Controversy
Over the Court's Decision
The
Court's decision in Miranda was met with criticism
when it was handed down in 1966, and it continues to be controversial
today. In this exercise you will read some recent pieces of
commentary on the decision and its effect on law enforcement.
Decide whether the writer is supporting (pro) or criticizing
(con) the decision in Miranda. Write a paragraph expressing
your opinion about the decision.
Read each selection, then write "Pro" or "Con"
in the right-hand column. Sources are listed below.
| 1 |
".
. . the idealistic impulse toward protecting individuals
from overbearing state authority has resulted in a system
where we deny people the opportunity to take responsibility
for their criminal acts. In our system, a man or woman
who takes responsibility must be crazy!"
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| 2 |
"[T]here
is little evidence that a significant number of guilty
people are going free because of the Miranda
warning. The chief reason for this is that, contrary
to expectations, most people under arrest do not keep
their mouths shut and do not ask for a lawyer, even
though it is almost always in their interest to do so."
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| 3 |
"Our
citizens' confidence in the criminal justice system
will be strengthened by ensuring that the rules will
be fair to crime victims as well as suspects; will protect
the public by helping convict those who voluntarily
confess their guilt; and will promote honesty and accuracy
in criminal trials by allowing the jury to hear all
truthful evidence. . . A society that beats confessions
out of suspects has lost its morals. But a society that
rejects a suspect's voluntarily given confession has
lost its marbles.”
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| 4 |
"When
people around the world go to the movies, they see a
bad guy who has just murdered a nun, impaled a policeman
and blown up a school, collared by Eastwood or Stallone
or Tommy Lee Jones. What are the first words out of
the good guy's mouth? 'You have the right to remain
silent.' The viewer has to wonder what kind of political
paradise America really is. People seeing this in Belgrade
and Harare and Kuala Lumpur, places where the innocent
get whacked and beaten and tortured at the whim of the
authorities, can only be awestruck at a country that
treats even its monsters with such delicacy."
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| 5 |
"Who
invokes their right to remain silent or, especially,
their right to counsel? The usual suspects: the hardened
criminals, the ones who have been through the system
many times before or who come into it well-heeled and
well-counseled. These offenders don't need the warnings
to understand their rights, and they are quick to assert
them. For all the rest, Miranda amounts to little
more than red tape, just another part of the ritual
of putting on the handcuffs and making the trip to the
station . . . Miranda does little, if anything,
to protect the most vulnerable suspects."
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| 6 |
"In
the common view, Miranda was necessary to protect
accused criminals from being forced to confess through
coercion or torture. Everyone is justifiably horrified
at the possibility of punishing an innocent man. In
order to avoid this extreme injustice, it was argued,
it might be necessary at first to let a few obviously
guilty murderers, rapists, and robbers go free on 'technicalities,'
while the police 'learned the ropes.' . . . Yet twenty
years later, the police still seem to 'make mistakes'
all the time. Confessions are continually ruled inadmissible
because they have been 'coerced.'. . . Investigations
carried out under highly trained prosecutors often fail
to issue in a conviction because the investigators did
not 'observe the defendant's constitutional rights.'"
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| 7 |
"Unless
Miranda warnings are a totally impotent gesture
. . . there must be some percentage of suspects who
invoke their right to remain silent who would not have
done so. Some subset of that group, in turn, presumably
would have gone on to make truthful confessions that
would not have been 'involuntary' in the classic beaten-out-of-him
sense. And in some subcategory of that subset, the confession
would have been crucial to building a case against that
suspect."
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-
Rothwax, Harold. Guilty: The Collapse of Criminal Justice.
New York:
Random House, 1996, p. 79.
- "A
Pillar of the Law Assailed." Economist 12/11/99 v
353 i8149 p. 23.
-
Otis, William G. "Miranda: Morals and Marbles."
The Washington Post 24
November 1999: A23.
- Krauthammer,
Charles. "Supreme Hypocrisy." The Washington
Post 30 June 2000: A31.
- Coughlin,
Anne M., "Miranda Only Works for the Usual Suspects."
The
Washington Post 12 December 1999: B1.
-
Tucker, William, "True Confessions: The Long Road
Back from Miranda."
National Review 18 October 1985: 28.
-
Parloff, Roger, "Miranda on the Hot Seat." New
York Times Magazine 26
September 1999: 84-87.
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