“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in court. You have the right to talk to a lawyer for advice before we ask you any questions. You have the right to have a lawyer with you during questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you before any questioning if you wish. If you decide to answer questions now without a lawyer present, you have the right to stop answering at any time.”
This is the now-famous “Miranda warning,” dramatized in movies, which must be read off to all people in police custody to alert them of their rights. Miranda warnings were derived from the landmark Supreme Court case ruling of Miranda v. Arizona in 1966, which required police to advise suspects of their rights, especially the right to remain silent.
In Phoenix, on March 13, 1963, a man named Ernesto Miranda was arrested by the local police, based on evidence linking him to the kidnapping and rape of an 18-year-old woman 10 days earlier. He was identified by the suspect in a police lineup.
Miranda was brought back to the police statement, and, after two hours of sustained interrogation by the police, signed a statement confessing to the rape charge. However, at no point was Miranda informed of his Sixth Amendment right to an attorney or his right to remain silent. He was unware of the fact that any statements he said could be used against him, and he did not know that he was free to not answer questions he did not wish to answer.
In court, his confession was used as evidence against him and was sentenced to 20 to 30 years of imprisonment. His court-appointed lawyer, Alvin Moore, argued that the confession was forced and was not voluntary, but Moore’s objection to the evidence was ignored, and Miranda was sentenced anyway. Moore appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court on the basis that his confession was forced and should not be used as evidence against Miranda. Unfortunately, the court sided with the lower court and affirmed the ruling, citing the fact that Miranda did not request an attorney to accompany him during his interrogation.
The case was then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments between Feb. 28 and Mar 2, 1966, after consolidating it with three other similar cases. The court considered whether “statements obtained from an individual who is subjected to custodial police interrogation” is valid evidence against the individual in a criminal trial and whether “procedures which assure that the individual is accorded his privilege under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution not to be compelled to incriminate himself” are necessary.
This was a difficult case for the court to cover. At the time, there was an ongoing effort by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration for a “war on crime” due to a sharp rise in crime during the 1960s, later becoming a major issue in the presidential election of 1968 and continuing on till the 1990s.
On June 13, 1966, the court ruled in a 5-4 decision in Miranda’s favor, overturning his conviction and sending the case back for a retrial.
According to the majority opinion penned by Chief Justice Earl Warren, due to the fact that the confessions were forced and nonvoluntary, no confession could be admissible in court under the Fifth Amendment’s protection of self-incrimination and the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee to an attorney, unless a suspect has been informed of his rights and made the explicit decision to waive them. He wrote:
“The person in custody must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that he has the right to remain silent and that anything he says will be used against him in court; he must be clearly informed that he has the right to consult with a lawyer and to have the lawyer with him during interrogation, and that, if he is indigent, a lawyer will be appointed to represent him. … If the individual indicates in any manner, at any time prior to or during questioning, that he wishes to remain silent, the interrogation must cease … If the individual states that he wants an attorney, the interrogation must cease until an attorney is present. At that time, the individual must have an opportunity to confer with the attorney and to have him present during any subsequent questioning.”
Majority opinion in Miranda v. Arizona (1966), Chief Justice Earl Warren
This laid out the basis of what police across the country are expected to inform all arrestees, forming what is now known as the Miranda warning. Most police departments now require suspects to sign a card with the Miranda rights listed on it acknowledging that they have understood their rights.
The dissent argued that the majority was overreacting to the problem of nonvoluntary interrogations, believing that suspects would always demand attorneys and cause issues for law enforcement to gain confessions from people. In addition, they argued that Constitution did not mention anything about alerting a criminal suspect of their rights. Justice Byron White, a dissenter, wrote: “The proposition that the privilege against self-incrimination forbids in-custody interrogation without the warnings specified in the majority opinion and without a clear waiver of counsel has no significant support in the history of the privilege or in the language of the Fifth Amendment.”
Though the court had declared Miranda’s first trial null and void, Miranda was retried under new evidence. A witness testified that Miranda had told her of committing the crime, and so Miranda was convicted in 1967 for 20 to 30 years in prison. However, due to good behavior, Miranda was paroled in 1972 and lived the rest of his life in relative peace. He was stabbed to death in a barfight in 1976. A suspect was arrested, but rather ironically, was later released due to a lack of evidence since he invoked his right to remain silent.
Conservatives, like Richard Nixon, denounced the decision, arguing that it made police work much more difficult and would increase crime.
Though the Supreme Court later granted some exceptions to the Miranda warnings in other cases, for the most part, any person who is arrested must be informed of their rights to remain silent and access to a counsel.
Make sure to check out Newshacker Blog‘s SCOTUS Cases page for more coverage on the Supreme Court. More posts like this one will be coming soon.