Miranda Who?

After three decades of TV cop shows, the “Miranda warning” is almost as familiar as the Pledge of Allegiance. “You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to a lawyer and to have a lawyer present during questioning. . . . “

But despite U.S. Supreme Court insistence that police explicitly advise suspects that they have a constitutional right not to incriminate themselves, the Miranda warning is sometimes little more than words.

The California Supreme Court heard arguments last month in a case that threatens to expose an open but nasty secret in some police departments: officers who deliberately ignore their own Miranda warnings by continuing to interrogate suspects after they have asked for a lawyer.

The case is an appeal from defendant Airrique Peevy’s 1995 trial for attempted robbery. A detective with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department admitted that he continued the interrogation after Peevy had been informed of his Miranda rights and had asked for a lawyer; eventually the detective elicited incriminating statements that helped result in Peevy’s conviction.

The state high court must rule on the case within 90 days.

Similarly disturbing police behavior is at issue in a recent federal civil rights suit stemming from two other cases. In one, Santa Monica police detectives persuaded a man who had asked for a lawyer to nonetheless confess by telling him that his words could not be used against him.

As isolated incidents, the actions of police in situations like this are troubling enough. But the behavior becomes unconscionable as a deliberate strategy. Sadly, in some police departments, that’s what appears to have happened. At seminars throughout California, detectives and prosecutors have been taught that Miranda need not be an obstacle. Training materials used by several departments, including the Los Angeles and Santa Monica police departments, encourage officers to continue questioning a suspect after he asks for a lawyer.

A string of past state and federal court decisions already have weakened the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1966 Miranda ruling by narrowing the definition of custody, the situation in which an officer must issue the Miranda warning. Moreover, police are required to only read the warning, not guarantee that a suspect understands it even when the suspect is retarded, not fluent in English or seriously hurt.

As Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote 32 years ago, the “interrogation environment is created for no purpose other than to subjugate the individual to the will of his examiner. . . . This is not physical intimidation, but it is equally destructive of human dignity. The current practice of incommunicado interrogation is at odds with one of our nation’s most cherished principles--that the individual may not be compelled to incriminate himself.”

The California Supreme Court should begin now to correct the damage that’s been done.