Arguments for Miranda Rights - Research Paper Example

?Miranda Rights serve as a protective mechanism for those accused of crimes in the United s, and it is an extension of the Fifth Amendment protection of due process. Any look at totalitarian regimes of true history or recent fiction will reveal that protection of citizens' rights to not be abused by law enforcement and to not self-incriminate is an important function both in terms of maintaining democracy and in ensuring human rights. In the United States, this need was recognized through looking at English common law, based on the Magna Carta, which set forth the rights of individual citizens as against the King. In this common law tradition, the United States further elaborated on the Constitution to institute Miranda Rights to make sure the Fifth Amendment is practiced in reality and law enforcement does not abuse or manipulate its suspects to serve its own ends. Arguments against Miranda Rights have to contend with counter-arguments that not having this protective mechanism in place will open citizens to potential rights abuses, and that not having this mechanism will remove a key set of information that individuals need when dealing with police. Those in favor of Miranda Rights must deal with the thought that they do not really change or better society in any substantive way. A comparison of these arguments and their relative worth is necessary to establish how much progress Miranda Rights have made since their inception in protecting individuals from harm. Miranda Rights, as they exist now, were conceived in 1966 as a result of the United States Supreme Court case Miranda vs. Arizona, in which Ernesto Arturo Miranda signed a confession without being properly informed of his various Constitutional rights related to due process. Miranda challenged the conviction based on this false confession and the circumstantial evidence that connected him to the crime, which led to Chief Justice Earl Warren of the Supreme Court to draft the first version of the Miranda warning. From this court case, suspects were now entitled to be informed of their rights to not self-incriminate and to seek counsel, even if he cannot afford one. The Court's opinion also indicated that if an individual chose to exercise his Miranda Right to remain silent, the interrogation must cease; likewise, if an individual chose to exercise his Miranda Right to counsel, the interrogation must cease until counsel can be found with whom he can confer with during interrogation. As with any verbal warning, there is a vague set of standards related to waiving or acknowledging understanding of the warning. With the Miranda Warning, a suspect must be asked if he understands these rights given under the Miranda Warning—either after each sentence of the Warning or after the entire Warning has been given. A person's silence in response to the Warning is interpretable, according to a recent decision by the Supreme Court, as an understanding of what the Warning says (Bravin, 2010). However, the issue is complicated when the Miranda Warning is issued to people who do not speak English or speak it poorly. In this case, the Miranda Warning will not help suspects who cannot understand its content. The standards for delivering the Warning to those suspects, then, become difficult to define. However, delivering the same Warning to all suspects taken in under arrest gives a sense of standardization and equality for everyone under the ideal of procedural justice, even if true justice is not achieved in every case. This argument against the Miranda Warning is one that its supporters must contend with as English becomes less of a dominant language among a growing American demographic. Miranda Rights are also vague in terms of their standards for exceptions. What comes to mind first of all is the public safety exception, derived most clearly from the Supreme Court case New York v. Quarles. In that case, officers questioned a suspect on the location of a firearm in a public setting before informing him of his Miranda Rights. The Court ruled that when the situation requires officers to think on their feet, rather than being concerned about procedure in achieving a conviction, in order to protect public safety, the Miranda Warning can be deferred to a time when the public is not in danger. However, a clear objection to this argument is its ambiguity and room for interpretation—and perhaps manipulation by law enforcement. If anything, that Court decision made the situations under which the Miranda Warning can be deferred for immediate questioning more unclear for the officers who must act on behalf of public safety. Thus, another objection that Miranda Warning supports must address is the thought that it applies only in most cases—not in all. The idea that the Warning is standardized between all people is broken down by certain exceptions to the rule. Similar to the objection that the Miranda Warning is difficult to apply in an increasingly diverse (and thus less English-speaking) population, there is also the idea that American law enforcement occurs across borders—requiring agencies to likewise export Miranda Warnings overseas. This is important to a discussion of the costs and benefits of the Miranda Warning because law enforcement officers of all kinds must take part in appropriately ensuring the rights of suspects are protected. In Afghanistan, under the shield of United States military operations, suspects have reportedly been issued Miranda Warnings at their arrest. However, there is no United States Department of Justice policy with respect to issuing Miranda Warnings to suspects of crimes in foreign lands (Hayes, 2009). To the objection that the Miranda Warning is incapable of adapting to changes in American life and law enforcement, this observation points in the other direction: as American interests in foreign interventions, which increases the exposure to crime of American citizens, there is a need to adapt Miranda warnings to new contexts such as the War in Afghanistan. Another argument against the inflexibility of the Miranda Warning with respect to the situations in which, and the suspects to whom, law enforcement can deliver the statement is the case of undercover law enforcement. Clearly, for an undercover agent, delivering the Miranda Warning before informally questioning an individual would pose a clear and present risk to that agent, as it would reveal him to be part of law enforcement. This stipulation was given by Illinois v. Perkins, in which a law enforcement agent posed as an inmate in order to elicit an informal confession for a murder investigation from a man already in jail. This confession was admitted, despite the fact that the agent did not properly inform the inmate of his Miranda Rights. As undercover investigations become an increasingly common (albeit inherently dangerous) form of law enforcement, it is important to keep in mind that the Miranda Warning has adapted to this trend both to protect the lives of undercover agents and to protect the evidence acquired both those agents in the line of duty. In addition to observing that the Miranda Warning is adaptable, those in favor of Miranda Rights may also argue from the perspective of the Supreme Court that ruled such Rights were necessary to protect citizens. Specifically, this argument reads that Miranda Warnings keep police and law enforcement agents in check. Looking at the case ruled upon by the Court in Miranda v. Arizona as one instance, one can see that even some confessions should not be admitted in court—as Miranda’s lawyer Alvin Moore argued during his trial. Miranda’s confession, in particular, was coerced because he was not told of his right to seek an attorney or to remain silent. Although Miranda did not specifically request an attorney, he still should have been aware the fact that he had access to one and that there are benefits to having an attorney present during interrogations. Informing suspects of this right is designed to cut down on the number of forceful and coercive interrogations that inevitably lead to false confessions of guilt. Indeed, the Miranda Warning and the respect that the United States affords to those accused of crimes is, for supporters, distinctly American in terms of its respect for human rights. Charles Krauthammer, quoted in Starr (2002), says that when people from totalitarian regimes—where “the innocent get whacked and beaten and tortured at the whim of the authorities”—see how Americans treat their bad guys in movies, they “can only be awestruck at a country that treats even its monsters with such delicacy” (Starr, 2002, p. 207). It seems doubtful that opponents of Miranda Rights would wish for the United States to have the same respect for human rights as places that Krauthammer has in mind. Protecting citizens from abuses of their freedoms is definitive of a free society, and Miranda Rights only serve to further that goal. Another important objection to consider against Miranda Rights is that criminals often go free because of their alleged failure to respect the accused’s Constitutional rights. Despite the argument that the Miranda Warning is designed to protect the accused’s Constitutional right to not be forced to confess a crime, the Miranda Warning has not improved the situation. According to these critics, such as Hoffman (1998), little progress has been made since 1966 in ensuring that police do not “make mistakes” in coercing suspects and therefore having that evidence ruled inadmissible by the courts. Even the most carefully undertaken interrogations and investigations by police and prosecutors are open to the objection that those procedures did not respect the Constitutional rights of the suspect. In the end, as critics argue, we need to let a few guilty murderers go due to procedural errors so as to protect the Constitutional rights of everyone with a strict and demanding process. This kind of utilitarian concept of the justice system (as serving the majority of people at the expense of a minority) flies in the face of a concept of government designed to protect the rights of all people, especially those who are negatively affected by a recidivist murderer who escaped conviction due to a Miranda Rights violation. However, proponents respond that there is “little evidence that a significant number of guilty people are going free because of the Miranda warning” (The Economist, 1999). In response to Cassell (1996), who believes that the positive effects of the Miranda Warning are negligible but its negative effects are profound, proponents note that most people under arrest neither keep quiet nor ask for counsel, even when the benefits of doing both of those things greatly outweigh the benefits of waiving one’s Miranda Rights. The Warning seems to protect individuals who do not usually think about their rights as they are being escorted to a police station. An individual’s mind typically jumps to the more immediate solution of forming a defense against accusation, rather than forming an idea of what plan to take in forming that defense. As a result, a post-Miranda era is more beneficial to society than a pre-Miranda era. Lastly, opponents to the Miranda Warning comment that the rule denies people the opportunity to take responsibility for their crimes. This kind of objection is clearly stated in Rothwax (1996), who writes, “The idealistic impulse toward protecting individuals from overbearing state authority has resulted in a system where we deny people the opportunity to take responsibility for their criminal acts. In our system, a man or woman who takes responsibility must be crazy!” (Rothwax, 1996, p. 79). In that statement, Rothwax is replying to a statement by Justice Thurgood Marshall, who claimed that no sane person would knowingly relinquish their right to be free of compulsion. Rothwax takes offense to the notion that the criminal justice system should be complicit in advising and counseling suspects in how to escape responsibility for their crimes. The Miranda Warning, according to this reasoning, constitutes the collapse of prosecution and defense as separate entities in the criminal justice system, which is a problematic outcome for the future of justice in America. However, Rothwax ignores the essence of what the Miranda Warning actually is: a warning—that is, the supply of information to an individual in order to help him or her make a more well-informed decision. The objection to the Miranda Warning on the basis that it represents the collapse of the justice system is an exaggeration of the responsibilities of officers. Nearly half a century after the Supreme Court decision of Miranda v. Arizona, the Miranda Warning still inspires enlivened and deep legal debate over its benefits and costs. The Warning has clear supporters and opponents; however, neither side makes definitively good arguments in favor of their position. All one can say is that the Miranda Warning is consistent with Constitutional rights, and it serves as an enhancement and protective mechanism of those rights. The Miranda Warning does not remove elements of personal responsibility or abuse of rights by law enforcement. It is, however, capable of adapting to changes in the American legal landscape, to the needs of a diverse population, and to the needs of a well-informed democracy. Equality and procedural justice is ensured by giving objective information about rights to citizens facing arrest and investigation. Works Cited Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (The United States Supreme Court 1966). New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S. 649 (The United States Supreme Court 1984). Illinois v. Perkins, 496 U.S. 292 (United States Supreme Court 1990). Bravin, J. (2010, June 2). Justices narrow miranda rule. Retrieved October 25, 2011, from The Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704875604575280392747737022.html Cassell, P. (1996). Miranda's Social Costs: An Empirical Reassessment. Northwestern University Law Review, 90, 387-499. Hayes, S. (2009, June 10). Miranda rights for terrorists. Retrieved October 25, 2011, from The Weekly Standard: http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/06/miranda_rights_for_terrorists.asp Hoffman, J. (1998, March 30). As miranda rights erode, police get confessions from innocent people. The New York Times, p. A1. Rothwax, H. (1996). Guilty: The Collapse of Criminal Justice. New York: Random House. Starr, K. (2002). First among equals: The Supreme Court in American life. New York: Grand Central Publishing. The Economist. (1999, December 9). A pillar of the law assailed. The Economist. Read More