In the United States, the Miranda warning is a type of notification customarily given by police to criminal suspects in police custody advising them of their right to silence and, in effect, protection from self-incrimination; that is, their right to refuse to answer questions or provide information to law enforcement or other officials. These rights are often referred to as Miranda rights. The purpose of such notification is to preserve the admissibility of their statements made during custodial interrogation in later criminal proceedings. The idea came from law professor Yale Kamisar, who subsequently was dubbed "the father of Miranda."
Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution restricts prosecutors from using a person's statements made in response to interrogation in police custody as evidence at their trial unless they can show that the person was informed of the right to consult with an attorney before and during questioning, and of the right against self-incrimination before police questioning, and that the defendant not only understood these rights but also voluntarily waived them.
Interrogation is interviewing as commonly employed by law enforcement officers, military personnel, intelligence agencies, organized crime syndicates, and terrorist organizations with the goal of eliciting useful information, particularly information related to suspected crime. Interrogation may involve a diverse array of techniques, ranging from developing a rapport with the subject to torture.
Ernesto Arturo Miranda was an American criminal and laborer whose conviction on kidnapping, rape, and armed robbery charges based on his confession under police interrogation was set aside in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona, which ruled that criminal suspects must be informed of their right against self-incrimination and their right to consult with an attorney before being questioned by police. This warning is known as a Miranda warning.
Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478 (1964), was a United States Supreme Court case holding that criminal suspects have a right to counsel during police interrogations under the Sixth Amendment. The case was decided a year after the court had held in Gideon v. Wainwright that indigent criminal defendants have a right to be provided counsel at trial.
Danny Escobedo was a Chicago petitioner in the Supreme Court case of Escobedo v. Illinois, which established a criminal suspect's right to remain silent and have an attorney present during questioning. This case was an important precedent to the famous Miranda v. Arizona decision.
Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279 (1991), was a United States Supreme Court case clarifying the standard of review of a criminal defendant's allegedly coerced confession. The ruling was divided into parts, with various justices voting in different ways on different points of law, but ultimately 1) the defendant's confession was ruled involuntary, 2) the harmless error rule had to be applied, and 3) in this case, use of the confession as evidence was not harmless.
Dickerson v. United States, 530 U.S. 428 (2000), upheld the requirement that the Miranda warning be read to criminal suspects and struck down a federal statute that purported to overrule Miranda v. Arizona (1966).
Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600 (2004), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that struck down the police practice of first obtaining an inadmissible confession without giving Miranda warnings, then issuing the warnings, and then obtaining a second confession. Justice David Souter announced the judgment of the Court and wrote for a plurality of four justices that the second confession was admissible only if the intermediate Miranda warnings were "effective enough to accomplish their object." Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in a concurring opinion that the second confession should be inadmissible only if "the two-step interrogation technique was used in a calculated way to undermine the Miranda warning."
In the law of criminal evidence, a confession is a statement by a suspect in crime which is adverse to that person. Some secondary authorities, such as Black's Law Dictionary, define a confession in more narrow terms, e.g. as "a statement admitting or acknowledging all facts necessary for conviction of a crime," which would be distinct from a mere admission of certain facts that, if true, would still not, by themselves, satisfy all the elements of the offense. The equivalent in civil cases is a statement against interest.
McNeil v. Wisconsin, 501 U.S. 171 (1991), held that the right to counsel secured by the Sixth Amendment and the right to counsel protected by Miranda v. Arizona are separate and distinct, such that invoking one does not implicitly invoke the other.
Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 201 (1964), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the government from eliciting statements from the defendant about themselves after the point that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel attaches.
Spano v. New York, 360 U.S. 315 (1959), represented the Supreme Court's movement away from the amorphous voluntariness standard for determining whether police violated due process standards when eliciting confessions and towards the modern rule in Miranda v. Arizona. In Spano, the Court focused less on factors such as meals provided to the accused and more on whether the accused had access to legal counsel.
Berghuis v. Thompkins, 560 U.S. 370 (2010), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court considered the position of a suspect who understands their right to remain silent under Miranda v. Arizona and is aware that they have the right to remain silent, but does not explicitly invoke or waive the right.
Watts v. Indiana, 338 U.S. 49 (1949), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court ruled that the use of a confession obtained through rigorous interrogation methods by Law Enforcement violates the Fourteenth Amendment.
Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387 (1977), is a decision by the United States Supreme Court that clarifies what constitutes "waiver" of the right to counsel for the purposes of the Sixth Amendment. Under Miranda v. Arizona, evidence obtained by police during interrogation of a suspect before he has been read his Miranda rights is inadmissible. Here, however, the defendant had been indicted in court and had asserted his desire to have counsel, thus his Sixth Amendment right to counsel had attached. At issue was whether a voluntary admission of incriminating facts in response to police statements made while the defendant was in custody and outside the presence of his lawyer constituted a waiver of this right to counsel.
J.D.B. v. North Carolina, 564 U.S. 261 (2011), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that age and mental status is relevant when determining police custody for Miranda purposes, overturning its prior ruling from seven years before. J.D.B. was a 13-year-old student enrolled in special education classes whom police had suspected of committing two robberies. A police investigator visited J.D.B. at school, where he was interrogated by the investigator, a uniformed police officer, and school officials. J.D.B. subsequently confessed to his crimes and was convicted. J.D.B. was not given a Miranda warning during the interrogation, nor an opportunity to contact his legal guardian.
Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652 (2004), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declined to overturn a state court's conclusion that a minor was not in custody for Miranda purposes during his police interview. Michael Alvarado helped his friend Paul Soto steal a truck in Santa Fe Springs, California. The truck owner was killed by Soto during the robbery and Alvarado was convicted of second-degree murder for his role in the crime. The evidence for Alvarado's conviction was primarily based on statements given by Alvarado during a two-hour police interrogation that occurred when Alvarado's parents brought him to the police station. Alvarado was 17 years old and was not read his Miranda rights before questioning. During Alvarado's murder trial in a state court, motions to suppress the statements given by Alvarado were denied on the ground that Alvarado was not in police custody at the time of the interrogation and thus did not have to be read his Miranda rights. Alvarado appealed his conviction, claiming that the determination that he was not in custody was incorrect because the courts did not take his age into account.
Brendan Ray Dassey is an American convicted murderer from Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, who at 16 confessed to being a party to first-degree murder, mutilation of a corpse, and second-degree sexual assault. He was sentenced to life in prison with the earliest possibility of parole in 2048. His videotaped interrogation and confession, which he recanted at trial, substantially contributed to his conviction. Parts were shown in the Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer (2015). The series examined the 2005–2007 investigation, prosecution, and trials of Dassey and his uncle, Steven Avery, both of whom were convicted of murdering the photographer Teresa Halbach on October 31, 2005.
Crooker v. California, 357 U.S. 433 (1958), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that limited criminal suspects' constitutional right to counsel before trial, refusing to overturn a subsequent conviction without a showing that the refusal of counsel had a coercive or prejudicial effect. This holding was later overturned by Escobedo v. Illinois and Miranda v. Arizona.
