The Court also stated that if an individual indicates at any time that he wants to remain silent, the interrogation must stop; any statement taken after this time is the product of compulsion. Silence can never constitute a valid waiver.
Dissent: Justice Clark's dissented in three of the decisions, but concurred in one. He found that police coercion was not sufficiently established to justify the extent of the majority's decision. Clark would continue to evaluate Fifth Amendment waivers under a totality of the circumstances approach.
Justices Harlan, Stewart, and White dissented. They found that the majority's required warnings would not prevent coercion, because officers could still lie about waivers, but to seek a Utopian "voluntariness" for confessions, which is impractical in the real world. They believed that the Court had already established an "elaborate, sophisticated, and sensitive approach to admissibility of confessions." (384 U.S. 436, 509). They believed that the Fifth Amendment was not a guarantee against pressure during interrogation.
Comment: At this time, the Miranda warnings are so widely known, that the reasons that the Court used to justify its decision may no longer be valid. Anyone who watches television or movies, has been exposed to the Miranda...
However, at the time of this decision, there were no Miranda warnings and people may have been ignorant of these rights. Furthermore, even with widespread awareness of Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights, the fact remains that there are some people who are not aware of those rights. In fact, those individuals are in the class that is probably the most vulnerable to coercion. Therefore, to make those rights meaningful, it makes sense to require that defendants be informed of those rights. Furthermore, the dissent's concerns that giving such a warning will hamper police interrogation techniques, however the warning is short, sweet, and easily given to defendants. It also prevents litigation over voluntariness, because the decision creates a bright-line rule.
Principle: In order to protect a defendant's Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights during custodial police interrogations, defendant's must be informed of the right to remain silent, the right to an attorney; the right to an appointed attorney if they cannot afford counsel; and the fact that all statements made by them can and will be used against them in a court of law. Any statement made by a defendant who hasn't received "Miranda" warnings is…
