¶ … Miranda Ruling: Its Past, Present and Future
In almost all cases, the Miranda ruling of 1966 applies to police interviews with criminal suspects, although other Supreme Court decisions extend some of the rights to legal counsel and prevention of self-incrimination to public and private employers. According to the Supreme Court, the Miranda Warnings must be given prior to questioning to all persons who have been arrested and are in police custody, although one loophole "permits the police to question suspects without giving them their Miranda rights in those settings where it is unclear whether custody is present" (Wrightsman and Pitman 2010). In addition, suspects might not understand all these rights, especially because local and state police forces around the United States use hundreds of different versions of these rather than one standard set of warnings. At times, police training manuals also advise officers how to avoid giving the warnings or pretending to ignore suspects when they choose to remain silent or ask for an attorney. More conservative Supreme Courts since 1966 have also sought to limit the application of Miranda and narrow the rights afforded to criminal suspects. Since the Miranda decision, however, the more old-fashioned 'third degree' methods of physical and psychological coercion have become much less common, and over the last thirty years videotaping of interviews and confessions has become standard procedure in most criminal and civil cases, and even in investigations by private employers. Police and investigatory work of all kinds has become more professional as a whole, although naturally incidents of coercion and brutality have continued.
Article #2 "Investigative Interviewing: Strategies and Techniques."
Private employers are generally not subject to the Miranda requirements, even when employees are being questioned or investigated about possible criminal activities, when security officers partnered with police conduct the interviews. Only rarely...
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now