition of the body and not the eternal destiny of the soul. Consequently, "defense" lawyers argue against a just verdict based on an honest confession and seek to have it overturned on a legal technicality, viz. a misconstruction of the Miranda precedent, which the Supreme Court, in this instance, correctly rejected.

Interrogation of the innocent for purposes of entrapping them is of course a grave sin and corrupt police are known to commit this sin; against this corruption the innocent must be protected. The invocation of the right of silence in the face of interrogation is ethical, compelling and testimony to the wisdom of the American Bill of Rights in its Fifth Amendment.

Interrogation of the guilty benefits not only the victim but the accused, and this point is one which few defense lawyers grasp.

For proof let us turn to Genesis 3, wherein the serpent seduced the woman, and the woman the man, into not fearing God and thereby succumbing to the temptation to transgress God's law.

In Genesis 3:9 God begins His arraignment of Adam and Eve by interrogating them. Of course God is omniscient and His interrogation is needful only for the spiritual benefit of Adam and Eve, as well as for all future generations of believers, as a model of judicial investigation.

Important legal lessons are imparted in Genesis concerning how to approach suspects. God's interrogation in Genesis 3: 9-13 forms an exemplary precedent for all judges, prosecutors and police officers.

In reply to God's questions, Adam accuses his wife and Eve likewise blames not herself but the serpent. Nonetheless, and this is key, in spite of attempting to minimize their guilt, they do not deny the crime for which they stand accused. Silence on the part of Adam and Eve in response to God's interrogation would have greatly compounded their transgression.

The humanist-oriented lawyer will only be interested in exculpating the defendants by having them resist God's interrogation through silence. Yet unknown to such a humanist mindset, any such silence would have brought a far more grievous sentence down upon our first parents than what they received after confessing their guilt, even though they did so in a roundabout manner. In this case, interrogation offered the guilty an opportunity to confess. Only through their mea culpa could repentance and reconciliation with God begin.

So-called defense lawyers would prefer that the guilty defendants refuse to answer the questions. This is the fatal and shortsighted folly of lawyers. They overlook the significance of the fact that there were three perpetrators, and yet only two were interrogated. The serpent was not interrogated by God -- because God did not intend to show the serpent any mercy!

Godly interrogation of the guilty is an act of mercy, a first step on the path to forgiveness for crimes committed.

The "conservatives" on the Supreme Court did not make this argument. "Conservative" justices like Antonin Scalia are more likely to argue from the Talmud than the Bible. When they do cite the Bible it is often the Bible filtered through the Talmud (cf. Caperton v. A. T. Massey Coal Co. June 8, 2009, wherein Scalia argued using the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Aboth).

To establish God's justice and His legal procedures for mankind, Christians are to resort to the authority of Scripture and not the arbitrary and deluded humanist or other traditions of men who imagine themselves wiser than Yahweh.

Hoffman is the editor of Revisionist History newsletter and the author of They Were White and They Were Slaves and Judaism Discovered, offered here.

***