What is a “Miranda warning”?
When police officers make an arrest, they commonly interrogate (question) the arrestee. Usually they are trying to strengthen the prosecution’s case by getting the arrestee to provide some evidence of guilt. An interrogation may have other purposes as well, such as developing leads to additional suspects.
By answering police questions after arrest, a suspect gives up two rights granted by the U.S. Constitution:
• the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, and
• the Sixth Amendment right to have a lawyer present during the questioning.
Although people are entitled to voluntarily give up these and other rights, the courts have long recognized that voluntariness depends on knowledge and free will, and that people questioned by the police while
they are in custody frequently have neither. To remedy this situation, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Miranda v. Arizona (1966) that information obtained by police officers through the questioning of a suspect in police custody may be admitted as evidence at trial only if the questioning was preceded by certain cautions known collectively as a “Miranda warning.”
Accordingly, police officers usually begin their questioning of a person in custody by first
making the following statements:
• You have the right to remain silent.
• If you do say anything, what you say can be used against you in a court of law.
• You have the right to consult with a lawyer and have that lawyer present during any questioning.
• If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you if you so desire.
• If you choose to talk to the police officer, you have the right to stop the interview at any time.
If a suspect is in police custody, it doesn’t matter whether the interrogation takes place in a jail or at the scene of a crime, on a busy downtown street or in the middle of an open field. Other than routine automobile stops and brief on-the-street detentions, once a police officer deprives a suspect of freedom of action in any way, the suspect is in police custody and Miranda is activated.
Case Example:
Kelly Rozmus is arrested for assault. At the police station, Officer Mayorkas seeks to question Rozmus about the events leading up to the assault.
Question:
Does Rozmus have to answer the officer’s questions?
Answer:
No. Rozmus has a constitutional right to remain silent, and if Officer Mayorkas fails to warn Rozmus of the Miranda rights before questioning begins, then nothing Rozmus says is later admissible in evidence.
What happens if the police question me while I’m in custody without first giving me a Miranda warning?
If a police officer questions a suspect without giving the suspect the Miranda warning, nothing the suspect says can be offered into evidence against the suspect at trial. Moreover, under the “fruit of the poisonous tree” rule, any evidence which the police find as the result of information obtained during questioning which violates the Miranda rule is equally inadmissible at trial.
Case Example 1:
Mal Addy is arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. Without advising Addy of his Miranda rights, the police ask Addy about the location of the knife that Addy allegedly used in the attack. Addy tells the police of its hidden location. The absence of the Miranda warning makes what Addy said to the police inadmissible at trial.
Question:
Can the prosecutor introduce the knife into evidence against Addy?
Answer:
No. The knife is the fruit of a poisonous tree. The police learned of the knife solely through an improper interrogation of Addy, so the knife is inadmissible as evidence. In some cases, police would have inevitably discovered the same poisonous evidence on their own. In that case, the evidence may be admitted against the suspect despite the poisonous fruit doctrine.
If I answer police questions even after I’m given the Miranda warning, is it ever possible to exclude what I say?
Under some circumstances, yes. If the police induce a suspect to speak because of illegal behavior engaged in by the police, the suspect’s statements may be excluded under the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine. For instance, assume that the police induce a suspect to confess by confronting the suspect with objects the police seized during an illegal search.
If seeing the illegally seized objects induced the suspect to confess, a judge may throw out the confession as the fruit of the poisonous tree (the illegal search), even if the police first gave the Miranda warning.
Defense attorneys often try to use the rule to weaken a prosecutor’s case before trial. If a defense attorney can convince a judge that a search or interrogation was improper, and most of the prosecution’s evidence is tied to the illegality, the defense can force the prosecution to dismiss charges or accept a plea to a lesser crime.
Am I entitled to have my case dismissed if the police questioned me without advising me of my Miranda rights?
No. One popular misconception about the criminal justice system is that a case has to be thrown out of court if the police fail to give the Miranda warning to people they arrest.
What Miranda says is that the warning is necessary if the police interrogate a suspect in custody and want to offer something the suspect says into evidence at trial. This means that the failure to give the Miranda warning is utterly irrelevant to the case if:
• the suspect is not in custody
• the police do not question the suspect, or
• the police do question the suspect, but the prosecution does not try to use the suspect’s responses as evidence.
In essence, if the prosecution can win its case without using the illegally obtained evidence, a Miranda violation will not cause dismissal of the case.
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