The Miranda Warning which is also known as the Miranda Rights is a warning that is usually given to criminals and other law offenders in the United States as they are being arrested and interrogated by the police. Every law enforcement officer in the US is meant to cite the Miranda warning as they place criminal suspects into custody. The main purpose of the Miranda warning or right is to ensure that suspects are aware of their rights under the US Constitution in the event they are arrested. The emergence of Miranda warnings came about after the Miranda v. Arizona court case that took place in 1966 where the court made a ruling that the inculpatory and exculpatory statements made by a defendant in police custody would only be admissible in a court trial if the prosecution could demonstrate that the defendant was informed of his/her right to consult with a lawyer before and during the questioning of the defendant by the police (Chapman, 2010).
The Arizona court ruling also held that the defendant had to have understood those rights before the questioning commenced in the event they decided to waive their rights. The Supreme Court enforced Miranda into law after three similar cases went to court to determine the rights of a suspect during police interrogation and questioning. These cases were Westover v. the United States, California v. Stewart, and Vignera v. New York. The Miranda Warning had a significant impact on law enforcement agencies in the United States where police and other law enforcers coerced and sometimes beat up criminal suspects during interrogation sessions. The rights or warnings become part of routine law enforcement procedures so that American citizens would be aware of their rights in the event they were arrested (Chapman, 2010).
The Miranda Warning under the Fifth Amendment allows a suspect in police custody to seek legal counsel before any interrogation begins. The warning also stipulates that an attorney representing the interests of the suspect should be present during the interrogation of the suspect. In the event the suspect cannot afford an attorney, the Fifth Amendment stipulates that the court has to present an attorney to represent the interests of the suspect. The Fifth Amendment on Miranda Warnings also stipulates that the suspect who has been placed under arrest has the right to remain silent and refuse to answer any questions posed by the police during their interrogation. The police on their part have to inform the suspect that they have the right to remain silent and in the event, they waive their Miranda Rights, the information they present to the police can be used against them in a court of law (Ruschmann, 2007).
There is no specific language that can be used to give the warning to criminals but the basic point of law that law enforcers should take into consideration is relaying the rights of the suspect during their arrest and subsequent custody. The suspect can be informed of their rights either orally or in a written format but the most commonly used is the oral communication of the rights. The Supreme Court has in the recent past resisted attempts to have police officers fully advising suspects of their Miranda rights. The Court has also barred police from informing their suspects that they have the right to have an attorney during their questioning where this right is more of a prerequisite before an interrogation begins (Ruschmann, 2007).
The Miranda Warnings have however faced some ethical issues where the citations given to criminals have become questions of ethics rather than questions of law. The question has emerged of whether to balance the rights of the individual suspected of committing a felony against the legitimate societal need for law enforcement. A recent court case Berguis v Thompkins has raised the question of whether the Miranda Rights serve the ethical needs of society as a whole. The suspect of the case was involved in a shooting and on being served with the Miranda Rights, he refused to have his attorney present during his questioning and he also refused to testify in a court case despite having the right to do so (Marshall, 2010).
The suspect was placed under police interrogation for three hours without saying a word until he finally responded “Yes” to a question posed to him by one of the police officers, asking him whether he would pray to God to forgive him for the shooting. This simple admission by the suspect was enough for the prosecution to convict him during a court trial. The suspect’s lawyers however argued that the confession was illegally obtained given that the suspect had been under police interrogation for three hours. The fact that he did not say anything during the three hours was also seen by the lawyers to be an assertion of the suspect’s right to remain silent under the Miranda rights (Marshall, 2010).
The case was presented to the US Supreme Court who ruled against the suspect by arguing that a suspect under police interrogation has to assert their rights to claim them. This means that until the suspect requests for a lawyer or admits to the police that he/she will not talk, the police are within their rights to continue questioning the suspect. Many legal experts argued that the suspect was within his rights to say nothing which he did thereby making the Supreme Court’s ruling to null and void. The opinions of this court case have become similar for other cases that resulted in a similar court ruling. The Thompkins case brought to light the aspect of fairness during the interrogation of a suspect by the police. Marshall (2010), in his analysis of the case and ethics in Miranda Rights, argued that while the liberal members of the society placed a lot of emphasis on individual principles rather than pragmatism, the conservative members of the society were more willing to avoid any absolute rights that conflicted with societal interests. This would provide law enforcers with more leeway during the interrogation of suspects unwilling to provide information. The proponents of the Supreme Court’s ruling argued that if a suspect truly understands their Miranda rights but they do not assert them in any way, then the police are within their powers to continue questioning the suspect for information (Marshall, 2010).
The ethical question of fairness, therefore, becomes whether police should continue interrogating suspects who are unwilling to talk despite being aware of their Miranda Rights. In the event a suspect is aware of their Miranda right to stop the interrogation session but does nothing about it, there is nothing unfair about the police questioning the suspect until he says something. The police interrogation according to such a line of thought is not coercion as long as the suspect has the power to end it (Marshall, 2010). In their evaluation of the validity of the Miranda warning, Reynolds and Miller (2003) noted that the confession of a defendant was the most influential source of information that can be used during the court case where the confession is the only primary source of evidence.
When suspects were placed under police custody, they had the right to utilize their rights in the event they were interrogated by the police. Any confessions or testimonies provided by the suspect to the police were meant to have the informed consent of how this information was obtained during the interrogation. Informed consent would be important in determining whether the confession of the suspect would be admissible in a court of law. Admissibility would depend on the conditions of the confession (whether the suspect has been coerced) as well as the methods that have been used to gain the suspect’s confession (torture, beating, or questioning). The aspect of ethics during the confession of the suspect there arises in determining the nature of their confession in a court of law (Reynolds & Miller, 2003).
Ethics in Miranda rights is a subject that continues to elicit varied reactions as many legal experts continue to support suspects who do not give in to police questioning. Take the case of Crane v. Kennedy where a 16-year-old defendant who had been convicted of murder gave an inculpatory statement to the police. The boy’s attorney moved to suppress the confession before the court trial but this was eventually denied when the court ruled during a pre-trial hearing that the defendant’s confession had been voluntarily obtained. However, during the trial, the court ruled the defendant’s confession to be inadmissible given the circumstances in which the testimony was obtained (Reynolds & Miller, 2003).
The suspect claimed that the police who were six in number coerced him into making a false confession and that they denied him the right to phone his mother. The interrogation was conducted in a windowless room and it went on for a subsequent period where the suspect was unable to communicate with an attorney for legal counsel. The Supreme Court in its ruling of this case made a decision based on the physical and psychological environments in which the testimony of the suspect was obtained. The main argument was that such an environment was enough to warrant a false confession from the suspect making their testimony inadmissible before the court (Reynolds & Miller, 2003)
References
Chapman, R., (2010). Culture wars: an encyclopedia of issues, viewpoints and voices, volume 1. New York: ME Sharpe Inc.
Marshall, J., (2010). The Supreme Court looks at Miranda and ethics. Web.
Reynolds, W.R., & Miller, G.E., (2003). Educational psychology. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons
Ruschmann, P., (2007). Miranda rights. New York: Infobase Publishing