During the 105th Congress, the proposed "Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1997" containedprovisions designed to overrule Miranda . This is a review of the controversy sparked by this as wellas other proposals governing the use of a defendant's confession against him at his criminal trial. This report reviews the development of the law regarding pretrial interrogation and self-incrimination from the late nineteenth century to the time of the Miranda decision and the periodcovering the aftermath. The topics covered include an historical overview of the case law of pretrialinterrogation prior to Miranda , that barred use of a confession during a defendant's criminal trial ifhe had not been given certain warnings before confessing; the Miranda decision and related SupremeCourt cases; the McNabb/Mallory rule, that barred certain confessions made while the defendant wasbeing illegally held in custody; 18 U.S.C. ï¿½ 3501, that addressed the issues raised by Miranda andthe McNabb/Mallory rule; proposals to replace Miranda with a further amended versionsection3501; and the Court's decision in Dickerson , which appears to have left the Miranda rulestrongerthan at any time in its controversial history. In spite of the Fifth Amendment's limitation on the use of coerced confessions, (1) the SupremeCourt's early decisions on the admissibility of confessions in federal courts relied upon the commonlaw rule. (2) In the 1897 case of Bram v. UnitedStates , (3) the Court attempted to define the FifthAmendment concept of voluntariness and to base exclusion upon violation of the privilege againstself-incrimination, but the Court in a subsequent decision appeared to withdraw from thatviewpoint. (4) Nonetheless, the Bram "voluntariness" approach was affirmed in Zhang Sung Wan v.United States, (5) and it influenced the Court tostate the rule of exclusion more broadly, so that it wasnot merely a matter of whether the confession was reliable or whether a forbidden inducement hadbeen used, but rather whether the confession "was in fact, voluntarily made." (6) According to thisdoctrine, confessions were admitted only if they had been given voluntarily; confessions wereexcluded if the suspect's will was subject to police duress. It was not until Brown v. Mississippi (7) that the Supreme Court applied the due process standardfor use of a confession in State criminal proceedings. Prior to that time, the Court had consistentlyheld that the Fifth Amendment did not apply to the states, and considered the admissibility ofincriminating statements in state proceedings as a issue of Fourteenth Amendment due processrelative to those standards regarding the conventional rule of evidence which prohibits involuntaryconfessions. (8) In Brown , three Blackdefendants were beaten by sheriff's deputies investigating themurder of a White male. The deputies hung one of the suspects from a tree, let him up and downseveral times and then beat him twice (while tied to a tree and subsequently on the roadside) untilhe confessed. (9) The deputies arrested the other twosuspects, stripped and placed them over chairs,and then beat both suspects with buckled leather straps until they confessed. (10) Since the FifthAmendment privilege was then not deemed applicable to the states, the Court struck down theconfessions based on the theory that interrogation is part of the process by which a state acquires aconviction and thus is subject to the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment due processclause. (11) The Court unanimously reversed theconvictions of all three suspects, deciding that thepolice tactics violated the Due Process Clause of Fourteenth Amendment. (12) Having established in Brown that due process was violated when a conviction rested exclusively upon a confession which was obtained in this manner, later cases made it clear that the admissionat trial of such a confession was unconstitutional. (13) In Brown , the Court held that although a Statemight be able to do away with the privilege against self incrimination completely, a State could notexact a confession by torture. (14) Subsequently,this was commonly referred to as the "FourteenthAmendment due process voluntariness test" requirement, and it was the standard used by the Courtin articulating the due process requisites for its admissibility. (15) Under this standard, the admissibilityof a confession was evaluated on a case by case basis according to the "totality of thecircumstances," (16) surrounding each confession. Four years after Brown , the Court in Chambers v. Florida , (17) reversed a State conviction basedon confessions obtained after five days of interrogation, during which the suspects had no contactwith their friends, advisers or counselors. (18) TheCourt went further than Brown and held that evenwhere there was no physical violence, (19) continuous questioning and "other ingenious forms ofentrapment of the helpless" could constitute compulsion. (20) Justice Black noted that it has beensuggested that the use of these coercive tactics "has lowered the esteem in which [the] administrationof justice is held by the public and has engendered an attitude of hostility to unwillingness tocooperate with the police...." (21) Two years later, in Ward v. Texas , where the defendant, an Afro-American, under interrogation had been threatened with mob violence, taken by night and day to strange towns in several counties,incarcerated in several jails, and by persistent questioning, coerced to confess, the Supreme Courtagain ruled for reversal. (22) In these and othersimilar cases, (23) where the convictions werereversed,the Court indicated its concern for the integrity of the process used for extracting the confession andnoted that there was almost no evidence against the defendants. The Court therefore relied on theFourteenth Amendment to reverse the convictions of what it believed were innocent men. The Courtwas also protecting minorities from brutality which was being tolerated by the States. (24) Between the time of Brown v. Mississippi (25) and Miranda v. Arizona , (26) the due process standardwas applied in dozens of cases. During these years, the Court designated certain police practiceswhich weighed the "totality of the circumstances" against a finding of voluntariness andadmissibility--including physical force, threats of harm or punishment, lengthy periods of unlawfuldetention, solitary confinement, denial of food or sleep, and promises of leniency--and thereforewere constitutionally impermissible. (27) Typicalcharacteristics of the accused that were also takeninto consideration included youth, lack of education or intelligence, member of a racial minoritygroup, poverty, and mental or intellectual disabilities. (28) Miranda wove together threads from the case law regarding confessions beginning in the late1940's that provided the basis for significant changes in criminal law investigations and adjudicationup to the present time. These changes were designed to impose, among other things, uniform federalstandards upon the States which up to that time had many variations in their pretrial procedures. (29) Decisions in the area of police interrogations which had a distinct relationship, as precursors, to Miranda are as follows: McNabb v. United States (30) involved the murder of a federal revenue agent during a raid on anillegal still. Several Tennessee mountaineers with limited education were arrested by federal agentsbetween one and two o'clock in the morning and were subjected intermittently to prolongedquestioning over the next several days, which resulted in confessions by three of them. Theconfessions were admitted as voluntary and the defendants were convicted. The Court decided thatit was not necessary "...to reach the Constitutional issue pressed upon us" (31) because the case can beresolved by the "...exercise of its supervisory authority over the administration of criminal justicein the federal courts...." (32) Since the record leftno doubt that the questioning of the defendants didnot take place before a judicial officer in a timely fashion as required by procedures which Congresscommanded, the Court concluded that the convictions: cannot be allowed to stand without making the courts themselves accomplices in wilful disobedience of law. Congress has not explicitly forbidden the useof evidence so procured. But to permit such evidence to be made the basis of a conviction in thefederal courts would stultify the policy which Congress has enacted into law. (33) Mallory v. United States (34) (35) (36) Mallory The police may not arrest upon mere suspicion but only on "probable cause." The next step in the proceeding is to arraign the arrested person before ajudicial officer as quickly as possible so that he may be advised of his rights and so that the issue ofprobable cause may be promptly determined. The arrested person may, of course, be "booked" bythe police. But he is not to be taken to police headquarters in order to carry out a process of inquirythat lends itself, even if not so designed, to eliciting damaging statements to support the arrest andultimately his guilt. The duty enjoined upon arresting officers to arraign "without unnecessarydelay" indicates that the command does not call for mechanical or automatic obedience. Circumstances may justify a brief delay between arrest and arraignment, as for instance, where thestory volunteered by the accused is susceptible of quick verification through third parties. But thedelay must not be of a nature to give opportunity for the extraction of a confession. (37) In every case where the police resort to interrogation of an arrested person and secure a confession, they may well claim, and quite sincerely, that theywere merely trying to check on the information given by him. (38) The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the criminal suspect the right against self-incrimination.