Montejo Vs Louisiana

In political science, states have a legal monopoly on violence within their sovereignty; in reality, this means a Government’s domestic policing powers are largely unconstrained, as it can justly, or unjustly, coerce, imprison, and murder in the name of the public. Yet in modern America, and most of the western world, constitutional checks and balances have constrained state interference; these limits specifically curtail a state’s policing power by protecting the individual’s autonomy from political tyranny and partiality. These so-called ‘natural rights’, liberties, or protections originated from the Enlightenment, and established the importance of individuals in relation to their societies and states. Modernity thinkers such as Tocqueville

In Montejo v. Louisiana, a new precedent maintained that police could go and question defendants who had waived their Fifth Amendment rights after they had been appointed counsel, even if counsel was unware of such a waiver. The facts of the case stipulate that Montejo had murdered a person with malicious intent; consequently, he was charged with first-degree murder and appointed a public defender. However, Montejo was likely unaware of his right to counsel – and thus, his Fifth Amendment rights, as the police convinced Montejo to confess the location of the murder weapon; Montejo may have unknowingly relinquished his right to deny self-incrimination, especially because the police spoke to him before his attorney could. Contrary to popular belief, the police are not your friends or allies; in fact, their neutrality or impartiality should never be assumed. Why else would the police question Montejo before his counsel could do his job? Blatantly the authorities were not there to help the defendant; they were likely there to take advantage of his counsel’s absence, or his ignorance by dishonestly coercing and manipulating him into self-incrimination. In addition, under the duress of police control, Montejo wrote a letter to the victim’s spouse

United States, the Supreme Court held that the Sixth Amendment forbids state institutions from instigating statements of self-incrimination from defendants, specifically after the right to counsel has been “attached” to the defendant. Massiah was accused of violating a federal drug statue; he maintained a lawyer, pled not guilty, and paid bail. Massiah eventually met with a co-defendant, who had decided to cooperate with the government by recording the conversation between him and Massiah. During a conversation with the co-defendant, Massiah had unknowingly incriminated himself, and such self-incrimination would be used against him in court. However, when Massiah appealed to the Supreme Court to void those statements, the court granted his request due to the absence of Massiah’s lawyer. This holding postulated that once criminal proceedings have started, the government is forbidden from bypassing the defendant’s lawyer and attempting to instigate statements from the defendant. An outcome of this case was the Massiah rule, which applied to testimonial evidence obtained by police from a defendant after charges have been arraigned; the rule stated that certain events that trigger Sixth Amendment safeguards are, firstly, the beginning of criminal proceedings and, secondly, the deliberate instigation of statements from the accused by state proxies. Thanks to the Massiah rule, Americans can rest assured that reasonable safeguards have been put in place in