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An Arizona man’s confession while in police custody in 1963 brought new protections to criminal suspects and earned an enduring place in American culture. But what the legal warning actually does is still misunderstood by many.

Ernesto Miranda was confronted at his Phoenix home in March 1963 days after an 18-year-old woman was raped. What Phoenix police officers didn’t do during the interrogation would lead to a case heard before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1966. 

The nation’s highest court decided to put safeguards in place to protect law enforcement and suspects. The “Miranda warning” requires that a person being interrogated is told of the right against self-incrimination, the right to consult with an attorney before and during questioning, and that the person understands those rights and voluntarily waives them.

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed for you.  

Who is Ernesto Miranda?

According to police, an 18-year-old woman was raped inside a car in March 1963. She couldn’t give the officers an exact description of the vehicle. The woman wasn’t sure of the car’s color but could give details of its interior and the smell. 

A week after her report to the police, one of her relatives saw a vehicle that was similar to the description given to law enforcement. He was able to write down a partial license plate number and told police the car looked like a 1953 Packard. 

Phoenix police Detective Carroll Cooley ran the plate and discovered there were several license plates in Arizona with the first three letters “DFL.”

However, one of the plates was for the model of car the woman’s relative saw. It belonged to Miranda, who had previously been arrested for armed robbery and attempted rape. 

When Cooley knocked on Miranda’s door, his girlfriend appeared with their baby and two of her other children. She woke up Miranda. Cooley asked Miranda to come with police since it was better to talk without his family present.

Miranda, who was born in Mesa, only had an eighth-grade education. During that year in school, he had his first felony arrest. He would spend several years after that being charged with crimes, including getting in trouble with the U.S. Army for going AWOL.

Miranda wasn’t arrested by Cooley at his home. He wasn’t informed of his rights since law enforcement officers weren’t required to do so. 

At the station, he was picked out of a lineup of people police believed matched the descriptions of the rape victim and another woman who had been robbed. Both women picked Miranda. 

During his interrogation, Miranda was asked how he committed the crime. He wrote a confession for police. 

Cooley said some have blamed him for the written confession. 

“They accuse me of telling him what to write, which is absolute BS,” Cooley said in an interview

During Miranda’s court proceedings, his lawyer objected to the admission of the written confession into evidence because Miranda didn’t have counsel at the time of the interrogation. 

The objection was overruled. 

Miranda was convicted of rape and kidnapping in June 1963. In 1965, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld his conviction and ruled that his confession wasn’t obtained illegally. 

What led to Miranda v. Arizona? 

The American Civil Liberties Union asked a Phoenix-based firm, then called Lewis, Roca, Scoville, Beauchamps & Linton, to take Miranda’s case. John P. Frank and John J. Flynn represented Miranda in front of the Supreme Court of the United States. 

Paul G. Ulrich, a Phoenix resident, was a law clerk at the firm during at the time and helped with the case’s merits brief. 

Before the argument, the court considered more than 100 cases that involved a variety of questions concerning the right to counsel, according to Ulrich. However, the court only agreed to hear four of them concerning Sixth Amendment violations. One of them was Miranda’s, which became the lead case. 

Ulrich said many people misunderstand the actual main issue of the oral arguments: If there is a right to counsel during an interrogation, why should it depend on a request?

The Supreme Court heard arguments for multiple days, from Feb. 28 to March 2, 1966, for the four cases on the issue of the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It guarantees the rights of criminal defendants, including the right to a lawyer.If a person wants an attorney but can’t afford one, a court will appoint counsel for them. 

Ulrich told The Arizona Republic that Flynn didn’t argue only on the Sixth Amendment issue during the oral argument, even though briefs from Frank and Flynndid.

Flynn told the court that people have the right to know and exercise their Fifth Amendment rights. He said the police were obligated to inform Miranda of these rights. 

“Under the facts and circumstances in Miranda of a man of limited education, of a man who certainly is mentally abnormal, who is certainly an indigent, that when that adversary process came into being that the police, at the very least, had an obligation to extend to this man not only his clear Fifth Amendment right, but to accord to him the right of counsel,” Flynn stated, according to the transcript

As Flynn talked in front of the court, he began to receive questions from Justice Potter Stewart on what would a lawyer would advise his client. 

Flynn responded with the now-familiar language. 

“That he had a right not to incriminate himself; that he had the right not to make any statement; that he had a right to be free from further questioning by the police department,” Flynn stated, according to the transcript. “That he had the right, at the ultimate time, to be represented adequately by counsel in court; andthat if he was too indigent or too poor to employ counsel, the state would furnish him counsel.” 

The court ruled 5-4, with Chief Justice Earl Warren writing the opinion. According to the opinion, Miranda’s interrogation violated the Fifth Amendment, which protects against self-incrimination. 

Therefore, they have the right to stay silent during an interrogation. If a person waives this right, anything they say can be used against them in court.

“The court decided the case based on the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, with the requirement to get police to give warnings,” Ulrich said. 

In addition to making a decision on Miranda’s conviction, the court added the safeguards for law enforcement.

After the Supreme Court case, Miranda was retriedand sentenced to 20 to 30 years in prison. 

After being released on parole in 1972, he started selling autographed “Miranda warning” cards. He went back to prison that year for a parole violation and was released in 1975. 

In 1976, Miranda died after being stabbed during a bar fight at La Amapola bar, near Second and Madison streets in Phoenix. No one was convicted in his death. 

His body is buried at Mesa Cemetery, along with other notable people such as singer Waylon Jennings and longtime U.S. Rep. John Rhodes II.

Your rights before an interrogation 

Before the Supreme Court’s decision, law enforcement had no guidelines to halt an interrogation. Valena Beety, deputy director of Arizona State University’s Academy for Justice, said officers could continue for as long as they wanted until they received a confession. 

“We know that false confessions have occurred and that people have been wrongfully convicted due to false confessions,” Betty said. “So Miranda put a stopping point to that.” 

However, this doesn’t mean an attorney will immediately come at the time a person is taken into custody. Lawyers suggest defendants should continue to stay silent until counsel arrives. 

It is important to be absolutely clear that you want to use your Miranda rights, because being completely silent isn’t always enough. 

The Times-Picayune reported in 2017 the Louisiana Supreme Court denied a man’s petition claiming police ignored his request for counsel even though he said, “I want a lawyer dog.”

Beety said a person must clearly say, “I want an attorney. I do not want to talk to you.”

Some law enforcement agencies require suspects to initial that they are requesting or waiving their Miranda rights. 

If law enforcement does not receive a waiver from stating the Miranda warnings, evidence gained from a confession may be inadmissible at trial.

In 2017, former Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery told The Republic the warnings are helpful during the court process. 

“Reading a suspect their Miranda warnings ensures that any statements elicited from a suspect by law enforcement will be given due weight by a jury later at a trial,” Montgomery said. 

Miranda v. Arizona’s impact

At the time, the decision received pushback. Many believed giving a “Miranda warning” would allow suspects to get away with their crimes due to staying silent. However, that wasn’t the case, and many people still waive their rights. 

At the time, the Supreme Court was looking at several cases related to civil rights. President Richard Nixon and members of his administration, including future Chief Justice William Rehnquist, attacked the court on its decisions. As a justice, Rehnquist wrote Miranda warnings were not protected by the Constitution before later changing his tone. 

In the 1980s, Attorney General Edwin Meese was criticized for his comments opposing the Miranda warning. In a 1985 interview with U.S. News World & Report, the attorney general said people wouldn’t be a suspect of a crime if they were innocent. 

President Joe Biden, then a U.S. senator, made a statement responding to Meese’s comments, according to a 1985 report by The Chicago Tribune. He said the attorney general’s comments are proof on why Miranda warnings are needed.

“There are people like Ed Meese who believe that anyone who’s a suspect is guilty until proven innocent,” Biden said in 1985.

Beety said many police organizations ultimately accepted the safeguards and saw them as an example of following protocols and respecting the law. 

“Miranda had shown that it did not stop people from confessing,” she said. “It did not increase crime, and instead it became a symbol of police professionalism.” 

In 2000 after hearing arguments in the case for Dickerson v. United States, the Supreme Court issued an opinion on whether Congress had the legislative power to overrule Miranda v. Arizona and its warnings.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, an Arizona native, was a part of the 7-2 majority vote. 

Rehnquist delivered the court’s opinion and stated Miranda warnings are constitutional and can’t be overruled by an act by Congress. 

“Miranda has become embedded in routine police practice to the point where the warnings have become part of our national culture,” Rehnquist wrote. 

This article includes information from a previous Arizona Republic article published in 2016 including reports from Republic staff and the Associated Press.

Lauren Castle covers Arizona’s legal system and incarcerated individuals. Reach the reporter at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter: @Lauren_Castle.

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