Ernesto Arturo Miranda (March 9, 1941 – January 31, 1976) was an American laborer whose criminal conviction was set aside in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona, which ruled that criminal suspects must be informed of their right against self-incrimination and their right to consult with an attorney before being questioned by police.

Miranda had been convicted of kidnapping, rape, and armed robbery charges based on his confession under police interrogation.

After his release, he returned to his old neighborhood and made a modest living autographing police officers' "Miranda cards" that contained the text of the warning for reading to arrestees.

A Mexican man, Eseziquiel Moreno Perez, was charged with the murder of Miranda, but fled to Mexico and has never been located.

Miranda was sentenced to one year and a day in the federal prison system because he had driven the stolen vehicle across state lines.

For the next couple of years, Miranda kept out of jail, working at various jobs, until he became a laborer on the night loading dock for the Phoenix Produce Company.

At that time he started living with Twila Hoffman, a 29-year-old mother of a boy and a girl by another man, from whom she could not afford to obtain a divorce.

After the lineup, when Miranda asked how he did, the police implied that he was positively identified, at which point he was placed under arrest, and taken to an interrogation room.

Filing as a pauper, Miranda submitted his plea for a writ of certiorari, or request for review of his case to the U.S. Supreme Court in June 1965.

After Alvin Moore was unable to continue representing Miranda because of health reasons, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Robert J. Corcoran asked John J. Flynn, a criminal defense attorney, to serve pro bono, along with his partner, John P. Frank, and associates Paul G. Ulrich and Robert A. Jensen[2] of the law firm Lewis & Roca in Phoenix to represent Miranda.

[3] They wrote a 2,500-word petition for certiorari arguing that Miranda's Fifth Amendment rights had been violated, and they submitted it to the United States Supreme Court.

[4]In January 1966, Flynn and Frank submitted their argument stating that Miranda's Sixth Amendment right to counsel had been violated by the Phoenix Police Department.

Flynn contended that an emotionally disturbed man like Miranda, who had a limited education, should not be expected to know his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.

In his capacity as the Solicitor General, he presented the Johnson administration's view of the case: that the government did not have the resources to appoint a lawyer for every indigent person who was accused of a crime.

Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?The Supreme Court invalidated Miranda's conviction, which was tainted by the use of the confession that had been obtained through improper interrogation.

At the second trial, his confession was not introduced into evidence, but he was convicted again, on March 1, 1967, based on testimony given by his estranged common-law wife.

[11] The person suspected of handing the knife to the man who murdered Miranda invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and refused to talk to police.