“Silence gives consent.” So runs an ancient maxim of common law, and from that maxim flows a widely applied legal principle: the rule of tacit admission. On the theory that an innocent man would loudly deny a serious charge, the rule holds that a suspect silent in the face of an accusation has tacitly admitted the crime. And such silence can later be introduced at his trial as an indicator of guilt.
Despite the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee against selfincrimination, the rule has long been followed in much of the U.S. Now the anachronism is under heavy fire. In Miranda v. Arizona last June, the Supreme Court held that confessions from persons in custody are inadmissible unless the suspect was clearly informed of his rights to silence and to counsel before being questioned. Can tacit admissions to the police survive that holding?
In a decision that is likely to be widely followed, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has just ruled that the answer is no. Suspected of stealing from his employer, Bethlehem Construction Worker Joseph Dravecz had stood mute when police read his accuser’s statement to him. Dravecz was convicted largely on the basis of his silence. By a vote of 6 to 1, though, the high court reversed the conviction and voided the tacit-admission rule in Pennsylvania.
If a defendant “could not be made a self-accusing witness by coerced answers,” wrote Justice Michael Musmanno for the court, “he should not be made a witness against himself by unspoken, assumed answers. A direct confession unwillingly given is a coerced confession. A tacit admission is still an unwilling performance. The decisions of :he Supreme Court of the United States have, in effect, shattered the tacit-admission rule. Whatever may be left of the rule after the enfilading fire of the Supreme Court is here overruled.”