CrimLaw

Miranda at the Supreme Court:

O.K. I can understand the idea that if a Defendant stops the police from reading Miranda warnings to him (by saying he knows his rights) and confesses that the evidence can be admitted. I don't like it because I can just hear the "You have the right to - Aw shucks, you know your rights don't you John?" question coming out of the mouth of officers. However, I can see how it looks good on paper.¹

However, this is just scary:

[T]he police pursued an intentional strategy of questioning a suspect without Miranda warnings, obtaining incriminating admissions before resuming the interrogation after a 20-minute delay. This time, the suspect, Patrice Seibert, was fully advised of her rights, signed a formal waiver form, and incriminated herself again.

The initial statement was clearly inadmissible. The question for the Supreme Court on Tuesday was whether the second statement, following the warnings, should be seen as the product of a fully informed suspect's free will, admissible in court. The Missouri Supreme Court said no, ruling that to admit the second statement in this circumstance would be to encourage deliberate evasions of the Miranda rules.

The Supreme Court ruled in a 1985 case from Oregon that an intervening warning could isolate the initial failure and make a second statement admissible. In that case, however, the initial failure to give the warnings was inadvertent. A central issue in the new case is whether it mattered that the police had deliberately omitted the warnings.

That there is even a question is very disturbing. The intentional constitutional violation is clearly meant to cause a continuing result even after the "cure."

As someone who spent a little time as a professional interrogator I must say that it is a wonderful technique. You get the suspect to incriminate himself - a total confession isn't needed, just enough that he can't make a plausible denial. Then you shut down - go to the restroom, get some coffee, have an emergency call, etc. - and come back shortly. Tell the guy we have to do some paperwork, take five minutes to go over Miranda and have him sign the form, and then say something like "John, I want to make sure that I understand everything correctly so let's go over it again from the beginning."

It's great technique. It's entirely reliant upon the constitutional violation but it's a great technique. The only way I see this as potentially constitutional is if the officers actually pointed out to the suspect that all of what he said before was not admissible to court while anything he says from this point forward will be. Even then it's a stretch because no matter how you slice it the entire scenario relies on a purposeful constitutional violation.

The Court's decision on this case will determine whether Miranda has teeth or if it is just a hollow shell.



¹ The problem, of course, is that every time something looks good on paper it gets pushed to its limit. Under the "get an inch take 5 feet" principle of real world application, things that the Court see as exceptions become the loophole/accepted norm in police procedure and in the courtroom. How many Defense attorneys have had their client arrested on one charge, get themselves an attorney and had the police come to the jail to speak to the client on "unrelated" charges? I have; in my latest brush with this the officer came to see my client twice without me present on "unrelated" charges involving the same victim, same m.o., same kind of charges, etc. My client was one of those rare men who refused to talk to the officer so it went like this: Arrest on two felonies, I am appointed, officer goes to talk to my client who declines without me present, client and I meet with officer but I don't let my client say anything, and then officer makes another trip to the jail to speak to my client the next day (client again declines).