I just finished a really awful book, and one segment had the female lead arrested in Africa. She invokes her right to remain silent and asks for an attorney, and the police inform her she has the right to neither in their country. She’s spirited away from police custody soon after, but it left me curious. What happens when you don’t want to talk and you’ve got no right to remain silent in other countries? Wheedling? Cajoling? Waterboarding? Imprisonment?
more knowledgable people than I will hopefully reply, but as I understand it in Britain a refusal to testify will be used as evidence against you in court.
Based entirely on watching English TV cop programmes:
- our police caution is currently "“You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”
I am not a lawyer (but I love Franklin and Bash. 
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My interpretation of the above is that you don’t have to admit anything, but refusing to give an alibi immediately could be treated with suspicion in future court proceedings. (It also wastes police time.)
Strictly speaking, the OP is asking what happens when there is no fifth amendment, rather than no Miranda warning. For clarity, under US law, the right to remain silent and not testify against oneself is in the fifth amendment. Miranda was a court case that established that people had the right to be specifically informed of their right to remain silent under certain circumstances when they’re arrested.
In the US, one’s right not to testify can be overcome by a grant of immunity. Basically, if the government agrees not to prosecute you for your testimony, you are no longer in danger of self-incrimination, and you are required to testify. If you don’t, you can be found in contempt of court. I am not knowledgeable as to what penalties can be imposed in what circumstances, but I think that you can be imprisoned in at least some cases, potentially for the whole length of the trial or proceeding in which your testimony is sought.
I couldn’t find a cite, but I remember reading years ago that police in France were annoyed with the American TV show Law and Order, because people would demand to see a warrant before the police searched their home, and French law didn’t require one. Many French viewers believed that the rules of evidence and civil rights were the same in their country as on the show.
Just because you might not be aware of your right, doesn’t mean you don’t have it. Without Miranda, some people would say too much, some still wouldn’t. With their rights in place, nothing would happen to those who didn’t.
ETA: I misread the OP but I’ll leave this post up anyway.
To actually answer the OP’s question properly, one would have to go through every country in the world, detailing people’s rights upon arrest. It is going to be different everywhere, arrestee’s rights will be protected to different degrees in different places, and different places will have different means of protecting those rights that they acknowledge. In some countries, very likely a majority, rights will not be so broad or so well protected as they are (at least in theory) in America (although, somehow, America seems to wind up with a greater proportion of its population incarcerated than anywhere else). In some places an arrestee may, in practice, have few rights at all, and suspects might sometimes get harshly interrogated or even tortured. In others they will be about equally or even a bit better protected than they are in the US, though perhaps in different ways.
Do you have a right in every country with diplomatic ties to speak to your embassy?
If so, can you remain silent until speaking to your consul?
Yes and no.
The concept of a requisite search warrant doesn’t exist in French law, however if the cops can’t get the agreement of a citizen for the search of their premises or persons (be it explicit or implicit), they still need a written order from the judge in charge of the investigation or from the local Procureur de la République (think District’s Attorney).
Which might come as a surprise to many a French youth, considering the first thing the cops tell you during a “random” stop and after asking for your ID is “turn over your pockets, open your bag, let my colleague pat you down”, not as a request but as an order. Of course, if you were to say no because on paper they need the equivalent of a warrant, in practice the French police are also empowered to detain your ass for up to 48h without having to provide a cause and liberally abuse that power upon any feller looks at 'em funny, so… in how much of a hurry are you ? 
To the first question, the answer is “it’s complicated”. These things are governed by the Vienna Convention of 1963 in states which are signatories (there are 176 signatories including the USA and most European nations.) Under this Convention, if you are arrested in a signatory state, you do have the right to have your consulate informed of the fact that you’ve been arrested and the basic reasons why. What your consulate does with that information is a matter between you and it.
If you’re arrested somewhere that has not signed or fully ratified the treaty, I guess you’re on your own. So take care in Ethiopia.
No real idea about the second question - in the USA, I suppose the answer must be “yes”, because the Fifth Amendment applies to non-citizens. But otherwise, I suspect there are as many precise answers as there are countries in the world.
If you are a citizen of the arresting country and also a citizen of a second country, the strict position that most governments take is that is that your citizenship of the second country gives you no special rights or advantages, on the grounds that all citizens are equal, and all have the same rights. In practice they will usually allow you to contact the consulate of the country of your second citizenship - who will tell you that, as you are a citizen of the arresting state, there is little or nothing they can do for you.
If you are a non-citizen of the arresting state, but a citizen of the second state, and the arresting state is party to the Vienna Convention then, yes, you have a right of access to a consular representative. The job of the consular representative is to ensure that you are treated by the arresting state in accordance with the minimum standards required by international law. Dependong on the policy of that state, they may do more than that for you - e.g. notifying your relatives in their country that you have been arrested, facilitating you in getting a lawyer to represent you, etc.
On the second question, in general whatever right to remain silent you may have is not linked in any way to the opportunity to speak to your consul. If there is no general right to silence, then as a non-citizen you do not have a right to silence until you have seen your consul. Conversely, if there is a right to silence, it does not disappear once you have seen your consul.
When you do see your consul, he will not give you legal advice. In particular he will not tell you whether you should exercise any right to silence that you may have.
This is at least as old as Roman Civil Law, which gave us the line qui tacet consentire videtur: he who remains silent, agrees. In other words, if you have a suit and neither you nor your solicitor can’t be arsed attend, your opponent wins. Coming from Roman Law, it’s extended throughout Europe and most of our ex-colonies. Whether it gets extended to Criminal Law or not varies by jurisdiction. In Spain it is not considered criminal evidence per se, but it does give civil suits to the other party.
From Medieval Criminal Law we get excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta: if you defend yourself without being asked to, the (self-)accusation is evident.
So, collaborate, but limit yourself to answering the questions which are actually being asked in the most concise possible manner.
Also, this.
I thought that Miranda was at least in part about making sure that the person understands those rights, the questions being asked, etc., but the wiki doesn’t mention Ernesto Miranda having low command of English: can any of our American lawyers indicate whether they recall this or not? The wiki does say that as of 2010, people who have been informed of their rights but do not unambiguosly invoke them lose them; this seems to me like someone who simply isn’t smart enough or who is too scared to remember “wanna lawyer” is left completely on his own.
In Spain the laws and attitudes are similar (surprise…), although you do need to produce ID, and the annoyance certainly wasn’t directed towards the program itself or even towards the consequences of cop shows alone; rather, towards the stupidity of people* and the laziness of broadcasting companies which would rather buy foreign series and produce talk shows than produce series locally. There was a rise in “local” procedurals as well as in shows bought from countries other than the US. More surprises: Italian cops look like Spanish cops and cuss pretty much like Spanish cops; German cops are highly unlikely to meet a black female judge but may have Turkish parents.
- One of Zapatero’s VPs cited the First Amendment during a press conference, leading to a general “dafuq?” on the part of the reporters. Note that, unlike her, the reporters didn’t have law degrees.
There are some countries where their equivalent to the Miranda warning is where they tell you before an interrogation “You can scream if you want to. We don’t mind. We have earplugs.” And for due process they’ll ask you if you prefer to be shot behind your left ear or your right ear.
French law does require a warrant to search your home. Also, the search can’t take place at night (except in matter of terrorism and drug trafficking since 2001 or so).
On the other hand, I heard that people commonly called the presiding judge in court “Votre Honneur” (“Your Honour”) and also that some expected to be told about their Miranda rights.
And that is a search warrant.
French police can’t detain you for 48 hours without a cause. A “garde a vue” (24h, can be 48h for some crimes and if specifically approved by a magistrate/“procureur”) must be motivated by the belief, supported by objective evidences, that you commited a crime. It must also have a purpose (making sure you don’t flee, for instance). It doesn’t require a proper arrest warrant, though.
Also, you can be detained for up to six hours or so if you’re unable to prove your identity during an ID check (and the cops can’t check your ID just because they feel like it, either : it must have been specifically ordered by a “procureur”, or there must be objective reasons to believe you commited a crime, or it can take place if a crime has just been commited in the vicinity).
Indeed, a random police officer asking for an ID and ordering someone to turn over his pockets is acting illegally.
Here’s the english version of the document that must be handed to detained people in France, and which summarize their rights :
-informing a third party (family, employer, consul if applicable…)
-seeing a medical doctor
-remaining silent (relatively recent in French law)
-being assisted by a lawyer (much less limitative than it used to be, mostly following ECHR rulings)
-Being informed about future proceedings
Yeah, IIRC, Miranda was about ensuring people knew the rights they had, and that the police had not (deliberately or mistakenly) mislead them about those rights.
As others mention, there are plenty of countries where you must produce ID on request, under various circumstances.
I assume in any state, any time, any where, you can refuse to talk. The degree to which you will be forced depends on the country and it’s legal procedures. In most of the first world, refusal to talk will likely mean they build their case by other means. In countries where rubber hoses and electrodes are permitted interview techniques, your silence is at your discretion. But then, there are countries that do not need even a hint of cooperation to convict you of whatever they want to.
As pointed out, the British allow the prosecution to point out that an alibi or other excuses like self defense did not appear until long after the original arrest. However, in British countries, generally, the defendant cannot be compelled to testify in court.
IIRC, The procedure in Napoleonic Code countries ( the rest of Europe, mainly) do not allow the defendant to refuse to testify. They can put you on the stand, and whatever you say or fail to say can be considered in evidence against you in deciding the case. As a mitigating factor, I recall reading though, that a defendant cannot be prosecuted for perjury no matter what they say in their defence - it is assumed that defendants may lie to exonerate themselves.
Not quite. Or rather yes, but.
Per US law, if a cop were to drive up to a suspect’s house, get the owner’s approval for a search of the place, found some evidence and brought it back ; that evidence would not be useable in court, because the search itself would have been illegal. In France, it would be fine.
To clarify, the difference lies in the requisite nature of a search warrant in the US. They simply can’t do without one (and securing one comes with other prerequisites such as solid probable cause).
Ah, I thought 48h was for all gardes à vue.
As for necessary evidence of a crime, that might be so on paper. In practice…
Yup. And yet it happens every day.
I’m pretty sure it’s before questioning, not necessarily immediately upon arrest.
ISTR that there have been court cases where some dumb-ass criminals weren’t Mirandized immediately, and spouted out some incriminating stuff on their own before being formally questioned (i.e. in the back of the car, being booked, etc…), and got all litigious as a result.
The other dodge the cops use is to not actually arrest someone and get them to fess up, THEN arrest them.
Um…huh?
Unless I missed some context, what you’re saying here is incorrect. Consent generally renders a search reasonable, and is an exception to the warrant requirement. In the US, a cop who obtains consent before his search is generally in good shape if he discovers relevant evidence – it will be admissible.