Introduction
In 1966, the U. S. Supreme Court voted on its landmark decision in Miranda
v. Arizona. Miranda was arrested at his home and taken into custody at a police station where he was identified by the complaining witness. He was then interrogated by two police officers for two hours, which resulted in a signed, written confession. At trial, the oral and written confessions were presented to the jury and Miranda was found guilty of kidnapping and rape which resulted in a sentence to 20-30 years imprisonment on each count. On appeal, in a 5–4 majority vote, the Court held that inculpatory statements made in response to being interrogated in police custody will be admissible at trial only if the prosecution can show that the defendant was informed of the right to an attorney before and during questioning, as well as, the right to voluntarily waive his/her rights (Wallenstein, 2018). The significance of the Miranda decision is individuals need to know and understand their rights in order to use and protect themselves, as well as, protect the ones who are innocent. After the Miranda decision, police now needed to respect the rights of individuals and make sure they are aware of their due process rights before they start questioning. The Miranda decision allows statements from interrogations if procedural precautions are in place (if the individual was Mirandized). The purpose is to make sure the alleged suspect spoke on his/her own free will and were not coerced in any way. This precaution either helps or hinders to protect an individual’s civil liberties, as well as, helps or hinders the control of crime.
Civil Liberties
The Miranda decision was a separation from the established law within police interrogation(s). Miranda v. Arizona gave an accused person 5 basic rights: the accused has the right to remain silent, the accused must be warned that anything they say can be used against them in court. the accused has the right to have an attorney present during any questioning, the accused can terminate questioning at any point they want to, and if the accused could not afford an attorney, they will be provided with one. Prior to the Miranda decision, a confession would be nullified only if a court determined it resulted from coercion, threat, or promise (Wallenstein, 2018). Individual rights did not change when the Miranda decision was established. However, it created new constitutional guidelines for law enforcement, attorneys, and the courts when it came to how a person is supposed to be treated when suspected of committing a crime (while under arrest). The guidelines of Miranda establish that the individual rights of the Fifth, Sixth and the Fourteenth Amendment are protected when they are being questioned by law enforcement. The Fifth Amendment protects a person’s right against self-incrimination. Individuals have the right not to speak to law enforcement and say anything that might incriminate themselves. The Sixth Amendment protects the rights of individuals to have counsel when they are under arrest or suspected of being involved in a crime. The Fourteenth Amendment protects individuals to the right of due process. The Miranda decision requires that unless a suspect in custody has been informed and understands his/her constitutional rights before questioning, anything he/she says may or may not be used against him/her in a court of law (Wallenstein, 2018).
Police officers seem to know how easy it is to obtain a confession through evident coercion, which is a tactic that most officials use when they want someone to confess to a crime. Frank Sterling had been fed information over a twelve-hour period. During that time, detectives told Sterling during his interrogation that one of his brothers had committed a murder (a lie made up) to see Sterling’s reaction. Detectives also used a “relaxation technique” which, aided Sterling in imagining false events. Correspondingly, detectives also explained their own theories to Sterling which he then spouted back into a (false) video confession. Having been held alone, without counsel, in a small interrogation room and questioned for a twelve-hour period, Sterling became exhausted and vulnerable to manipulation. This manipulation resulted in him confessing to a crime he did not commit (Kolker, 2010). In 1964, the case of Malloy v. Hogan was decided by the United States Supreme Court. After being arrested during a 1959 gambling raid by Hartford, Connecticut police officers, William Malloy plead guilty to pool selling and was sentenced to one year in jail and fined $500. Three months later, Malloy's sentence was suspended, and he was placed on two years’ probation. Following his plea, he was ordered by a Superior Court official to testify about gambling and other criminal activities. Malloy refused to answer questions about the circumstances of his arrest and conviction on the grounds that his answers could possibly incriminate himself. He was then imprisoned for contempt and held until answering the court (“JUSTIA US Supreme Court”, n.d.). Malloy claimed that his rights were violated because he was held in contempt for not answering questions in court that would have caused more trouble for himself. This case demonstrates that witnesses can't be held in contempt for refusing to answer self-incriminating questions. Subsequently, in 1966, the United States Supreme Court established in the case of Miranda v. Arizona, affirming that whenever a person is taken into police custody, before being questioned, he/she must be told of their Fifth Amendment right of not to make any self-incriminating statements. Furthermore, in Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), the United States Supreme Court decided that people can't be denied their right to a lawyer (the Sixth Amendment) just because they can't afford one. As mentioned in the Fourteenth Amendment, everyone must be treated equally under the law. Being treated equally means there can't be different services unavailable or available to someone based on the amount of money or assets they have. The verdict of this case, along with the Miranda decision, ensured that the rights of the accused would be upheld, which allows the accused to get a fair chance to prove their innocence. Without the personal assurances and freedoms that the government cannot change, there would be no cases involving due process which would result in cases like the ones mentioned above to be unwarranted.
Crime Control
Herbert Packer constructed two models, the crime control model and the due process model to represent the systems of values operating within the criminal justice system. The crime control model depicts that criminal justice should focus on supporting victims' rights rather than protecting a defendants' rights, the accused should be found guilty because the findings of police and prosecutors are highly reliable, and the purpose of the criminal justice process should be to determine the truth or to determine the guilt of the accused. Packer's due process model portrays that the criminal justice system should focus on a defendants' rights, not victims' rights because the Bill of Rights protects a defendants' rights. Also, police powers should be limited to prevent the coercion of the individual. Criminal justice officials should be held accountable to rules, procedures, and guidelines to ensure fairness and consistency in the justice process, the criminal justice process should consist of several barriers that take the form of procedural safeguards (like being Mirandized), that aid as protection to the innocent, and the courts shouldn't hold a person guilty exclusively on the foundation of facts if the government does not follow legal procedures in its findings (Packer & Roach, 1999). In the case involving Sterling, the detectives got their confession that they wanted, that Sterling committed the murder. Under Packer’s crime control model, Sterling should have been convicted without any appeals of the crime because there was a confession and the findings of police officers/detectives and prosecutors are reliable (since it does not matter how they obtained their information). Under the due process model, the detectives did not prevent coercion of the individual. They intimidated the individual until they got the confession they wanted by using various techniques. During the interrogation of Sterling, criminal justice officials did not hold accountable to rules, procedures, and guidelines to ensure the fairness and consistency in receiving their findings. After the confession, an individual claimed to be the one who committed the crime and got away with murder. Since the detectives already got their confession from Sterling, they did not bother looking into the individual who was claiming to be the one to commit the murder right away. Instead, they waited while Sterling was already in prison. Their only concern was to get a confession from a person they believed committed a crime without any physical evidence.
John Reid’s most influential work focused on the art of interrogation. His methods during an interrogation involved three stages meant to break down a suspect’s defenses and rebuild him as a confessor: 1) isolation of the suspect, 2) having the interrogator let the suspect know that the interrogator knows he is guilty and having the interrogator float a theory of the case, and 3) have the interrogator the suspect that he understands why the suspect did it and that other person would also understand and tell the suspect he will feel better if he would just talk about it (Kolker, 2010). Reid’s methods coincide with Packer’s crime control model in that the defendant did not matter to the case. In Brown v. Mississippi (1936), The defendants were hanged, beaten with belt buckles until their backs were bloody, and told that the beatings would not stop until they had confessed. This type of interrogation represents the crime control model because the police determined the “truth” of the accused by using tactics that would influence the confession. This case was decided upon Due Process grounds. There was no fairness and consistency in the justice process. Since the defendants were tortured, they were deprived of their Due Process right. This crime control model does not take the Miranda decision into consideration. The model demonstrates that violating individuals ‘constitutional rights during an arrest is okay if it leads to a confession, which violates Miranda.
Why the Miranda decision is a failure
Over the years, there have been many succeeding cases where the Court has indicated that a Miranda warning must be given before questioning. The failure to appropriately remind a defendant of his/her rights can and has resulted in the dismissal of charges regardless of the person’s actual guilt or innocence in numerous cases. Miranda has been seen as an unwarranted infiltration which makes it difficult for police to do a good job in gathering evidence. Although, law enforcement officials have been able to accept Miranda through the exceptions of requirements: when the suspect is not under arrest, the suspect volunteers the statement, On-the-scene investigation(s), stop and inquiry based on reasonable suspicion, “ordinary” traffic stops (until the suspect is taken into custody), “pedigree” questioning during booking of an arrestee, private persons conducting questioning, sex offenders in treatment programs as a condition of parole or probation who are required to be “truthful” in the program, and parole interviews, Miranda still makes the job difficult for law enforcement officials (Wallenstein, 2018) For example, if a suspect is talking to law enforcement officials about a crime committed, the officers may not be able to use the confession in court if the suspect was not Mirandized. Without the suspect being Mirandized, and the confession being the only source of evidence, it could be difficult to win a case and provide justice to the victim(s) without a confession or any other pieces of evidence.
Additionally, law enforcement officials most likely get fewer confessions when they have to state the rights of an individual during an interrogation. Once individuals are aware of their rights, they believe they do not have to talk to police even if the evidence they are withholding can solve a crime. Correspondingly, a study had found that four out of five suspects (about 318,000 suspects in custody per year) waive their Miranda rights when the police start the interrogation. This is due to the fact that those suspects know and understand their rights, or they do not know and understand their rights. “Most adults with average intellectual functioning exhibit a reasonably good understanding of their rights, reasonably good, however, may still result in a troubling factual misunderstanding of rights. Prior studies had shown that twenty-three percent of adults do not understand at least one of the rights in the written waiver form” (Wallenstein, 2018). Sometimes a person does not understand their rights because they are caught up in the moment and is panicking (their brain “shuts off”), they have never heard of or used the terminology before, or the person is not native to the United States and just simply does not understand the laws.
Being questioned by law enforcement officials when one is not free to leave, makes it hard to exercise constitutional rights. It can be difficult for one to remember his/her rights when immediately after stating the Miranda rights law enforcement officials were using various tactics to form a confession. Law enforcement officials persuade the accused suspect that he/she is better off telling their story to a sympathetic law enforcement agent, rather than waiting for an intimidating district attorney who only cares about the victim. This being said, law enforcement officials can persuade individuals to waive their rights in order to get a confession. As a result, the Miranda decision proves to fail in protecting the rights of suspected suspects.
Conclusion
The Miranda decision allows statements from interrogation if procedural precautions are in place (if the individual was Mirandized). This decision allows individuals to know and understand their rights in order to use and protect themselves, as well as, protect the ones who are innocent. The purpose is to make sure the alleged suspect spoke on his/her own free will and were not coerced in any way. The Miranda decision was a separation from the established law within police interrogation(s). Individual rights did not change when the Miranda decision was established. However, it created new constitutional guidelines (following the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendment) for law enforcement, attorneys, and the courts when it comes to how a person is supposed to be treated when suspected of committing a crime. This resulted in police officers using various techniques to obtain a confession through evident coercion, which is a tactic that most officials use when they want someone to confess to a crime. Herbert Packer’s crime control model represent the systems of values operating within the criminal justice system. The crime control model depicts the work of John Reid and his methods of interrogation. Although, there has been succeeding cases where the Court has indicated that a Miranda warning must be given before questioning, the Miranda decision stops potential confessions, is not understood by many individuals and can be forgotten by individuals when multiple tactics are being used on them to get a confession, which, results in the Miranda decision being doomed to fail from its inception.