- [Kim] You have the right to remain silent.
Anything you say can and will be used against you
in a court of law.
We've become familiar with the Miranda Warnings
given to suspects in police custody
through movies and TV shows
but who was Miranda and what do these warnings really mean?
This is Kim from Khan Academy and today we're digging into
the 1966 supreme court case Miranda versus Arizona.
To learn more about the case, I spoke with two experts.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO
of the National Constitution Center
who's written extensively about the Supreme Court.
Paul Cassell is the Ronald N. Boyce
Presidential Professor of Criminal Law
at The University of Utah School of Law.
He's a leading researcher on criminal procedure
and crime victims rights.
So Jeff, if we actually go back to the time of this case
what was going on at this time in constitutional law,
why was the Miranda case so important?
- [Jeff] The Miranda case was hugely important
because it represented the high water mark
of the Warren Court's criminal procedure revolution.
The 1960's were a time when there was a lot of concern
about the third degree.
Southern states were interrogating
African American defendants in ways that struck
many people as unfair but the Supreme Court
took a long time to respond.
- [Paul] Historically the admissibility
of confessions into a trial had been determined
by what is called, The Voluntariness Test
and that required a judge to decide
was the confession voluntarily given
or had the police used unfair, overly aggressive tactics
to extract it but making those kinds of determinations
had proven challenging for some courts
and so there was interest in coming up with,
I guess what you might call a bright-line rule,
a single test for determining whether
confessions were or were not voluntary.
- [Jeff] The court didn't really settle on a standard
for deciding whether or not
a confession was voluntary or not.
A test emerged and it was called,
the Totality of The Circumstances Test
which basically gave judges a lot of discretion
to weigh different factors.
Was the defendant well educated,
what was his physical health, his emotional characteristics
but lots of people were uncomfortable with the
amorphousness of this test
and at a time when there's renewed concern
in the 1960's about the unfairness of the third degree,
there's pressure to come up with a crisper
and more constitutionally rooted way
ensuring that confessions are not only
involuntary in the sense of
not being beaten out of the suspect
but not involuntary in the sense of
not reflecting the subtle coercive pressures
of the confession room.
- [Paul] So Miranda was arrested on suspicion of rape
and at the time the law on confessions was somewhat in flux.
He appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court
and then ultimately appealed to the
United States Supreme Court which agreed
to review his case and determine the issue.
- [Kim] So who was Ernesto Miranda?
What was his background?
- [Jeff] Ernesto Miranda was a 23 year old Hispanic man.
He was accused of raping a woman called Patricia.
That was a pseudonym for her real name,
she was basically forced into a car
after getting off of a bus and assaulted
in this terrible way.
- [Paul] Miranda was a laborer, he was poorly educated
I think is fair to say and I think it's also important
to remember that he was a rapist.
There doesn't seem to be any doubt that he in fact
had sexually assaulted a young 18 year old girl
as she was walking home from work late one night.
He grabbed her off the street,
threw her into the back of his car
and drove her out into the desert and raped her
and so those are all things that I think are important
to recall when we talk about the Miranda decision.
- [Jeff] And he was identified after
a friend of hers saw a car similar to the one
that she described a week later
and the police tracked the registration
down to Miranda's girlfriend who identified him.
- [Paul] So the police got the report of the crime
from the victim and they also had report
of an unusual car that was involved
and so eventually they were able to identify a car
that was similar to that described by the victim
that came back as registered to Miranda
and so they picked him up for questioning,
they took him into the station house.
He denied having any involvement
but then the police pulled a ploy,
they had the victim come and look at Miranda
along with a couple of other people in a lineup.
A group of similarly appearing people
and the victim thought that maybe Miranda was the person
who'd committed the crime but she wasn't sure.
So the police went back to Miranda
and they said, "Well, she's identified you."
and Miranda at that point said,
"Well I guess I better tell you what happened then."
and he made a confession to the rape
as well as to some other crimes as well.
- [Jeff] The question was whether this confession
was consistent with the Fifth Amendment.
He might or might not have met
the totality of the circumstances test
as Justice Harlan noted in his dissent.
Miranda was 23 years old, indigent,
educated to the extent of completing
half the ninth grade, had an emotional illness
of the schizophrenic type
and the question was whether he made a knowing
and intelligent waiver of these rights
but the Supreme Court decided
not to stick to that old totality of the circumstances test
and rethink the entire way
that confessions should be evaluated.
- [Kim] So the Supreme Court was kind of looking for
an example case right, to try to figure out
what this line should be about confessions
and how the police should treat suspects.
Why did they choose this case in particular?
- [Jeff] The court chose the Miranda case
'cause it came up at the right time
at a time when all of the judges
were increasingly impatient with
this totality of the circumstances test
including the great liberal textualist Hugo Black
who had been a opponent of the voluntariness test
'cause he just thought it was too subjective.
So they took the case.
It was certainly not a sympathetic one
in the sense that Miranda
was not the most sympathetic defendant
but the court thought the time was right
and they decided in Miranda to rethink
the Fifth Amendment law.
- [Kim] Wow, so during his case what did Miranda argue?
So why did he think that his confession
should be thrown out?
- [Paul] Well Miranda's case attracted a lot of attention
because everyone knew the Supreme Court were very interested
in the law of confessions and trying to come up with
a new rule for addressing some of the issues
and so he had a very good lawyer, John Flynn.
Flynn interestingly enough argued that
Miranda's right to counsel had been violated.
It was only the police and Miranda
who were in the interview room talking to each other
and there was no lawyer there
and so Flynn argued that this violated Miranda's
Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
However as the case developed
and ultimately the opinion was released,
the Supreme Court rejected the Sixth Amendment argument
and instead went with the Fifth Amendment argument.
The court said that what had been violated
by the procedures here was Miranda's right
against being compelled to incriminate himself
and the court said that there needed to be certain warnings
given to Miranda and certain procedures followed
to make sure that confessions given by suspects like him
were admissible in court.
- [Jeff] Flynn never said the confession was compelled
in the sense that it was coerced by threats
or promises or compulsion or at gunpoint
but the fact that he gave the confession
without knowing his rights, to silence
or having an attorney present while in police custody
made him in effect surrender a right
that he didn't fully realize and appreciate.
The State was represented by very prominent attorney
Telford Taylor and he said that you should
retain the totality of the circumstances test
and not change the law but the Supreme Court
disagreed and on June 13th 1966,
it announced its five to four decision
in the Miranda case.
- [Kim] So what actually happened to Ernesto Miranda
after this Supreme Court case?
- [Jeff] Well the fallout from the decision was interesting.
Miranda assumed that he was going to be released
because the Supreme Court had ruled his confession
inadmissible and that was a pivotal piece of evidence
without which the prosecution was not going to be
able to prove that he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt
and so Miranda's father ordered a bottle of whisky
that they were going to open to celebrate his release.
But unfortunately for Miranda
and I suspect fortunately for the citizens of Phoenix,
Miranda had made a few statements along the way.
He had threatened his common-law wife
that he was going to get out
and was going to come back and try to take the kids
away from her and she went to police
and reported that Miranda had confessed the crime to her
and of course a confession to a private citizen,
a common-law wife is not the same thing
as a confession to a police officer
and so the case was retried.
Miranda's confession to his common-law wife
was used in evidence against him.
Miranda was convicted and I guess it's fair to say
that bottle of whisky went unopened.
- [Kim] Alright this is very interesting
because we see this a lot on TV procedurals
and also just in our sort of everyday policing.
So how is this Miranda rule applied today?
Has it developed at all over time?
- [Paul] Yes, what the Supreme Court said was
basically two things were going to have to happen
before a confession given by
someone who was in police custody
could be admitted at a trial.
The first is that the suspect would
have to be given Miranda warnings.
That is, you have the right to remain silent.
Anything you say can be used against you.
You have a right to an attorney
before you answer any questions
and if you cannot afford an attorney
one will provided for you.
So those are the famous Miranda warnings
that I think a lot of have seen those on TV shows
or other programs and there is a second feature though
of Miranda that I think is much more important
and in some ways much more harmful to society.
It's what is known as the waiver requirement.
Police officers must ask a suspect,
"Do you agree to answer questions?"
and if the suspect says no
then the police can't ask that suspect any questions
no matter how briefly, no matter how reasonable
the questions might be
and so it's this warning and waiver procedure
that the Supreme Court put in place.
- [Jeff] So that core right remains the law of the land.
- [Paul] So there are some situations
where Miranda is not in place.
One of them is if a suspect is not in custody.
For example if the police are responding to a crime
and question people on the scene there.
That's not a situation where there is
what's known in the Miranda opinion
as the inherent compulsion of police questioning.
That's just ordinary citizen police interaction
and special warnings aren't required there.
Also a suspect's agreed
to come down to the police station and talk,
there's no requirement of a Miranda warning
and in very rare situations,
if there is an extremely pressing public safety need
police officers need not give Miranda warnings.
For example if they've apprehended a terrorist
who's hidden a bomb, police can ask questions
without giving the Miranda warnings.
- [Kim] How has the Miranda case and later cases
that interpret Miranda reflect the way
that the court balances individual liberty
and the constitutional rights of defendants
with public safety and the needs of law enforcement?
- [Paul] When the Supreme Court looked at the Miranda case
there were two competing concerns at play.
One was to make sure that suspects like Miranda
were treated fairly but the other
was to make sure that law enforcement agencies
could effectively investigate crime
and what resulted out of Miranda was
I think it's fair to say,
something of a compromised decision.
There were some who argued that police officers
should never be able to question suspects
once they were taken into custody
that suspects should receive a lawyer
and of course a lawyer would immediately
tell a suspect, don't say anything at all.
Miranda didn't go that far
and I think the reason it didn't go that far
is there are very significant countervailing concerns.
A lot of crimes cannot be solved
unless a suspect is willing to give some statements
and provide information that police can check out.
The Miranda case itself is a good illustration of that.
The victim in that case, because the crime was
committed at nighttime and in the dark
was unable to give a positive identification
of Miranda and it was only when police
were able to get a statement from him
that they were in a position to move forward
and prosecute him and to take a dangerous rapist
off the streets of Phoenix, Arizona.
- [Jeff] Listeners should definitely check out
Professor Cassell's study written
with Richard Fowles in 1998
called Handcuffing The Cops
which looked at FBI data for crime clearance rates
in the two years after Miranda
which fell significantly and they concluded
that Miranda warnings were the main cause of this decline.
But it's really important to stress that other scholars
have questioned the study and have also noted
that even if Miranda initially made it more difficult
for officials to interrogate suspects,
the police have since adjusted to Miranda.
In fact they've come often to embrace it
concluding that basically saying the magic words
and mirandizing suspects frees up the police
to employ a range of sophisticated strategies
to get people to confess anyway
and for this reason when the Miranda case
was reaffirmed, far from being upset,
the police in many cases welcomed the certainty
that Miranda provides.
So for all these reasons I think it's fair to say,
just descriptively that Miranda regardless of the
empirical dispute about whether or not
it has discouraged confessions
has been accepted by law enforcement by and large.
It's been affirmed by the Supreme Court
and at least for the immediate future,
it's here to stay.
- [Kim] So we've learned that the ruling
in Miranda versus Arizona arose out of concern
that suspects in police custody
might confess out of coercion
or lack of knowledge about their own rights.
The decision in Miranda that suspects
must be informed of their rights
helps to protect individuals accused of a crime
from surrendering their Fifth Amendment right
not to self incriminate.
But has Miranda harmed the ability of police
to investigate crimes by preventing them
from obtaining important information?
Professor Cassell suggests that the broad application
of Miranda has hampered police investigations.
By contrast Jeff Rosen argues that police
have adjusted to working within the confines of Miranda
and use other techniques to investigate crime.
To learn more about Miranda versus Arizona
visit the National Constitution Center's
interactive constitution and Khan Academy's
resources on U.S. Government and politics.