Miranda

In this episode, one of the most influential cases in the American Criminal Justice system, Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 1966, will be explained and discussed.  Miranda changed police procedures regarding interrogation and confessions.

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Have you ever wondered if cops have to follow traffic laws while they're working? Have you ever wondered if your DNA is in a government database? Have you ever wondered if cops have to enforce laws while they're off duty? Welcome to the Inside the Criminal Process Podcast. I'm Scott, and I'm a 29-year veteran law enforcement officer and a licensed attorney. I've worked as a patrol officer, a crime scene investigator, a field training officer, a detective, a parole officer, an investigator, a polygraph examiner, a crisis negotiator, and an administrator. I've also taught college-level criminal justice classes. Today I'm going to talk about the Miranda case. This is a case that had a major impact on law enforcement procedures and is probably the most well-known case amongst the U.S. population. If anybody if you've ever watched cop shows or cop movies, you've seen the you've heard him talk about Miranda or you've heard the Miranda warnings. So an overview basically, Ernesto Miranda was arrested in Arizona and convicted of crimes of kidnapping, rape, and armed robbery. The conviction was based on his confession. During a lengthy police interrogation, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction and he was tried again, but the confession wasn't allowed to be used as evidence against him in the second trial. He was found guilty during the second trial based on testimony of his estranged common law wife, who claimed that he had confessed to committing the crime to her. He was sentenced to 20 to 30 years in prison. He actually paroled from prison in 1972. Miranda was born in 1941 in Mesa, Arizona. When he was 14 or 15, he was convicted of burglary and sentenced to a reform school for one year. Miranda had several other arrests after getting out of reform school and he moved to Los Angeles, was there for a time. He was arrested in Los Angeles, but not convicted for sex crimes and armed robbery. He spent time in jail in Texas. He was arrested in Nashville, Tennessee. He spent time in a federal prison for being pulled over or caught in a stolen car that he had driven across state lines. So he was no he was no stranger to criminal conduct or committing crimes. In March of 1963 in Phoenix, Arizona, Patricia Weir, an 18-year-old, was kidnapped after she got off her bus. She reported to the police that a man that was approximately 25 years old, Italian or Hispanic, had abducted her, tied her up, drove her to an isolated area, and sexually assaulted her. The man then drove her back and dropped her off close to the city. A couple of weeks after that, the victim's brother saw a man matching the abductor's description in a car that also matched the description of the car that the victim had reported that she had been kidnapped in. So Patricia Weir is the victim, and it was her brother that that saw all this. The brother reported the license plate to the police, and when they ran a check on it, the car came back registered to Miranda's common law wife. So the police go over to Miranda's house, pick him up. Miranda volunteered to go to the police station for a lineup. A lineup is basically where you have people standing shoulder to shoulder in a line, six to eight people, and they're on they're in a room like on a kind of an elevated platform, a little stage, and then witnesses or victims or are in another room looking through a two-way mirror to see if they can identify um the suspect. So and sometimes they'll have people step forward and say something. You've probably seen these on the old cop shows if you've ever watched old cop movies or old cop shows. And um it's just a way for cops, especially if they've if it's been that there's been some time between the crime and the time the person was arrested, they can they can get the victims and witnesses in and try to get an identification of the of the suspect. So Miranda was considered a person of interest by the police at the time of the lineup. The police did not consider him to be in custody. So that's a that's a distinction that comes up when the case gets to the Supreme Court. They didn't think that he was in custody. Um he was just a person of interest. So after the lineup, Miranda asked how he had fared, and the police implied that he had been identified. They weren't real clear on whether or not he was identified during the lineup. They then interrogated him and he confessed that he had kidnapped and raped Patricia Weir. The police then took Miranda to Meet Weir for whatever reason. I don't I I wasn't really clear on that. And he stated, that's the girl when he saw her. And Weir also identified his voice as that of her attacker. Miranda signed, he he wrote a statement out and signed it, and the heading for each page of that written statement had the following statement on it. This statement has been made voluntarily 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 can and will be used against me. And he signed that. Miranda was not informed that he had the right to remain silent or that he had the right to an attorney. So this went to trial, and he was convicted in the Arizona State District Court and sentenced to 20 to 30 years for the kidnapping and sex assault. His lawyer argued against allowing his confession to be used as evidence, allowing it to be admitted in the court, but the court allowed it and it did become evidence. So then Miranda appealed the conviction, but the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the conviction. The Arizona Supreme Court upheld the conviction. So then the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Miranda's case in November of 1965. So Supreme and Appellate Courts don't work like trial courts. There is no trial, nobody testifies, no evidence is introduced. The jobs or the function of those courts is to review the decision of the trial court for legal errors just to make sure that the court applied the law correctly. They don't assess witness credibility or hear any new evidence or anything of that nature. And the lawyers for the parties going to appellate courts and supreme courts draft briefs. Basically, this is my case, this is our case, and this is what we want, this is what we're looking for as a final result. The justices have an opportunity to review those briefs, and then the lawyers are given a time limit to present their cases to the justices, and the justices ask questions and get information from them while they're briefing the court. You can actually listen to U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments. They're on the Supreme Court's website. The court records all their oral arguments and posts them the day that the arguments are heard. You can also read transcripts of the arguments, and those are provided on the Supreme Court website as well. So it's kind of interesting. Some of the cases, you know, if it's like a securities case or mortgage fraud or something like that, it might not be all that exciting, but but it is interesting if you've never heard um the Supreme or Appellate Court case being argued. It's interesting because a lot of times you can hear when the justices are act asking questions, you kind of know how they're how they're leaning during the during the actual brief. The Supreme Court accepted Miranda's case and several others that had similar issues to the to Miranda. And the the court had ruled previously on a case uh uh the the name of the case was Escobito v. Illinois, and they had ruled on that when the police have focused on a suspect in their custody who has been refused an opportunity to consult with counsel and who has not been warned of his constitutional right to keep silent, the suspect has been denied the assistance of counsel in violation of the Sixth and Fifteenth Amendments, and no statement extracted by the police during the interrogation may be used against that person at trial. So that was the Escobito case. Escobed did not address the suspect's right to remain silent or the consequences of speaking. So police could still question suspects aggressively, and if the suspect was intimidated or unaware of their rights, they might be pressured into making an incriminating statement. The court recognized that without a warning about the consequences of speaking, the right to counsel could be rendered meaningless, basically. So in short, Miranda was necessary because escobido by itself left a gap. Suspects could still be pr pressured into confessing if they didn't know their rights. And Miranda closed that gap by making the right to remain silent and the consequences of speaking part of the constitutional protect protections during police questioning. In 1966, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the majority opinion for the Supreme Court, and it basically requires that anybody in custody prior to interrogation must 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 a lawyer present during the interrogation, and that if he is indigent, a lawyer will be appointed to represent him. If a suspect says they want to assert their right to remain silent, or they request a lawyer after they've been mirandized, police cannot question the subject, or the suspect rather. And the burden is on the prosecution to show that the suspect knowingly and intelligently waived their right to counsel. And there's a lot of cases in that since Miranda that have that have kind of clarified some of these issues that have come up regarding the Miranda warnings and police in custody interrogations. So the police actually use cards with the Miranda warnings on them. Some of them do, I always did, uh, so that they can testify regarding the warning that they issued with the minimum so the minimum requirement that you have to tell somebody prior to interrogating them if they're in custody is you have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right, anything you say can and will be used against you in court of law. You have the right to an attorney and have to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided to you. Now that last part, I never would tell people if you can't afford an attorney, one will be be provided to you because being able to afford it to afford an attorney means different means something different for everybody. Everybody thinks of that differently, right? So I used to tell them if you can't afford an attorney, you may qualify to have one appointed to represent you for free or at a reduced cost because the police aren't going to be the ones that determine whether or not you can afford an attorney. The courts are going to look at your assets and whether or not you are able to pay to pay for your representation. I I would also tell people that if you do consent to being questioned, you have the right to stop the interview at any time and request a lawyer. And then I would ask them, do you understand these rights? And with these rights in mind, would you like to speak to me about what happened? When I went through the academy, we were taught to treat Miranda like it's not a big deal so that suspects don't focus on it. That always felt kind of sketchy to me. I felt like I was they were telling me to be a salesman. I didn't feel comfortable trying to sneak the rights in, so to speak. So I always made it very clear when I was advising somebody of their rights, and I always read the Miranda warning ver verbatim off of a card I carried with me. It just made it easier for me to testify that I had fully advised the person of their constitutional rights because I do it the same way every time, and I use this card. And if the prosecution wanted to get that admitted as evidence, they could. And it just it was very i i it was very structured, and I just felt more comfortable doing it that way. There's a number of cases to this day that involve police incorrectly advising or failing to advise suspects of their Miranda rights, and I didn't want to be the subject of a Supreme Court case telling the whole country that I had messed up. There is a an exception, a limited exception to Miranda, is a 1984 case called New York v Quarrels. And the court allowed the public safety exception to the Miranda requirement. What had happened is an officer had arrested somebody and the and the person had an empty holster on him. The officer questioned the arrestee about the whereabouts of the firearm without Mirandizing him, and the court said that it was okay. He he made some incriminating statements about where the gun was, and that the court allowed the suspect's statements to be used as evidence. So it is a narrow exception, and and you have to prove that there's an immediate and significant danger to the public. To the public. For example, the the the terrorism case, the the in Boston bombing case in 2013, the court recognized the exception and allowed statements made by the suspect prior to any Miranda warnings to be admitted into evidence. Uh it is a narrow exception. And even if you do follow all of the requirements, I had a case once where a female had attacked an officer and she had stabbed him in the face with a pen. Not serious injuries, but enough to to scratch him and make him bleed. I've I've audio and video recorded, me reading her rights, me re-reading the rights to her. We also had a piece of paper with the rights broken down, sentence by sentence, with a little line next to them for people to initial. I gave her that paper. I had her read those to me, asked her if she understood, and if she did to initial it, she did all that. Um I asked her, I said, Did do you want to talk to me about what happened? Uh, fully expecting her to say, No, I want a lawyer. And she goes, Yeah, absolutely. She acknowledged that uh she didn't she she she attacked the the officer and assaulted him. She said, I don't care about the assault charges because I want to teach the officer a lesson. He shouldn't have done that to me. And what he did was grab a piece of paper out of her hand. Um so the judge felt that that was the the full confession on video and audio recording was was too prejudicial to admit. It was too prejudicial against her, against the defendant. And so they only showed they had to sit down and the lawyers had to agree. The district attorney and the defense lawyer had to agree what what they wanted to be shown, and it it was pretty choppy. It was it seems to me like if I was just a regular citizen, it would have been a little confusing to me. So also violations of Miranda doesn't necessarily mean that the case will be dismissed. So usually any statements that are gathered in violation of Miranda are just made inadmissible in court. And that's for pretrial motions and stuff of that nature for the lawyers and the judge to figure out what they're not going to admit. So, for example, if an officer is transporting a non-mirandized arrestee and that person makes a statement and the officer asks for clarification, if the suspect says anything, it won't likely be admissible in court because he or she hasn't been Mirandized. Whatever happened to Ernesto Miranda? Well, after paroling in 1972, he went back to his old neighborhood and he made money. I thought this was kind of cool. The little cards with the Miranda advisement on them. Miranda would autograph those cards and sell them for a buck fifty. So I got online and I tried I tried to see if I could find any for sale. There was an old expired link that had two of those signed Miranda cards, and they were asking $65 apiece. Um, but again, it was the link was expired. And in January of 1976, Miranda was stabbed and killed in a Phoenix bar fight. He was 34 years old, and the 23-year-old man that charged that was charged with Miranda's murder was never tried because he had fled and was never apprehended. On to the questions I asked at the beginning of the podcast. Traffic laws. Um in my state, they've adopted the model traffic code, which basically says officers that are actively enforcing the law in an emergency vehicle are exempt from traffic laws. They do have to drive with due regard and due care so that they're not being reckless or negligent. But they are exempt. So you can speed, you can go through stoplights, stop signs, all that other stuff carefully, obviously. But they are know that when they're actively enforcing the law, even detective cars that are unmarked are exempt. The detectives and the officers driving those cars are exempt from traffic laws. CODIS is the combined DNA index system, and it's it was created by and maintained by the FBI. So APIS is the automated fingerprint identification system, and that's also maintained by the FBI. And it's a database containing fingerprints of everyone who's ever been arrested or booked, or had a background investigation completed, military people, immigration fingerprints, licenses or permits, some concealed weapons permits, all those fingerprints that are taken by the government go go into APIs. CODIS doesn't work that way. CODIS is it only has DNI prof DNA profiles of convicted offenders, people who are currently arrested. In the state I live in, when you're arrested, they will take a swab of your cheek to get your DNA profile. All those different things. And get that information. They backed it down from there. Pretty interesting. So I was at a call one time, somebody had thrown a rock through a guy's window, and he asked me why I didn't collect the wall or the rock so that it could be processed and we could use the DNA to catch the person that threw the rock. So I explained to him, at this time at that time, we could not use the coded database to identify suspects in property crimes just because of the cost. It was cost prohibitive, thousands of dollars for the for the test itself. And not to mention the odds of the person's DNA being in the database was low, especially at that time because it was this was in the 90s. So if you're a criminal and you fall into one of those categories that I mentioned that that maintains CODA profiles or DNA profiles in the CODAS database, you may get caught because of your DNA. Otherwise, it's it's not likely. It's not like running fingerprints through through APIs. As far as off duty requirement to enforce laws, actually the police departments that I worked for discouraged. Off-duty engagement. They would always tell you the best practice just to call 911 and be a good witness. A lot of cops would get in trouble for getting involved in off-duty things, getting fights or whatever. The you know, when you try to take an enforcement action and people are like, Who are you? There's just a bunch of issues. You don't have a radio, you don't have backup. Um, most people don't aren't gonna respect you if you go up and tell them, hey, I'm a police officer, knock it off. So the the best practice of call the pol call 911 and be a good witness is good advice for everybody. And what I'm thinking of is like the rage baiters on TikTok and YouTube that videotape everybody going into and out of a post office or a restaurant or whatever. Um like just leave them alone. Ignore them. That's where they get their clicks, and that's where they that's where they make their money is getting people to come up and confront them and and then they pepper spray them and it turns into a big ordeal. Don't give them the satisfaction. And most cops are pretty good now at ignoring them. I mean, you know, as I said in my first podcast, cops are human, so these rage baiters can push their buttons and and have confrontations. But for the most part, I think cops are learning just to ignore them. Because if you don't give them any any content to post, they're gonna they will eventually like just fade away, hopefully. So that's it for this episode. Next week I'm gonna talk about the use of the polygraph by law enforcement, how, why, how it works. Uh I'm gonna give you a lot more information than you'd ever want to know about polygraphs. So until then, take care.