While addressing the news that Boston bombing suspect Dzhokar Tsarnaev had divulged information about the attacks during 16 hours of questioning before a judge arrived to read him his so-called “Miranda rights” to remain silent and not incriminate himself, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith and senior judicial analyst Judge Napolitano tore into the concept of stripping the suspect of his rights solely because of the nature of his alleged crimes.



Smith has occasionally let fly his civil libertarian leanings (see the time he shouted “We do not fucking torture!” on-air), and this time he did so immediately at the outset of the segment:

“I want to get the facts out of the way here, because I think they are important: The reading of the rights does not activate them. The absence of the reading does not remove them. They simply are. They are rights and, he, like you and I, has the right to remain silent.”

“What’s confusing that this?” he asked the judge, who in turn said “Nothing” and heaped praise upon Smith for his eloquence on the matter. Napolitano then explained that the suspect was read his rights because of how, according to criminal procedure, he must be charged with a crime within 72 hours of being detained. Once a charge is filed, the judge noted, you must bring them before a judge. In Tsarnaev’s case, the judge had to be delivered to his bedside due to physical impairment.

“This is not rocket science,” the judge said, dismissing those (including his own Fox colleagues) who are appalled that the suspect was read his rights. “This is criminal procedure 101. It happens in every courthouse — state, local, and federal — every day in the United States of America.”

A clearly incensed Smith then asked: “What is the ruckus? It’s as if people think because they didn’t read him his rights, he did not have them. He had them. What they’re suggesting is that we shouldn’t have told him what his rights are.”

“That’s where they are wrong,” Napolitano responded before explaining why, exactly, the Supreme Court instituted what is now known as the Miranda rule for criminal procedure of civilians.

“I wonder how concerned you are that when these big, troubling events happen that bring us together as a nation and we mourn in unison, that we will go to the extremes of the Constitution and sometimes beyond it,” Smith asked to conclude the segment.

“I am profoundly concerned that when the evidence of guilt is overwhelming and the people are weeping because they have been deeply disturbed and hurt and harmed and maimed and killed, the government will find ways to go around the Constitution,” the judge responded.

“And when the government has done that, historically it has never worked,” he concluded. “It has never brought about safety, it has only lessened freedom.”

Watch below, via Fox News:

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