The Public Safety Exception to Miranda: Analyzing Subjective Motivation (original) (raw)
Related papers
2004
Many problems in the interpretation of Miranda v Arizona can be solved by recognizing that Miranda is actually a Fourth Amendment case dressed-up in Fifth Amendment clothes. Miranda does more than protect a suspect from coercion or compulsion; the right to remain silent reflects an autonomy interest better expressed through the 4th Amendment. Fourth Amendment values are reflected in the warnings themselves, the remedy for violations, and even in the Miranda exceptions. And contrary to Chavez v Martinez, the 4th Amendment views a Miranda violation as a constitutional violation that occurs in the interrogation room itself.
Overcoming Miranda: A Content Analysis of the Miranda Portion of Police Interrogations
The authors analyzed the Miranda portion of electronically recorded police interrogations in serious felony cases. The objectives were to determine what percentage of suspects waived their rights, whether the suspects understood their rights before waiving them, and whether the police employed any tactics to induce the suspects to waive their rights. The results of the study revealed that 93% of suspects waived their Miranda rights and talked to the police. Further, it is unlikely that those suspects understood their rights; in fact, the police used a version of the Miranda warning that required a level of reading proficiency that most suspects do not possess. Moreover, the police did very little to ensure that suspects actually understood their rights before waiving them. Finally, the police spoke significantly faster when reading suspects their Miranda rights and, in nearly half of the interrogations, also minimized the importance of the rights. Both of these tactics likely limited the suspect's comprehension of the rights and likely induced them to waive, rather than invoke, their rights. These findings are largely consistent with the limited number of other social science studies that have been published and raise serious doubt about whether suspects' waivers are truly voluntary, knowing, and intelligent, as required by Miranda. Based on these findings, the authors recommend specific reforms to the Miranda warning and to the Miranda process.
Salinas v. Texas: An Analysis of the Fifth Amendment's Application in Non-Custodial Interrogations
Liberty University Law Review, 2014
I. INTRODUCTION The Fifth Amendment self-incrimination clause states that a person cannot be compelled to be a witness against himself This clause is important in the field of criminal procedure because it determines whether a criminal defendant's statements can be used against him. However, there are some Fifth Amendment issues that have not been completely settled. The issue of pre-arrest, pre-Miranda silence is one such issue. The Supreme Court has previously held that post-arrest, post-Miranda silence cannot be used against a person,' and post-arrest, pre-Miranda silence cannot be used as substantive evidence against a person.' Otherwise, the Court's holding in Miranda v. Arizona 4 would have no effect.' The Court touched on the issue of pre-arrest, pre-Miranda silence recently in the case of Salinas v. Texas,' a murder case in which the prosecutor used the defendant's silence during police questioning as evidence of his guilt. 7 Nevertheless, because the Court based its reasoning, in part, on other factors-namely, the defendant's other behavior during police questioning-the question of pre-arrest, pre-Miranda silence should remain open. Since the Fifth Amendment states that a person may not be compelled to be a witness against himself,' the answer to this question turns on whether the person was compelled to
Handcuffing the Cops? A Thirty-Year Perspective on Miranda's Harmful Effects on Law Enforcement
Stanford Law Review, 1998
, an electronic mail distribution list for criminal law professors. David Huth provided valuable assistance in running preliminary regression equations, and Katarzyna Celinska helped collect several data series and provided much other valuable statistical analysis. Research assistants Karen Korevaar and Bret Hayman were also vital to the success of this project. The article was supported by the
Silence, Speech, and the Paradox of the Right to Remain Silent in American Police Interrogation
Law and Language, 2013
The right to remain silent has long been regarded as one of the most cherished and fundamental principles of American criminal jurisprudence, one with a venerable his~ tory stretching back centuries to the English struggle to resist the tyranny of the Star Chamber, which compelled those brought before it to answer accusations or be flogged until they did so. Colonial Americans were just as insistent as their British cousins on the importance of a right against self-incrimination; upon independence, every state constitution incorporated guarantees against compelled self-incrimination even prior to the adoption of the federal Bill of Rights.' In contemporary jurisprudence, the right to remain silent has been valorized as foundational to human dignity2 and to human expressive freedom. 3 The right to remain silent is also likely the criminal law doctrine most recognized by the American general public. In fact, given the worldwide marketing of American movies and television dramas, the Miranda warning, beginning, "You have the right to remain silent," may well be the single most widely known principle of criminal law in the world. Little wonder that even conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist-no friend to expansive constitutional protections in the criminal context-had to admit that the Miranda formulation of the right to remain silent had become an indelible part of the fabric of American culture. 4 Yet, despite both its deep roots in American legal history and its entrenched status in current popular culture, the right to silence as articulated in Miranda has in recent years been subject to a barrage of judicial limitations, qualifications, and exceptions to the point where it currently can scarcely be said to provide any meaningful constraint on police interrogation at all.
Miranda, Surreptitious Questioning, and the Right to Counsel
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013
Miranda waiver elicited by police after the suspect invokes his right to counsel is conclusively invalid and never subject to a totality-of-the-circumstances assessment. 6 Indeed, in Edwards, Justice Powell's concurring opinion expressed concern that the waiver-invalidation rule announced in that case might evolve into a conclusive presumption of invalidity, which he rejected as unjustifiable. 7 The Minnick decision validated this concern. 8 The combined effect of Edwards, Minnick, and Shatzer is clear: if police subject a suspect to custodial interrogation, and that suspect then invokes his Miranda right to counsel, the police may not approach him to reinitiate questioning until fourteen days after his release from custody. 9 The rationale of this prophylactic rule seems relatively clear: by invoking the right to counsel, a suspect indicates his subjective recognition of the inequality in the police-questioning process. 10 Unless and until counsel is present, the police may not exploit the suspect's vulnerability. 11 Accordingly, police contacting a suspect to elicit a subsequent Miranda waiver effectively exploits this expressed vulnerability. 12 Therefore, to level the playing field between a suspect and police, the Court deems any waiver invalid unless the suspect makes it with the assistance of counsel. 13