Miranda v. Arizona and its impact on criminal procedure

Miranda Issues in Law Enforcement

In 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the landmark case of Ernesto

Miranda, who had been arrested by Arizona police on suspicion of rape. The suspect confessed to the crime after two hours of questioning by police while in their custody, without ever having been advised of his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination or his 6th Amendment right to legal representation before such questioning.

Ever since the Miranda ruling, police have been required to advise suspects in their custody that they have four specific rights before interrogating them. Failure to comply with the Miranda requirements constitutes grounds for excluding any confessions in response to police interrogation. According to Miranda, custodial suspects must be advised that they have the right to remain silent, that anything they say can be used against them in court, and that they have the right to legal representation prior to questioning, at no cost, if they are unable to pay for legal counsel. The modern importance of advising suspects, specifically, to the right to secure legal representation prior to questioning was highlighted just this year, by the Supreme Court ruling in Feller.

Since the landmark Miranda ruling, patrol officers are trained to read (or recite) the rights that it guarantees prior to interrogating subjects under arrest. Failure to do so properly compromises any evidence obtained in violation as per Massiah.

Unless the tainted evidence can be proven to have been discoverable by other means, it is excluded. (Brewer) Veteran law enforcement officers often say that Miranda has had absolutely no affect on their cases, unless they make the mistake of questioning a subject under arrest without properly advising him of his rights first.(CSU)

Miranda requires only that police advise persons under arrest of their constitutional right to remain silent before interrogating them. Contrary to popular belief, there is no requirement that any Miranda warnings be issued immediately upon arrest. As a practical matter though, patrol officers generally do so, simply as a precaution against accidental violations. The most likely scenario for violating Miranda arises where one officer places the subject under arrest without mirandizing him, fully intending to do so prior to questioning, and then a second officer obtains tainted evidence by questioning the subject under the assumption that the first officer has already fully advised him of his rights.

Because Miranda rights only apply to person in custody, it raises issues as to the definition of custody. The line of case law on point establishes that for the purposes of triggering Miranda, a subject is considered in official custody as of the moment that a reasonable person would believe he is not free to terminate any verbal exchange, and more importantly, to remove himself from the environment of his interrogators.(Orozko)

Similarly, because Miranda only applies to police "interrogation," cases have arisen requiring the Supreme Court to define "interrogation," most notably, the so- called "Christian Burial Case," where officers elicited a full confession from a person in their custody by informing him of information that they knew (or hoped) would appeal to the suspect's personal religious views, without ever posing any actual questions to him.(Brewer) Under this decision, police may not circumvent the intent or purpose of Miranda by engaging the suspect in any conversation designed to prompt a confession, regardless of whether or not the suspect is actually questioned in the traditional sense. A few years after Brewer, another case distinguished that situation from circumstances where the officers engaged in conversation between themselves without ever addressing the suspect, where it prompted a spontaneous confession on the part of the suspect overhearing their conversation. (Innis) Similarly, the Court refused to characterize police conduct as interrogation where a suspect was permitted to confess spontaneously to his wife in the presence of an officer who was recording the conversation. (Mauro)

The Miranda requirements have their philosophical critics, most notably, Chief

Justice Renquist of the U.S. Supreme Court.(Dershowitz) According to some legal theorists, there is no justification for requiring law enforcement to specifically educate suspects who may be ignorant of their rights, as long as they do not coerce statements by the use of force or any threat thereof.

Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, Miranda critics have called for its suspension with respect to criminal prosecutions in connection with the United States' global War on Terrorism. They seek to define terror crimes as exceptions in the same manner that individual states (like New York) recognize certain exceptions to the general rule excluding the introduction of evidence tainted by Miranda issues, such as its use exclusively for impeachment purposes. (Harris) Subsequently, New York specifically recognized another class of exception, where Miranda warnings can be ignored in the interest of exigent circumstances of public health and safety. (Quarles)

The fact of the matter is that suspending Miranda rights is probably almost never justified by the public interest of addressing terrorism, primarily because doing so assists only in prosecution after the fact, rather than preventing terrorist acts. Even states that recognize the suspension of Miranda, in principle, actually do so only for ancillary" use of tainted testimony, such as for impeachment of witnesses.

The irony, is that even the strongest critics of Miranda agree that coerced confession (such as by torture) are absolutely prohibited by the right against self-incrimination. Meanwhile, the new breed of terrorist that is quite capable of killing thousands of innocent civilians at a time might actually justify a reconsideration of that very issue. It is not terribly difficult to imagine hypothetical scenarios that might justify coercing information purely for its public safety value, if not for its value as a confession, per se. Dershowitz goes so far as to outline the legal and moral theories underlying a torture warrant.