Miranda: More than just words
The story of one of the most basic legal rights Americans have today has its roots in a tragic and unsympathetic man named Ernesto. In 1963, Arizona police officers arrested Ernesto for stealing $8 from a bank worker. Ernesto was also charged with armed robbery.
After spending two hours under questioning by police, he wrote a confession stating that he did commit the robbery. He also admitted to the kidnapping and rape of an 18-year-old 11 days after the robbery. Being found guilty, Ernesto’s lawyers asserted his confession should not have been used against him because he was unaware that he had the right not to answer police questions and no one informed him of his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination or his Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
In 1966, the Supreme Court overturned Ernesto’s conviction, finding that the coercive nature of detention in a police station necessitates certain safeguards in order to ensure that suspects do not naively waive their rights. The court held that when law enforcement officers take a suspect into custody with the intention of conducting an interrogation, they must inform the suspect of certain fundamental conditions:
1. The suspect has the right to remain silent.
2. Anything the suspect says can be used against him/her in court.
3. The suspect has the right to an attorney.
4. If the suspect cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided at no charge.
The court imposed these limitations upon law enforcement officers for the purpose of ensuring that criminal suspects do not waive constitutional rights as a result of not knowing how to properly exercise them. This ruling had broad ramifications for all law enforcement officers, who have since been required to issue Miranda warnings to all suspects that are arrested and taken into custody.
These rights, repeated on televised police dramas nightly, have become woven into the fabric of our consciousness, and are taken for granted by most who don’t even know how the rights came to be recognized. But these rights are founded upon the sound principle of liberty that it is up to the state to prove guilt, not for the defendant to prove innocence; and that since a confession is all the state needs to obtain a conviction, a defendant cannot be forced to speak against him or herself at trial. These fundamental tenants of the justice system, while posing hurdles for law enforcement, create an essential balance between the duty of the state to protect its citizens and bring criminals to justice, and the right each citizen has to be free of the unchecked power of their state and its police forces prior to the Court’s decision.
Returning to Ernesto’s case, on his retrial, he was convicted with the help of other evidence the police had gathered, and ended up serving 11 years in prison. The parole board let Ernesto out on parole in 1972. However, Ernesto Miranda’s freedom and life were lost in 1976, the 200th anniversary of America’s independence, when someone stabbed him during a bar fight. He was 34 years old. Ironically, the man accused of having stabbed him exercised his right to remain silent at his trial. He was not convicted and was later released. To this day, authorities have not convicted anyone of Ernesto Miranda’s murder.
As the Manatee County Bar Association joins lawyers and judges around the nation to celebrate Law Day and its 2016 theme of the 50th anniversary of the landmark Miranda v. Arizona decision, each of us should take a moment to be thankful for the added liberty this case provided to citizens; and for the public defenders and other lawyers who fought during our nation’s history and continue to fight each day to preserve our liberties and press our governmental authorities to perform their vital functions within their constitutional bounds. The acts of Ernesto Miranda and his killer were criminal, and it would be wrong to elevate either of them in any way. But their story, little known to most Americans, helps us all to better understand how our right to counsel, to remain silent, and to be presumed innocent in the face of an accusing government came to be, and how important they are to each of our personal liberty.
Robert M. Eschenfelder is the 2015-2016 president of the Manatee County Bar Association.
This story was originally published May 17, 2016 at 2:05 PM with the headline "Miranda: More than just words."