The Irish Council for Civil Liberties strongly opposes new proposals
to curtail the right to silence and allow suspects to be held for up
to four days for questioning.

Justice Minister John O'Donoghue's proposals to allow courts to draw
inferences of guilt from a suspect's failure to answer questions and
to allow for extended periods of detention are unnecessary, unfair and
unwise.

The proposed measures are unnecessary because the crime rate is
falling steadily and there is no evidence that the lack of such powers
is allowing criminals to go free. In fact, there has been no research
on the effect of similar powers introduced under the 1996 Drug
Trafficking Act.

The proposed measures would be unfair because we already have cases of
people confessing to things they did not do, such as Dean Lyons who
recently admitted to murdering a psychiatric patient at Grangegorman,
only to have the charges dropped when another man admitted the murder.

If detention periods are extended and detainees put under more
pressure to make statements or answer questions there would be more
false confessions and more miscarriages of justice.

The proposals would be unwise because they would represent a
fundamental shift from the position where a person is assumed to be
innocent until proven guilty to one where a person is assumed to be
guilty until they prove themselves innocent. That would break the bond
between the police and the people on which our justice system relies.

Trust in the Garda=ED and the law enforcement systems, already frayed,
would be replaced by fear, with disastrous long-term consequences. The
Minister for Justice would be better occupied implementing the eight
years old recommendations of the Martin Committee that all Garda
questioning should be video recorded, instead of dreaming up more
coercive measures to shore up his discredited zero tolerance policy.

Judy Walsh, Executive Secretary, Shivaun Quinlivan, Administrative
Assistant, Irish Council for Civil Liberties, 14, Exchequer Street,
Dublin 2.