"You have the right to remain silent." Most Americans can recite the line from television, and this year marks 60 years since the Supreme Court decided the case behind it. In June, the court showed the rule is still being tested when it reinstated the murder conviction of Pedro Hernandez in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz, a case built on confessions that began before police read him his rights.
Where the warnings came from
Ernesto Miranda was arrested in Phoenix after a woman identified him in a lineup as the man who had kidnapped and raped her. According to an educational summary from the federal judiciary, police questioned him for about two hours until he confessed, without telling him he had a right to stay silent or to have a lawyer. An Arizona court convicted him and sentenced him to 20 to 30 years.
On June 13, 1966, the Supreme Court ruled for Miranda in a 5 to 4 decision. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for the majority that a person in custody "must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that he has the right to remain silent." The suspect must also be told that statements can be used in court, that he has the right to a lawyer during questioning, and that one will be appointed if he cannot afford one.
Miranda himself did not go free. He was retried in 1967 without the confession, convicted on other evidence and again sentenced to 20 to 30 years.
What the rule covers, and what it does not
Miranda applies when police question someone who is in custody. The exact wording of the warning varies, and the judiciary's summary notes that jurisdictions have their own rules on it.
The court has tested and trimmed the rule over the decades. In New York v. Quarles in 1984, it created a public safety exception that lets officers ask urgent questions, such as where a gun is, before giving warnings. In Berghuis v. Thompkins in 2010, it held that silence or an ambiguous statement does not require police to stop an interrogation, and that a suspect who understands the warnings and then talks voluntarily can waive his rights without saying so.
The biggest threat came from Congress, which tried to overrule Miranda by statute. In Dickerson v. United States in 2000, the court rejected that effort 7 to 2, with Chief Justice William Rehnquist writing that "the warnings have become part of our national culture."
In Vega v. Tekoh in 2022, a 6 to 3 majority held that police officers cannot be sued under the federal civil rights law for failing to give the warnings. That leaves the main fight where it has always been, in criminal court, over whether a statement can be used against a defendant.
The Etan Patz case
Police questioned Hernandez for about seven hours before reading him his rights and recording the interview, according to news reports. He then repeated his confession on tape at least twice. His lawyers say the confession was false and the product of a mental illness that sometimes made him hallucinate.
A first trial in 2015 ended with a deadlocked jury. At the retrial, which began in 2016 and ended in a 2017 verdict, jurors asked whether they had to disregard his later confessions if they found he had not confessed voluntarily before being read his rights. The judge told them "the answer is no." Hernandez was convicted of kidnapping and felony murder and sentenced to 25 years to life.
A federal appeals court later overturned the conviction, finding that answer inadequate under Missouri v. Seibert, a Supreme Court case about police who question first and warn later. On June 22, the Supreme Court reversed in an unsigned opinion. It said federal law does not require a jury to decide whether admitted confessions were lawfully obtained, and that a 1996 federal law limits how far federal courts can second-guess state convictions. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the petition.
Defense lawyers Harvey Fishbein and Alice Fontier said, "We firmly believe that an innocent man is in jail for a crime that he did not commit." Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said, "It's impossible to imagine the pain of losing a child."
Convictions can be undone and restored on appeal, as the Alex Murdaugh case also showed. Confession fights like this one are the kind of issue Daniel Rosenberg, Michael Dye and Lloyd Golburgh take apart on the show.
This article is general information about how the legal system works and is not legal advice.
Two Taps News stories summarize reporting and the analysis discussed on Two Taps and Friends. They are not legal advice. Read our standards.
