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; 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 Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. It prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. In addition, it sets requirements for issuing warrants: warrants must be issued by a judge or magistrate, justified by probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and must particularly describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.
In United States criminal law, probable cause is the standard by which police authorities have reason to obtain a warrant for the arrest of a suspected criminal or the issuing of a search warrant. There is no universally accepted definition or formulation of probable cause. One traditional definition, which comes from the U.S. Supreme Court's 1964 decision Beck v. Ohio, is when "the facts and circumstances within [an officer's] knowledge and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information [are] sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that [a suspect] had committed or was committing an offense."
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 voluntarily waived them.
The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 was legislation passed by the Congress of the United States and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson that established the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA). Title III of the Act set rules for obtaining wiretap orders in the United States. The act was a major accomplishment of Johnson's war on crime.
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court ruled that it is not unconstitutional for American police to "stop and frisk" a person they reasonably suspect to be armed and involved in a crime. Specifically, the decision held that a police officer does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures when he or she stops a suspect on the street and questions him or her even though the officer lacks probable cause to arrest the person, so long as the police officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime. The Court also ruled that the police officer may perform a quick surface search of the person's outer clothing for weapons if they have reasonable suspicion that the person stopped is "armed and presently dangerous". This reasonable suspicion must be based on "specific and articulable facts", and not merely upon an officer's hunch.
A traffic stop, commonly referred to as being pulled over, is a temporary detention of a driver of a vehicle by police to investigate a possible crime or minor violation of law.
In the United States, the exclusionary rule is a legal rule, based on constitutional law, that prevents evidence collected or analyzed in violation of the defendant's constitutional rights from being used in a court of law. This may be considered an example of a prophylactic rule formulated by the judiciary in order to protect a constitutional right. The exclusionary rule may also, in some circumstances at least, be considered to follow directly from the constitutional language, such as the Fifth Amendment's command that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" and that no person "shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law."
Self-incrimination is the act of exposing oneself generally, by making a statement, "to an accusation or charge of crime; to involve oneself or another [person] in a criminal prosecution or the danger thereof"..
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."
United States v. Patane, 542 U.S. 630 (2004), was a United States Supreme Court case relating to Miranda warnings.
Virginia v. Moore, 553 U.S. 164 (2008), is a Supreme Court of the United States case that addresses use of evidence obtained by police in a search incident to an arrest if that arrest is later found to be unlawful.
Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963), is a United States Supreme Court decision excluding the presentation of verbal evidence and recovered narcotics where they were both fruits of an illegal entry. Narcotics agents unlawfully entered Toy's laundry at which point Toy indicated that Jonny was selling narcotics. The drug agents then went to Jonny and found the narcotics. Jonny made a deal to give up his supplier, Wong Sun. The agents then arrested Wong Sun. All were arraigned and released on their own recognizance. Several days later, Wong Sun voluntarily returned to the police station to make a statement, during the process of which he confessed.
Berghuis v. Thompkins, 560 U.S. 370 (2010), is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court 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.
Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U.S. 291 (1973), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld a murder conviction notwithstanding a challenge that the evidence upon which guilt was based was obtained in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. The court held that in view of the station-house detention upon probable cause, the very limited intrusion of scraping the defendant's fingernails for blood and other material, undertaken to preserve highly evanescent evidence, did not violate the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.
United States v. Watson, 423 U.S. 411 (1976), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States that decided that a warrantless arrest in public and consenting to a vehicle search did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
United States v. Drayton, 536 U.S. 194 (2002), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court clarified the applicability of Fourth Amendment protections to searches and seizures that occur on buses, as well as the function of consent during searches by law enforcement. During a scheduled stop in Tallahassee, Florida, police officers boarded a Greyhound bus as part of a drug interdiction effort and interviewed passengers. After talking to two of the passengers and asking if they could "check [their] person", officers discovered the two passengers had taped several packages of cocaine to their legs. At trial, the passengers argued that officers violated their Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures because the police engaged in coercive behavior and never informed them that their participation in the drug interdiction efforts was voluntary.
Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590 (1975), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Fourth Amendment's protection against the introduction of evidence obtained in an illegal arrest is not attenuated by reading the defendant their Miranda Rights.
United States v. Sharpe, 470 U.S. 675 (1985), was an important decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court explained how long police are permitted to stop vehicles as part of an investigatory stop before violating the Fourth Amendment. A seven-member majority of the Court determined the twenty minute stop in this case was legal, so the government won. However, the Court declined to adopt a bright line rule, deciding instead that "common sense and ordinary human experience must govern over rigid criteria." The Court announced that the rule for determining whether a detention is too long will depend on whether the police "diligently pursued" an investigation to quickly confirm or dispel their suspicions. The Court clarified that judges should avoid "unrealistic second-guessing" of police and should take into account "swiftly developing situation[s]." Sharpe has been frequently cited, and is the framework used to challenge unduly prolonged police stops in thousands of criminal cases.
