Miranda v. Arizona

Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that law enforcement in the United States must warn a person of their constitutional rights before interrogating them, or else the person's statements cannot be used as evidence at their trial. Specifically, the Court held that under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the government cannot use a person's statements made in response to an interrogation while in police custody as evidence at the person's criminal trial unless they can show that the person was informed of the right to consult with a lawyer before and during questioning, and of the right against self-incrimination before police questioning, and that the defendant not only understood these rights but also voluntarily waived them before answering questions.
Miranda was viewed by many as a radical change in American criminal law, since the Fifth Amendment was traditionally understood only to protect Americans against formal types of compulsion to confess, such as threats of contempt of court. It has had a significant impact on law enforcement in the United States, by making what became known as the Miranda warning part of routine police procedure to ensure that suspects were informed of their rights, which would become known as "Miranda rights". The concept of "Miranda warnings" quickly caught on across American law enforcement agencies, who came to call the practice "Mirandizing".
Pursuant to the U.S. Supreme Court decision Berghuis v. Thompkins (2010), criminal suspects who are aware of their right to silence and to an attorney but choose not to "unambiguously" invoke them may find any subsequent voluntary statements treated as an implied waiver of their rights, and used as or as part of evidence.
In 1951 Legal Aid in the United States, a report in the Survey of the Legal Profession series, was published by the American Bar Association. It identified large gaps in the availability of legal services in both civil and criminal cases for those unable to afford a lawyer. By the early 1960s, in response to the report, efforts by various bar associations to expand legal aid for defendants had resulted in a substantial increase in services albeit still with large areas of the country underserved.
In the civil realm, it led to the creation of the Legal Services Corporation under the Great Society program of Lyndon B. Johnson. Escobedo v. Illinois, a case which closely foreshadowed Miranda, provided for the presence of counsel during police interrogation.
On March 13, 1963, Ernesto Miranda was arrested by the Phoenix Police Department officers Carroll Cooley and Wilfred Young, based on circumstantial evidence linking him to the kidnapping and rape of an 18-year-old woman 10 days earlier. After two hours of interrogation by police officers, Miranda signed a confession to the rape charge on forms that included the typed statement: "I do hereby swear that I make this statement voluntarily and of my own free will, with no threats, coercion, or promises of immunity, and with full knowledge of my legal rights, understanding any statement I make may be used against me."
However, at no time was Miranda told of his right to counsel. Before being presented with the form on which he was asked to write out the confession that he had already given orally, he was not advised of his right to remain silent, nor was he informed that his statements during the interrogation would be used against him. At trial, when prosecutors offered Miranda's written confession as evidence, his court-appointed lawyer, Alvin Moore, objected that because of these facts, the confession was not truly voluntary and should be excluded. Moore's objection was overruled, and based on this confession and other evidence, Miranda was convicted of rape and kidnapping. He was sentenced to 20–30 years of imprisonment on each charge, with sentences to run concurrently. Moore filed Miranda's appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court, claiming that Miranda's confession was not fully voluntary and should not have been admitted into the court proceedings. The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's decision to admit the confession in State v. Miranda, 401 P.2d 721 (Ariz. 1965). In affirmation, the Arizona Supreme Court heavily emphasized the fact that Miranda did not specifically request an attorney.
Attorney John Paul Frank, former law clerk to Justice Hugo Black, represented Miranda in his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Gary K. Nelson represented Arizona.
On June 13, 1966, the Supreme Court issued a 5–4 decision in Miranda's favor that overturned his conviction and remanded his case back to Arizona for retrial.
Five justices formed the majority and joined an opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren. The Court ruled that because of the coercive nature of the custodial interrogation by police (Warren cited several police training manuals that had not been provided in the arguments), no confession could be admissible under the Fifth Amendment self-incrimination clause and Sixth Amendment right to an attorney unless a suspect has been made aware of his rights and the suspect has then waived them:
Thus, Miranda's conviction was overturned. The Court also made clear what must happen if a suspect chooses to exercise their rights:
Warren also pointed to the existing procedures of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which required informing a suspect of his right to remain silent and his right to counsel, provided free of charge if the suspect was unable to pay. If the suspect requested counsel, "the interview is terminated." Warren included the FBI's four-page brief in his opinion.
In a separate concurrence in part, dissent in part, Justice Tom C. Clark argued that the Warren Court went "too far too fast." Instead, Justice Clark would use the "totality of the circumstances" test enunciated by Justice Goldberg in Haynes v. Washington. Under this test, the court would:
In dissent, Justice John Marshall Harlan II wrote that "nothing in the letter or the spirit of the Constitution or in the precedents squares with the heavy-handed and one-sided action that is so precipitously taken by the Court in the name of fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities." Harlan closed his remarks by quoting former Justice Robert H. Jackson: "This Court is forever adding new stories to the temples of constitutional law, and the temples have a way of collapsing when one story too many is added."
Justice Byron White took issue with the court having announced a new constitutional right when it had no "factual and textual bases" in the Constitution or previous opinions of the Court for the rule announced in the opinion. He stated: "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." White did not believe the right had any basis in English common law.
White further warned of the dire consequences of the majority opinion:
Miranda was retried in 1967 after the original case against him was thrown out. This time the prosecution, instead of using the confession, introduced other evidence and called witnesses. One witness was Twila Hoffman, a woman with whom Miranda was living at the time of the offense; she testified that he had told her of committing the crime. Miranda was convicted in 1967 and sentenced to serve 20 to 30 years. The Supreme Court of Arizona affirmed, and the United States Supreme Court denied review. Miranda was paroled in 1972. After his release, he returned to his old neighborhood and made a modest living autographing police officers' "Miranda cards" that contained the text of the warning for reading to arrestees. Miranda was stabbed to death during an argument in a bar on January 31, 1976. A suspect was arrested, but due to a lack of evidence against him, he was released.
Another three defendants whose cases had been tied in with Miranda's – an armed robber, a stick-up man, and a bank robber – either made plea bargains to lesser charges or were found guilty again despite the exclusion of their confessions.
The Miranda decision was widely criticized when it came down, as many felt it was unfair to inform suspected criminals of their rights, as outlined in the decision. Richard Nixon and conservatives denounced Miranda for undermining the efficiency of the police, and argued the ruling would contribute to an increase in crime. Nixon, upon becoming president, promised to appoint judges who would reverse the philosophy that he viewed as "soft on crime." Many supporters of law enforcement were angered by the decision's negative view of police officers.
After the Miranda decision, the nation's police departments were required to inform arrested persons or suspects of their rights under the ruling prior to custodial interrogation or their answers would not be admissible in court. Such information is called a Miranda warning. Since it is usually required that the suspects be asked if they understand their rights, courts have also ruled that any subsequent waiver of Miranda rights must be knowing, intelligent, and voluntary.
Many American police departments have pre-printed Miranda waiver forms that a suspect must sign and date (after hearing and reading the warnings again) if an interrogation is to occur.
Data from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports show a sharp reduction in the clearance rate of violent and property crimes after Miranda. However, according to other studies from the 1960s and 1970s, "contrary to popular belief, Miranda had little, if any, effect on detectives' ability to solve crimes."
The federal Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 purported to overrule Miranda for federal criminal cases and restore the "totality of the circumstances" test that had prevailed previous to Miranda. The validity of this provision of the law, which is still codified at 18 U.S.C. § 3501, was not ruled on for another 30 years because the Justice Department never attempted to rely on it to support the introduction of a confession into evidence at any criminal trial.
Miranda was undermined by several subsequent decisions that seemed to grant exceptions to the Miranda warnings, challenging the ruling's claim to be a necessary corollary of the Fifth Amendment. The exceptions and developments that occurred over the years included:
United States v. Garibay (1998) clarified an important matter regarding the scope of Miranda. Defendant Jose Garibay barely spoke English and clearly showed a lack of understanding; indeed, "the agent admitted that he had to rephrase questions when the defendant appeared confused." Because of the defendant's low I.Q. and poor English-language skills, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that it was a "clear error" when the district court found that Garibay had "knowingly and intelligently waived his Miranda rights." The court investigated his waiver and discovered that it was missing all items for which they were looking: he never signed a waiver, he only received his warnings verbally and in English, and no interpreter was provided although they were available. With an opinion that stressed "the requirement that a defendant 'knowingly and intelligently' waive his Miranda rights," the Court reversed Garibay's conviction and remanded his case.
Miranda survived a strong challenge in Dickerson v. United States, 530 U.S. 428 (2000), when the validity of Congress's overruling of Miranda through § 3501 was tested. At issue was whether the Miranda warnings were actually compelled by the Constitution, or were rather merely measures enacted as a matter of judicial policy. In Dickerson, the Court, speaking through Chief Justice Rehnquist, upheld Miranda 7–2 and stated that "the warnings have become part of our national culture". In dissent, Justice Scalia argued that Miranda warnings were not constitutionally required. He cited several cases demonstrating a majority of the then-current court, counting himself, and Justices Kennedy, O'Connor, and Thomas, as well as Rehnquist (who had just delivered a contrary opinion), "[were] on record as believing that a violation of Miranda is not a violation of the Constitution."
Over time, interrogators began to devise techniques to honor the "letter" but not the "spirit" of Miranda. In the case of Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600 (2004), the Supreme Court halted one of the more controversial practices. Missouri police had been deliberately withholding Miranda warnings and questioning suspects until they obtained confessions, then providing the warnings, getting waivers, and eliciting confessions again. Justice Souter wrote for the plurality: "Strategists dedicated to draining the substance out of Miranda cannot accomplish by training instructions what Dickerson held Congress could not do by statute."
Berghuis v. Thompkins (2010) was a ruling in which the Supreme Court held that a suspect's "ambiguous or equivocal" statement, or lack of statements, does not mean that police must end an interrogation. At least one scholar has argued that Thompkins effectively gutted Miranda. In The Right to Remain Silent, Charles Weisselberg wrote that "the majority in Thompkins rejected the fundamental underpinnings of Miranda v. Arizona's prophylactic rule and established a new one that fails to protect the rights of suspects" and that
In Vega v. Tekoh (2022), the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that police officers could not be sued under a particular statutory cause of action for failing to administer the Miranda warning, ruling that not every Miranda violation is a deprivation of a constitutional right. In dissent, three justices held that the court had "repeatedly and emphatically" determined that the Miranda decision established a constitutional right, and would have allowed such lawsuits. According to pundits, the ruling Vega v. Tekoh "makes it easier for police to obtain coerced confessions – by continuing to ask questions even if someone doesn't want to speak" and "guts a major pathway for incentivizing police to provide a Miranda warning and ensuring their accountability."
Miranda's impact on law enforcement remains in dispute. Many legal scholars believe that police have adjusted their practices in response to Miranda and that its mandates have not hampered police investigations. Others argue that the Miranda rule has resulted in a lower rate of conviction, with a possible reduction in the rate of confessions of between four and sixteen percent. Some scholars argue that Miranda warnings have reduced the rate at which the police solve crimes, while others question their methodology and conclusions.
The 2023 film Miranda's Victim directed by Michelle Danner explores the origins of the Miranda warning and the ultimate decision of the Supreme Court in favour of Miranda.