After Charles Dickerson was convicted, he took his case to the United States Supreme Court on the issue of whether Congress could legislatively overrule the Supreme Court's Miranda dictates. The Court resoundingly upheld its own 1966 decision in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), and the District Court's decision to suppress Dickerson's confession thus stood. Read the decision of the Supreme Court by clicking on Dickerson vs. Miranda.

Now we go back to trial, and after the prosecution presented its evidence–minus Dickerson's confession–it became time for the defense to put on its case. Because Dickerson's cousin, James Rochester, had stated that Dickerson had been his regular driver ("wheel man") when conducting robberies, the defense strategy was to put Dickerson himself on the stand to allow him to give the court and jury his side of the story. He explained that he really was attending beauty school or at work when Rochester committed all these robberies, and presented some documentary evidence that seemed to support that testimony.

Testifying in his own behalf may have been a poor strategic choice, depending on how one views the result. Once Dickerson took the stand, the prosecution was permitted to introduce his earlier confession, which the Government was unable to use in its case in chief, as impeachment material – to show that he had previously made an inconsistent statement. In the case of Harris v. New York, 401 U.S. 222 (1971) and several subsequent decisions, the Supreme Court had held that an otherwise voluntary confession obtained in violation of a defendant's Miranda rights and therefore inadmissible as evidence of guilt, was nevertheless admissible to impeach the defendant if he takes the stand in his own behalf and testifies inconsistently.

That's what happened here, folks! The same confessions that was the subject of the challenge in the earlier United States Supreme Court decision in Dickerson v. United States, came in to impeach the witness. And, on October 6, 2000, the jury convicted him of conspiracy, bank robbery and a gun charge. But they also acquitted him of helping cousin Rochester hold up two other Northern Virginia banks, and related gun charges.

According to a report in the Washington Post of October 7 (page B01), Dickerson's attorney claimed that the result was a good one, since the acquittal on some of the charges saved Dickerson at least an additional 40 years in prison. He is still subject to a dozen or so years in prison at the sentencing hearing scheduled to commence on December 15.

We'll leave it up to you to decide whether Dickerson won or lost. Certainly, whether winning his Miranda challenge in the United States Supreme Court did him any good is open to question. Perhaps, after he is sentenced and begins to pursue the inevitable post conviction remedies, he will accuse his defense lawyers of incompetent advice in letting him take the stand in his own behalf!