Criminal Justice: Learning to Live with Miranda

In Miami last week, seven men charged with rape were released with out trial; in Los Angeles, a confessed murderer under sentence of death went free. In Cincinnati, a silent robbery suspect was let go — and promptly committed another crime.

All of these troubling cases were direct results of the Supreme Court’s sweeping decision in Miranda v. Arizona (TIME, June 24). Applying the Fifth Amendment guarantee against selfincrimination, the court ruled that every suspect must now be “warned prior to any questioning that he has the right to remain silent, and that anything he says can be used against him in a court of law, that he has the right to the presence of an attorney, and that if he cannot afford an attorney one will be appointed for him prior to any questioning, if he so desires.”

Damned Public. On one level many policemen agree with the court’s decision. Chief Thomas O’Brien of Somerville, Mass., explains, “A guy who has been through the mill before is not going to talk anyway. Anyone who has had half an education knows his rights, and anyone connected with organized crime isn’t going to talk either. So the only people this really protects are the ignorant, and that’s not a bad thing.”

Even so, Miranda has plunged many police into despair. Omaha’s Public Safety Director Francis Lynch argues, “If we can’t get to the truth, we can’t solve cases. If we can’t talk to the accused, whom can we talk to? The victim is often either dead or missing.” Cincinnati Prosecutor Melvin Rueger complains, “Guilt or innocence is no longer the issue. The prime issue is whether a suspect was searched, interrogated or detained.” Minneapolis Chief Calvin Hawkinson hits the “tone” of the ruling: “The emphasis of the court’s decision is on individual rights and the public be damned, at a time when the crime rate is increasing.”

In an effort to discover just what Miranda means, 900 policemen, prosecutors and lawyers gathered at the University of Michigan last week to hear a panel of experts deliver “an explanation—not a debate.” For many police, it was still hard to take. After hearing a distinguished federal judge defend Miranda, Alex Kloka, an Ohio police chief, said hotly: “That man had tears in his eyes when he talked about the rights of criminals! How do the victims feel? How does a father feel when his daughter is raped, a husband when his wife is killed?” Judge John Van Voorhis of the New York Court of Appeals ended his own speech with the wry comment, “All I can say to the law-enforcement officers who are here is—I wish you well.”

Unanswered Questions. Though Miranda’s specification of police procedure was unusually precise for a Supreme Court decision, Chief Justice Earl Warren’s opinion raised many unanswered questions. Every suspect must now be warned as soon as he is “deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way.” Does this include even a few minutes of street-corner interrogation? How can police obey Miranda’s command to furnish lawyers for indigent suspects? Most communities, especially in the South, have neither money nor means to do so. Says Birmingham Chief Jamie Moore: “We don’t even have a public-defender system.” Yet if no lawyer is available for a suspect who wants one, the police cannot ask him a thing. Equally baffling is how to prove that a suspect who does talk, “knowingly,” waived his rights to silence and to counsel. Unless the police take movies or make tape recordings, they and defendants may be right back where they started: the traditional “swearing contest” in which a court must weigh the policeman’s word against that of the defendant. And what of “poisonous fruits,” meaning an illegal confession’s leads to other telltale evidence? Since the court has not yet said that such fruits of a confession are inadmissible, police will be tempted to use them.

Grim Optimism. The most dramatic example of Miranda’s early effects is the way Chicago police have handled Richard Speck, accused killer of eight nurses, in what the coroner called “the crime of the century.” The police were so fearful of prejudicing their case that they did not even question Speck during the first three weeks after his arrest. Ironically, they seem also to have ignored another historic Supreme Court decision—the recent reversal of Dr. Sam Sheppard’s murder conviction on grounds of “virulent” pretrial publicity. While recoiling from Speck himself, the Chicago police have talked about him enough so that his lawyers may well plead “trial by newspaper.”

In wider perspective, a surprising number of police are grimly optimistic about learning to live with Miranda. “What do you mean, ‘Can we?’ ” asks Florida Sheriff George Leppig. “We have to; it’s the law of the land.” Another Florida police official argues that Miranda will sharpen sleuthing by “getting the guys who depend on confessions off their duffs” and out searching for better evidence. Facing up to harder work than ever, a veteran Manhattan detective says that Miranda “of necessity makes us resort to the sciences.” While all this may produce better policemen, it also requires more policemen—and far higher pay than many communities have yet faced up to.