Miranda warning
If you decide to answer questions now without a lawyer present, you have the right to stop answering at any time.The Miranda warning is part of a preventive criminal procedure rule that law enforcement are required to administer to protect an individual who is in custody and subject to direct questioning or its functional equivalent from a violation of their Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination.
The ruling states: To summarize, we hold that, when an individual is taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom by the authorities in any significant way and is subjected to questioning, the privilege against self-incrimination is jeopardized.
After such warnings have been given, and such opportunity afforded him, the individual may knowingly and intelligently waive these rights and agree to answer questions or make a statement.
[6] In Berkemer v. McCarty (1984),[7] the Supreme Court decided that a person subjected to custodial interrogation is entitled to the benefit of the procedural safeguards enunciated in Miranda, regardless of the nature or severity of the offense of which they are suspected or for which they were arrested.
In Vega v. Tekoh (2022), the Supreme Court held that police may not be sued for failing to administer Miranda warnings, and that the remedy for such a failure is the exclusion of the acquired statements at trial.
[25] However, neither the Fifth Amendment nor Miranda extend to pre-arrest silence, which means that if a defendant takes the witness stand at trial (meaning he just waived his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent), the prosecutor can attack his credibility with his pre-arrest silence (based on his failure to immediately turn himself in and confess to the things he voluntarily testified about at trial).
For example, "the right to remain silent" means little to a deaf individual and the word "constitutional" may not be understood by people with only an elementary education.
[Note 10] Immigrants who live in the United States illegally are also protected and should receive their Miranda warnings as well when being interrogated or placed under arrest.
Courts traditionally focused on two categories of factors in making this determination: (1) the personal characteristics of the suspect and (2) the circumstances attendant to the waiver.
[52] In Connelly, the Court held that "Coercive police activity is a necessary predicate to a finding that a confession is not 'voluntary' within the meaning of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The requirement that a waiver be unequivocal must be distinguished from situations in which the suspect made an equivocal assertion of their Miranda rights after the interrogation began.
In Berghuis v. Thompkins (2010), the Supreme Court declared in a 5–4 decision that criminal defendants who have been read their Miranda rights (and who have indicated they understand them and have not already waived them), must explicitly state during or before an interrogation begins that they wish to be silent and not speak to police for that protection against self-incrimination to apply.
For example, questions that are routinely asked as part of the administrative process of arrest and custodial commitment are not considered "interrogation" under Miranda because they are not intended or likely to produce incriminating responses.
[65] The public safety exception derives from New York v. Quarles (1984), a case in which the Supreme Court considered the admissibility of a statement elicited by a police officer who apprehended a rape suspect who was thought to be carrying a firearm.
The Supreme Court found that such an unadvised statement was admissible in evidence because "[i]n a kaleidoscopic situation such as the one confronting these officers, where spontaneity rather than adherence to a police manual is necessarily the order of the day, the application of the exception we recognize today should not be made to depend on post hoc findings at a suppression hearing concerning the subjective motivation of the police officer.
"[67] In 2010, the Federal Bureau of Investigation encouraged agents to use a broad interpretation of public safety-related questions in terrorism cases, stating that the "magnitude and complexity" of terrorist threats justified "a significantly more extensive public safety interrogation without Miranda warnings than would be permissible in an ordinary criminal case," continuing to list such examples as: "questions about possible impending or coordinated terrorist attacks; the location, nature and threat posed by weapons that might pose an imminent danger to the public; and the identities, locations, and activities or intentions of accomplices who may be plotting additional imminent attacks."
[70]: 643 The New York Court of Appeals upheld the exception in a 2013 murder case, People v Doll,[71] where a man with blood on his clothes was detained and questioned.
[Note 15] That is, if the defendant objects or files a motion to suppress, the exclusionary rule would prohibit the prosecution from offering the statement as proof of guilt.
[Note 17] Therefore, the exclusionary rule exceptions, attenuation, independent source and inevitable discovery, do not come into play, and derivative evidence would be fully admissible.
Specifically, the Massiah rule applies to the use of testimonial evidence in criminal proceedings deliberately elicited by the police from a defendant after formal charges have been filed.
The events that trigger the Sixth Amendment safeguards under Massiah are (1) the commencement of adversarial criminal proceedings and (2) deliberate elicitation of information from the defendant by governmental agents.
The Sixth Amendment right "attaches" once the government has committed itself to the prosecution of the case by the initiation of adversarial judicial proceedings "by way of formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information or arraignment".
Massiah applies to express questioning and any attempt to deliberately and intentionally obtain incriminating information from the defendant regarding the crime charged.
Due to the prevalence of American television programs and motion pictures in which the police characters frequently read suspects their rights, it has become an expected element of arrest procedure—in the 2000 Dickerson decision, Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote that Miranda warnings had "become embedded in routine police practice to the point where the warnings have become part of our national culture".
[100] While arrests and interrogations can legally occur without the Miranda warning being given, this procedure would generally make the arrestee's pre-Miranda statements inadmissible at trial.
Because it is a protective measure intended to safeguard the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, it does not prevent the police from taking blood without a warrant from persons suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol.
Many police departments give special training to interrogators with regard to the Miranda warning; specifically, how to influence a suspect's decision to waive the right.
[103] In Illinois v. Perkins, 496 U.S. 292 (1990), the United States Supreme Court held that undercover officers are not required to give suspects a Miranda warning prior to asking questions that may elicit incriminating responses.
Beginning in 2009, some detainees captured in Afghanistan have been read their Miranda rights by the FBI, according to Congressman Michael Rogers of Michigan, who claims to have witnessed this himself.
While there have been specific cases in which FBI agents have Mirandized suspects overseas at both Bagram and in other situations, in order to preserve the quality of evidence obtained, there has been no overall policy change with respect to detainees.
