Could the Reading of Suspects’ Rights Be the Wrong Thing to Do?

In Dickerson vs. United States, an appellate court ruled that a federal statute allows into evidence a voluntary statement by a defendant in which he implicated himself in a bank robbery, even though a Miranda warning apparently was not given.

The case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court, which will determine whether the Constitution requires the exclusion of reliable and voluntary confessions given without a Miranda warning. Under Miranda, discovering the truth has been less important than preserving a defendant’s interest of having incriminating statements, no matter how voluntary, excluded from evidence.

Two years after Miranda, in response to the Supreme Court’s invitation to develop other ways to protect an individual’s privilege against compelled self-incrimination, Congress passed a law now commonly known as 3501. This law provides that a judge, in determining the issue of voluntariness of a confession, shall take into consideration “all of the circumstances surrounding the giving of the confession,” including the presence or absence of the Miranda warning and the defendant’s knowledge of the nature of the offense.

While the law applies only to federal cases, the states can be expected to follow if the Supreme Court upholds it. If that occurs, the Miranda warning still will be given most of the time because that makes it easier for a prosecutor to demonstrate that the confession was voluntary. The National Assn. of Police Organizations has filed an amicus brief in this case, pointing out that the purpose of law enforcement is to uncover truthful information in order to investigate crimes, identify suspects, clear the innocent and convict the guilty, all without coercing incriminating statements. This is why police professionals are trained to avoid practices that would result in involuntary confessions--not only because such statements violate the Constitution but also because they yield unreliable information.

Interrogation of criminal suspects is essential. As the Supreme Court has recognized, admissions of guilt are more than merely desirable: “They are essential to society’s compelling interest in finding, convicting and punishing those who violate the law.” Even when experienced police officers investigate a crime, it often takes a confession or other information obtained from other suspects to solve it. Under Miranda, voluntary, reliable confessions sometimes are excluded from evidence for technical violations, even when there is no suggestion of police wrongdoing, but merely inadvertence or confusion.

Miranda has become a vehicle inviting routine efforts to exclude voluntary confessions. Criminal justice is reduced to a game in which the incantation of magic words offers little, if any, advantage to the innocent but serves instead to give the guilty a sporting chance of going free.

Implicit in the Miranda decision is the notion that a suspect, however guilty, should resist doing the right thing and telling the truth if to do so is not in his or her own self-interest. Miranda’s concern about the suspect’s lack of awareness of information that might prompt him or her not to confess reveals the insidious principle that any confession made in the absence of a lawyer is itself proof of coercion, since it is implied that no rational person would have any reason to voluntarily confess. The National Assn. of Police Organizations believes that it is not wrong to expect any defendant who committed a crime to voluntarily confess to it.

One of the purposes of the 5th Amendment is to curb coercive police practices, not to protect people from themselves. Section 3501 recognizes that a confession may be voluntary, even if the Miranda warning is not given, and that the rigid application of Miranda to automatically exclude relevant evidence, far from benefiting law enforcement, creates an unnecessarily high cost to criminal justice.