Wickersham Commission

Transcription

“You have the remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult an attorney before questioning. You have the right to have your attorney present with you during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney one will be appointed for you at no expense to you. You may choose to exercise these rights at any time. Do you understand these rights?” Everyone has undoubtedly heard of these famed Miranda Warnings, and that law enforcement has to read them to suspects under arrest. But what is not as evident is how important they are in order to ensure the fundamental rights of Americans,and how they also protect the rights of criminals. The Miranda Rights are a fundamental part of American society, appearing in countless books, TV shows, and movies. The line “you have the right to remain silent,” is perhaps the most recognizable part of police in entertainment. This giant of American culture is really just a Supreme Court decision from 1966 boiled down to six points. The decision it came from was a case called Miranda v. Arizona, one of the most well known and profoundly influential Supreme Court cases in American history. The Miranda decision forever protected the right to remain silent for every American, a right the police previously abused regularly by getting confessions from suspects solely because they didn’t know their rights. The decision also reminds all americans that their rights are sacred and that the government fulfills its responsibility to uphold these rights. In the Pledge of Allegiance, every American recites that in their country there is “liberty and justice for all,” a statement that is realized by most Americans today. But it was not always this way. Not so long ago in history, police abused suspect’s rights on a regular basis. In the 1930’s, president Hoover established the Wickersham commission, a commission charged with investigating police in America and police brutality, or the “third degree” as it was known at the time. The report found that “the third degree that is, the use of physical brutality, or other forms of cruelty, to obtain involuntary confessions or admissions is widespread.” Police used these tactics because confessions are a pivotal piece of evidence in a criminal trial and a powerful tool for the prosecution. If a criminal admits to his crime, there is not much that the defense can do. The right to protect oneself from giving a confession, or the right against self-incrimination, is guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. “The reality of custodial interrogation in a fair number of places in America was the soul investigation. Crimes were investigated by interrogation and nothing else” (Bob Corbin) The admissibility of the confessions in the first place depended on if they were voluntary or not, which was a vague and elusive concept, subject to the opinion of each judge. The government was clearly ignoring its most important responsibility, the responsibility to safeguard the constitutional rights of all. This abuse of criminal’s rights persisted until the 1960’s, although greatly alleviated by a few Supreme Court cases. While America was in the full swing of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, the future namesake of the Miranda Warnings, Ernesto Miranda, was living the life of the common criminal in Phoenix, Arizona. On March 2, 1963, Miranda kidnapped a woman, took her into the desert, and raped her. Miranda became a part of this unfair justice system a week later when the police showed up at his door and arrested him for his crime. When the police interrogated him later that day, they followed every police procedure and acted completely within the law of the time, and two hours later they came out with a signed confession. The confession outlined all of his crime and was as complete as the police could possibly hope for. In signing the confession, Miranda also signed that he confessed voluntarily and that he understood all of his rights. However, the confession did not say what those rights were and in truth, Miranda did not know his rights. At the Superior Court trial in Maricopa County, the only piece of evidence besides the police and victim’s testimonies used was the confession, there was no physical evidence used so the decision would be based almost entirely on MIranda’s confession. Miranda’s appointed lawyer argued that the confession should be thrown out because Miranda had not been advised of his rights before making the statement. But since the law did not require this at the time, the confession was kept and Miranda was sentenced to twenty to thirty years in prison. A year and a half later, Miranda found himself in front of the Arizona Supreme court with the admissibility of his confession being scrutinized. The Arizona Supreme Court decided that the confession was admissible, but luckily for Miranda, the American Civil Liberties Union, a group devoted to protecting citizen’s rights, caught wind of his trial and decided to provide two lawyers to represent him to try to get the case into the Supreme Court of the United States. The Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, agreed to hear the case because “coerced confessions were the common way in which crime was solved, far too common. Miranda was a case that could be used to address that very large social and legal problem, and the Warren Court knew that” (Gary Stewart). The Warren Court was an activist court, it saw much flaw in police in America and made many changes to police procedure. The Supreme Court at other times would have seen no controversy in Miranda’s case, but the Warren Court seized the opportunity. Critics of the Warren Court said that they made decisions based on what they thought was best and that the reasoning for their decisions was detached from the constitution. Almost six years after he committed the crime, on February 28, 1966, Miranda appeared in front of the Supreme Court. During the hearing, Miranda’s lawyers made the argument that his rights were violated because everyone has the “fifth amendment right, not to incriminate oneself, the right to know you have that right and that of the right to consult with counsel, at the very least, in order so that you can exercise that right” (John Flynn). The majority of the court agreed with Miranda’s lawyers, and three months later in a 5-4 decision they overruled Miranda’s conviction along with three other similar cases on the grounds that that the defendant’s fifth and sixth amendment rights had been violated. They held that “it is clear that Miranda was not in any way appraised of his right to consult with an attorney and to have one present during the interrogation, nor was his right not to be compelled to incriminate himself effectively protected in any other manner. Without these warnings, the statements were inadmissible” (Opinion of the Court). Without these warnings, the statements were inadmissible. They held that police had to inform suspects of their right to remain silent and to have counsel because without this knowledge the suspects could not exercise these rights, and therefore their rights would be obsolete. Also, it addressed the sixth amendment right to counsel. A year before the Miranda decision the supreme court ruled in Escobedo v. Illinois that suspects had the right to counsel during a police interrogation, and the Miranda ruling mandated that suspects be advised of this right. This decision caused widespread public uproar, becoming a topic for newspapers across the US, presidential campaigns, and even US congressional hearings. The public thought that informing criminals of their rights would make it impossible to get a confession, allowing criminals to have wholesale immunuty to punishment because confessions were the most common way in which criminals were prosecuted. The justices with dissenting opinions shared this view- Justice White said in his dissent that “in some unknown number of cases, the Court's rule will return a killer, a rapist or other criminal to the streets and to the environment which produced him, to repeat his crime whenever it pleases him. The public’s prediction that the decision would cripple law enforcement was ultimately untrue. Police learned to work with the decision. They were forced to turn to other, more reliable pieces of hard evidence because confessions became harder to get. “It did make law enforcement to be better law enforcement. They had to learn to become perhaps more professional” (Bob Corbin). The decision made for a fairer trial because before the case, the admissibility of confessions depended on if they were voluntary or not, which could be very subject to opinion. The Miranda decision provided strict guidelines for the police and courts, so that standard procedure could leave no room for a compelled confession, forever protecting the right to remain silent for all Americans. The Miranda decision had a fate of taking America one step closer to having “liberty and justice for all,” but Ernesto Miranda’s fate wasn’t so bright. After having his conviction reversed by the Supreme Court, Miranda was retried for his crimes with different evidence, and sentenced to twenty to thirty years in prison. Eleven years later, he was let out on parole and soon was killed in a bar fight. As the years went by for the Miranda v. Arizona decision, courts later chipped away at it, making multiple exceptions but in the end still keeping its spirit. The Miranda Rights became an icon of American justice in pop culture as time went by, becoming an integral part of American culture and one of the most influential court cases in American history. The Miranda Warnings widespread fame allows them to be a constant reminder to all Americans that their rights are sacred, they prove to the public that the government fulfills its most important responsibility - the responsibility to uphold citizen’s rights. Upholding the constitution and the rights it entails is perhaps the most defining feature of America, one of the only things the things president's swear to do is to “preserve, protect, and defend, the constitution of the United States” (Obama). A reminder of what it means to be an American, these rights exist in order to ensure a fair trial, and as Justice Potter Stewart said, “fairness is what justice really is.” These rights, or liberties, eventually give way to justice, an innate connection between two of the most important American values, a connection made stronger by the Miranda Rights.