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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (35166)	10/23/2001 1:17:59 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

How would you suggest doing this in a way this is consistent with the U.S. Constitution? EACH time I called upon the protection of the Fifth Amendment during my appearance before the McCarthy Committee last year, I demanded from the Senators the right to state why I was using this privilege. They were almost hysterical in their unwillingness to grant me that right. The hearing was being televised, and they had no desire to allow an explanation of the beginnings of the Fifth Amendment to go out over the air to millions of Americans. Nevertheless, an explanation of the origin of this amendment is most important in the struggle for our civil liberties, as well as to augment our knowledge of our democratic heritage. It is not accidental that the Constitution of the United States provided that no person should be forced to give evidence against himself. Quite to the contrary, this became one of the ten articles of the Bill of Rights precisely because it was of deep import and meaning to the men and women who lived at the time of the American Revolution. There was a period when no such concept prevailed anywhere in Europe. At that time, it was widespread practice for both lay and religious courts to extract evidence from a defendant through the use of torture. The wheel, the rack, the press and the whip were all used as means of obtaining evidence. The accused was subjected to torture until he signed a confession, thereby giving evidence against himself--which, in turn, was used to obtain his conviction in a court. Out of this, the question of self-incrimination originally arose, with a deep and lasting impact. It is important to dwell for a moment on this question of the use of torture to gain a confession which is subsequently used to establish the guilt, usually by pseudo-legal means, of the person who has confessed. While people recognize that in ancient times the use of torture was fairly common, indeed traditional in many places, they are prone to hold that such practices have no bearing in today's America. Yet, anyone who has even casually perused the history of the Rosenberg case, can come to only one conclusion--that again and again mental torture of the most extreme kind, under the pain and penalty of death, was used in an attempt to extract "confessions" from the Rosenbergs. It is quite true that our federal secret police today do not stoop to such common, obvious methods of torture as the cruel beatings used to extract confessions from suspected criminals and militant leaders of the working class in almost every metropolitan area of the United States; but the secret police of J. Edgar Hoover have as efficient, if more refined, methods. The threat of blacklist, with its inevitable destruction of any hope for economic survival, is a form of torture. The threat of public defamation and character assassination, is a form of such torture. The threat of prison and the threat of death, the former voiced so often today by Senator McCarthy, and the latter made so plain by the Justice Department in the Rosenberg frame-up, is another form of torture. These are cases directly to the point; for this is the modern American method of extracting confession, and then using this forced confession to obtain convictions on one charge or another of those who have confessed, as well as those implicated by such forced confessions.