Miranda decision: Right to remain constitutional
Finally, in 1966,
the Miranda decision established a universal standard, requiring people in
police custody to be read their rights before being questioned. Under most
circumstances, failure to comply with this rule would lead to a suppression of
the confession. However, contrary to common belief, the Miranda warning doesn’t
confer rights; it simply reminds arrestees of the rights already granted to them
by the Constitution....
But resolving immediate emergencies is about as far as we should go
in delaying the Miranda reading or creating exceptions to it. To open
non-emergency exceptions, like the one proposed by the Obama administration,
would be to go down a road toward the eventual nullification of the
constitutional protection against self-incrimination. The Miranda rule enables
us to protect a fundamental right without forcing the courts to allow the
legitimacy of every confession to be proven before it is allowed into evidence.
To compromise the rule would be counterproductive to the freedom we enjoy — a
freedom that terrorists would like nothing better than to destroy. --
Sol Wachtler
By Sol Wachtler
May 14
2010
After the Times Square scare, the US administration is mulling an
exceptions to Miranda rules
Since its adoption after a landmark 1966 Supreme Court decision, the
Miranda warning has worked its way into not only everyday police procedure, but
American culture as well — even if you’ve never been arrested, you probably know
the words “anything you say can and will be used against you.” But as the Obama
administration considers carving out an exception to the Miranda rules for
terrorism suspects in the wake of the arrest of Faisal Shahzad, accused of being
the Times Square bomber, it’s important to note how little people understand
what Miranda does and doesn’t mean.
First, the failure to give a Miranda warning does not result in a
case being dismissed. It only results in the inability of the police to use a
confession and its fruits in evidence. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of
successful criminal prosecutions do not involve
confessions.
The warning’s genesis lies in the Fifth Amendment, which says that
the government may not compel a person “in any criminal case to be a witness
against himself.” The framers knew how easy it was to obtain a confession
through torture or other forms of overt coercion, and how tempting it was for a
government to use such tactics. To prohibit this, the founders said, in effect,
that a person could not be forced to confess. The problem was trying to
determine what counted as a coerced confession. The methods of police
interrogation were so diverse, and the effects of isolation, intimidation and
defendant ignorance so varied, that appellate courts found it difficult to
determine whether a confession had been voluntary.
Finally, in 1966, the Miranda decision established a universal
standard, requiring people in police custody to be read their rights before
being questioned. Under most circumstances, failure to comply with this rule
would lead to a suppression of the confession. However, contrary to common
belief, the Miranda warning doesn’t confer rights; it simply reminds arrestees
of the rights already granted to them by the Constitution. Moreover, talk-show
hosts and television police dramas have led people to believe that before the
police may interrogate or arrest a suspect, the Miranda warning must be given.
That just isn’t the case. Neither arrest alone nor interrogation alone (if there
has been no arrest) requires the warning to be given. Miranda applies only to
in-custody questioning; a statement made to the police by a suspect not in
custody is not subject to Miranda. Still, many supporters of Miranda exclusions
argue that the rule hamstrings law enforcement. This is wrong,
too.
When Miranda was decided, we envisioned wily defence lawyers using
Miranda to suppress a confession, often the strongest foundation on which to
build a conviction. Over time, however, police compliance became second nature,
and the warning has become a routine part of post-arrest interrogation. Today,
judges only rarely suppress confessions because the warning wasn’t given. This
doesn’t mean that Miranda is irrelevant, or that there isn’t a place for
exceptions. In 1982, while I was a judge on New York’s highest court, the Court
of Appeals, we heard a case in which a man entered a supermarket with a loaded
gun. When the police detained the man, they found him wearing an empty holster,
and asked him the whereabouts of the weapon. After he showed the police where he
had hidden the gun, he was charged with criminal possession of a
weapon.
The lower courts held that he should have been given his Miranda
warning before being asked the location of the gun. I wrote an opinion, later
embraced by the Supreme Court, which created an “emergency exception” to
Miranda, allowing the police to defuse a dangerous situation before
administering the warning.
But resolving immediate emergencies is about as far as we should go
in delaying the Miranda reading or creating exceptions to it. To open
non-emergency exceptions, like the one proposed by the Obama administration,
would be to go down a road toward the eventual nullification of the
constitutional protection against self-incrimination. The Miranda rule enables
us to protect a fundamental right without forcing the courts to allow the
legitimacy of every confession to be proven before it is allowed into evidence.
To compromise the rule would be counterproductive to the freedom we enjoy — a
freedom that terrorists would like nothing better than to
destroy.
Source: The Indian Express, New Delhi
8:39 AM
Sultan Shahin
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