(upbeat trumpet music) (schoolbell ringing) ♪ Yo, I've got self-determination ♪ ♪ That's the heart and the soul of this nation ♪ ♪ Each American's got the right to be ♪ ♪ Though we live together, we all live free ♪ ♪ You got that right ♪ ♪ You got that right ♪ ♪ You got that right ♪ ♪ You got that right ♪ - No person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.
- I refuse to answer on the grounds that what I say may tend to incriminate me.
- You have the right to remain silent.
Should you give up that right anything you say can and will be held against you in the court of law.
- You have the right to an attorney and to have an attorney present during questioning.
- If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you by the court.
- [Group] Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?
- Most of us will never need the protection of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Most of us will never be accused of a crime more serious than an overdue parking ticket.
In fact, most of us stand a better chance of being victims of a crime than we do of being accused of one.
- So what do we need the Fifth Amendment for?
- I cannot imagine ever having to plead the fifth.
- It seems like the only people it helps are the people that are up to no good.
- The main purpose of the Fifth Amendment is to preserve the integrity of our justice system which places the burden of proof on the government, not the accused.
In the majority opinion of a landmark Supreme Court case called Griswold versus Connecticut, the justices put it this way.
- [Narrator] "If a person has done wrong, "he or she should be punished.
"But the evidence against him or her should be produced "and evaluated by a proper court in a fair trial.
"Neither torture, nor an oath, "nor the threat of punishment such as imprisonment "for contempt should be used to compel him or her "to provide the evidence to accuse "or convict him or herself.
"If the crime is a serious one, "careful, and often laborious police work may be required "to prove it by other evidence.
"Sometimes no other evidence can be found.
"But for about three centuries "in the Anglo American legal system "we have accepted the standard that even then, "we do not compel the accused to provide that evidence."
- I still don't understand.
If you didn't do anything wrong, then you don't need it.
But if you did do something, then you don't deserve it.
So why do we have it?
- What is the most powerful evidence against an accused person?
- A confession, a legally obtained confession makes our jobs a lot easier.
- If we have a confession that can be used in court, it's like hitting a home run.
- It's tough to argue with a confession if it's obtained legally.
- So why would someone confess to something that they're not guilty of?
- You tired, Ray?
You hungry, Ray?
Well, I'm tired and I'm hungry.
We've been here four hours, now talk to me, who's Ramon?
- I don't know Ramon.
- You don't know Ramon.
Of course you know about Ramon.
Ramon knows who you are.
- I don't know.
- Yeah, of course you don't.
You don't know nothing, do you?
Let's just book him.
I'm tired of this.
We've been here four hours.
I'm sick and tired of this guy.
He's lying and I'm sick of it.
- Come on, Jack, calm down, take a break would you?
- [Alfre] The US Supreme Court has recently handed down rulings which many believe will affect the level of protection available under the Fifth Amendment.
The rulings involve confessions obtained from people accused of crimes.
- We've got statements from each of the fellows that was with you.
They got you there.
They got you pulling the trigger.
Every single one of them's given detailed statements.
Now, you gotta help me out.
If you don't help me out, I can't help you out.
Each one of these charges is 20 years, man.
Now, if you'll help me out and come clean, it'll go lighter on you.
But if you don't help me out there's nothing I can do for you.
- It wasn't me.
- It wasn't you?
He's lying again.
You're wasting your time because you're a punk.
A man is dead because of you.
You were there.
You pulled the trigger.
You're wasting your time, let's book him.
Let's book him now.
- Jack, Jack you've lost it.
Give me a chance with him.
Give me a chance.
Take a break.
Go get a cup of coffee or something.
- Yeah, just what I need's coffee.
All right, fine.
Yeah fine, you take it.
You got all night, go ahead.
- Look man, you got to help me out here.
I can't keep Jack off of you forever.
He's going crazy about this.
- Yeah, maybe I was there.
- Why would someone confess to something you're not guilty of?
- You've heard of taking a rap for someone else, right?
It happens a lot, but usually we can tell a difference 'cause the story doesn't add up.
- I can understand if you wanted to protect someone you love, or a kid wanted to fit into a group.
In that case that could happen.
- People will say things they don't mean to say, it happens.
- I know it's hard not to say anything, especially if you didn't do anything wrong.
Then you might wanna tell them your story.
But they may think you did it, especially if you're in the wrong place.
I can see where you can easily say the wrong thing.
- Suspects sometimes think they're actually protecting themselves by confessing to things they didn't do.
- Yeah, I saw that on TV where this kid made a deal with the police or something because he thought he was gonna go to a jail or something, but he didn't even do the crime and he thought people wouldn't believe him.
Does that stuff really happen?
- It happens.
- [Narrator] On the night of Friday, September 23rd, 1973, in the small Connecticut town of Falls Village, a woman named Barbara Gibbons was brutally stabbed to death in our home.
That Sunday, the 25th, after many hours of questioning by police, Barbara Gibbons' son, Peter Reilly, who had found his mother's body confessed to her murder and was arrested.
He was tried, convicted and sent to jail for a crime which he did not commit.
The physical, circumstantial and historical evidence surrounding the case shows that Peter Reilly did not kill his mother, and yet he was convicted based almost entirely upon his confession.
Today Peter Reilly is a free man.
All charges were dismissed on appeal and the confession was shown to have been coerced.
- I guess, Peter, among other things was confused and tired.
There's a sergeant named Kelly who plunked him down and gave him what would originally in the old days have been called the third degree.
- Police interrogation techniques are designed to get people to confess.
And if you have a young, impressionable person who is already in a state of shock, it's not out of the question that intensive interrogation could produce a confession from an otherwise innocent person.
- Peter didn't have a spot of blood on him, which is a very, very important piece of evidence.
This was in effect subdued to the point that it no longer figured in the testimony at all and was totally overshadowed by Peter's confession, which became the crux of the entire case.
- The Fifth Amendment is a right which is easy to misinterpret, since so often it's the truly guilty who are invoking it.
But in the case like the Peter Reilly case, Peter Reilly could have saved himself literally years of pain had he understood that he had the right to stop talking at any time and go home if they weren't going to arrest him.
- The single most important thing that saved Peter was, in this case, and it was unusual, was concerted community action.
I think that the people of Falls village kind of took courage from the fact that some more or less prominent people were angry about what had happened and they did an absolutely beautiful and ennobling sort of job, I thought, by simply rising up in outrage, sheltering this waif, so to speak, and making sure that he was not gonna be railroaded as it appeared he was going to be.
People at all levels of society have to learn that they do have this right.
Peter, ignorant to some degree, young, completely confused, didn't realize he had that right.
And as a result, the whole story began to snowball from the moment he was plunked down in that chair and submitted to this interrogation.
- Peter Reilly's innocence was compromised because he chose not to exercise his right against self-incrimination.
In the case of Jacque Bouknight.
the exercise of her Fifth Amendment rights might have cost an innocent child his life.
- [Narrator] Jacque Bouknight is presently in jail in Baltimore, Maryland.
Her infant son, Maurice, is missing.
- Well, in about 1987 Maurice was judged to be a child in need of assistance as a result of certain injuries that he had received.
- He had been hospitalized twice with multiple fractures of major bones.
- Jackie had stated that the injuries were received as a result of accidents with the child.
- His mother was observed abusing him, even while in the hospital.
- And therefore the wheels began to turn that perhaps the court should intervene to see whether or not both parent and child needed assistance.
- [Alfre] When the infant, Maurice, had recovered enough to leave the hospital, he entered the foster care system.
The Juvenile Court of Baltimore had determined that Jackie was incapable of providing him with proper care.
Jackie, who was mildly retarded, was a foster child herself and was poorly treated by all but one of her foster families.
She was very fearful of her baby being subjected to that same awful experience.
She wanted her child back, so she agreed to attend parenting classes and meet once a week with a social worker.
She also agreed to refrain from physically punishing Maurice.
- Ultimately a decision was made that the child should be returned to Jacque and there was some controversy over that decision as a result of some of the reports that had been prepared on behalf of both parties in the juvenile proceedings.
- She was brought into court and ordered to produce the child.
She initially gave various responses to where the child was to be found.
That information was checked and none of it turned out to be the case, the child was not located.
The judge ordered her to produce the child.
She refused and eventually asserted constitutional privilege under the Fifth Amendment not to produce the child.
- I think the bottom line is is that the Constitution places beyond the reach of government the right to remain silent.
That's the whole point.
It plays it in an area where even the government can't reach it.
And I think that is an important reason that we have the Fifth Amendment and an important reason why it should serve to protect Jacque in a case where she simply does not need to be in the middle of circumstances that might lead to evidence against her.
- The Fifth Amendment is only a privilege against a testimony, it does not protect you, for example, from standing in a lineup or giving fingerprints or giving blood or other things, or taking a breathalyzer test.
We argued that producing the child was like that, like those kinds of acts which the state can require a person to perform and cannot refuse to perform asserting the Fifth Amendment.
- The case of Jacque Bouknight and her missing child, which began with a court order from a juvenile court judge, was taken up by the Maryland Court of Appeals.
They agreed that her Fifth Amendment rights were violated by the court order and they ordered her released from jail.
But it didn't end there.
Maryland prosecutors appeal to the US Supreme Court, and as a result of this appeal, Jacque Bouknight remains in jail and remains silent.
The Fifth Amendment was conceived and written by the founders of this country to protect us all equally.
That includes Peter Reilly and Jackie Bouknight.
What if we did not have this protection?
Perhaps the mystery of Jacque Bouknight's lost child would be solved and perhaps more criminals would be persuaded to admit their guilt.
But Peter Reilly would still be in jail while the real murderer of his mother remained at large.
These days innocence is hard to come by and the cost to our society of a truly innocent person being punished for a crime they did not commit is impossible to calculate.
But the writers of the Bill of Rights knew this much, the cost is very high.
(upbeat drum music) ♪ Yo, I got self-determination ♪ ♪ That's the heart and the soul of this nation ♪ ♪ Each American's got the right to be ♪ ♪ Though we live together, we all live free ♪ ♪ You got that right ♪ ♪ You got that right ♪ ♪ You got that right ♪ ♪ You got that right ♪