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This summer the United States Supreme Court will decide a case which may well change the law of confessions in the federal courts. By reviewing a Richmond, Virginia, court decision, the Supreme Court will decide whether a federal law passed by Congress in 1968 trumps the 1966 Miranda decision. The federal law, Section 3501, allows statements to be used against suspects in a federal prosecution even if the police give no Miranda warnings, as long as the confession was voluntarily given to the police.
FLASH! The Supreme Court has handed down its decision in this case on June 26, 2000.
It can be found immediately following this text, and is titled "Dickerson vs. Miranda"
The defendant, Charles Dickerson, a Maryland man accused of robbing seven banks, made incriminating statements to police even though he may not have received his warnings. Ordinarily, Dickerson's statements would be automatically excluded as evidence. But the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld their admission under a statute passed by Congress in 1968 which intended to overturn Miranda by legislative fiat. Section 3501 was considered "vague and ambiguous" by President Lyndon Johnson who signed it into law in 1968. His advice to federal agents: keep on reading suspects their rights. Until recently, Section 3501 hasn't gotten much push. But the court in Virginia applied it in Dickerson’s case, and some Justices on the United States Supreme Court seem to favor its revival. Said Justice Scalia earlier this year, failure to apply Section 3501 in cases "may have produced . . . the acquittal and nonprosecution of many dangerous felons, enabling them to continue their depredations upon our citizens." On the other side of the fence is the American Civil Liberties Union that believes Section 3501 will lead to "heavy-handed" tactics by police. And that's just what Miranda was supposed to avoid.
But who was Ernesto Miranda anyway, and why did the case warrant such a radical change in the law? He was one of those boys who had been in and out of juvenile courts in his home State of Arizona for more than a decade. Police believed that Miranda was a sexual predator who assaulted and robbed his victims, so they picked him up one night and accused him of rape and kidnaping. The police bluffed Miranda, suggesting that a woman had picked him out of the line-up in which he was placed. Miranda then confessed, a confession he recanted by the time of trial. Miranda's attorney tried to suppress the confession, but the judge allowed it into evidence. Miranda was found guilty in Arizona but his case ultimately reached the United States Supreme Court. Miranda's was one of a number of cases which presented the same problem: the defendants said they had been coerced or tricked into confessing, denied an attorney during questioning, or kept ignorant of their right to remain silent.
On June 13, 1966, the United States Supreme Court overturned Miranda's conviction, and overnight, Ernesto Miranda became America's most famous prisoner. However, his luck did not change with the decision. Even without the confession he made to the police, he was found guilty on remand at his second trial. He served his time, and was freed in December 1972. But in 1978, Ernesto Miranda joined in a fight over a $3 bet at a Phoenix bar. After he went to the washroom to clean the blood off his hands, he was jumped by two men who stabbed him to death. Police picked up a suspect soon thereafter. They read the man his rights, including the one against self-incrimination. He remained silent and went free! Was justice done?
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