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| MIRANDA RIGHTS | |
 January 6, 2000 
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Gwen Ifill leads a discussion with two lawyers on each side of the Miranda rights case, which the Supreme Court is scheduled to rule on later this year.
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JIM LEHRER: Now, Gwen Ifill has the Miranda
rights story.
To supporters, Miranda is a safeguard against police abuse; to opponents, a spoiler in hundreds of thousands of criminal cases every year because if the warning is not given or given improperly, a defendant's confession can be thrown out. The Supreme Court agreed earlier this month to take up a challenge to Miranda from Maryland. In it, an accused bank robber's confession was excluded in his trial because police gave him the Miranda warning after they questioned him, not before. |
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| Each side of Miranda | |||||||||||||||||
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Two perspectives now. Paul Cassell, a University of Utah law professor, has been a long time advocate to loosen the Miranda requirement. He will argue the case before the Supreme Court. Steven Shapiro is a legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, and favors keeping Miranda protections in place. Mr. Cassell, what is wrong or right with the Miranda protections as they now stand?
GWEN IFILL: When we speak about Mr. Dickerson, we're talking about the Maryland case. PAUL CASSELL: That's exactly right, yes. GWEN IFILL: Mr. Shapiro, what about you? What do you think is wrong or right? What should be upheld in the Miranda warning?
PAUL CASSELL: Well, there's substantial empirical evidence, that over the last 50 years, Miranda's had a devastating effect on law enforcement. If you look at crime clearance rates -- the rate at which police officers solve crimes -- from 1950 to 1965, it was about 60%, but then fell dramatically after Miranda. And if you work through the numbers, as I have with some econometricians, it turns out that about 70,000 violent criminal cases each year go unsolved because of Miranda. And so it's not a win-win situation, at least if you're willing to go beyond the groups that the ACLU looks at, and look, for example, at victims of crime who are typically poor or racial minorities, residents of inner cities. They're the ones who lose because of Miranda. Criminals are set free and set free to commit their crimes again. That's the problem with Miranda, and that's why I think the Supreme Court will take a hard look at correcting some of the excesses of the decision. GWEN IFILL: Mr. Shapiro, your chance to pony up a little evidence, exactly what evidence is there that defendants' rights would be compromised without Miranda?
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| Are Constitutional rights enough? | |||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: What about the constitutional underpinnings of this case, Mr. Cassell? You'll be arguing this in front of the court. They argue... the Constitution does guarantee a right to remain silent. Is that enough?
STEVEN SHAPIRO: Well, in many circumstances, it is not going to be thrown out. It will not be thrown out if somebody confesses before the police interrogate them; it will not be thrown out if the police give the Miranda warnings before interrogating them. But as you said before, quite properly, Gwen, we do have a constitutional principle that says people have the right to remain silent. And in our system, the government cannot force you to give evidence against yourself. And if that is the constitutional rule, I don't see any basis for objecting to a principle that says people have a right to be informed of their rights. Do we really want to live in a system and live in a society in which the law enforcement depends upon keeping people ignorant of their rights? And let me just say, I don't think you can dismiss the Justice Department brief in this case as politically driven. The fact of the matter is, the law that is now before the Supreme Court was enacted in 1968; it has not been relied on by a single administration, Democrat or Republican, in the intervening 30 years. This is not an issue of politics; this is an issue of constitutional law. And if Miranda were not, in fact, a constitutional ruling, the Supreme Court could not have applied it against the states, as it did in Miranda and as it has done in many cases subsequently. And while it is true that Chief Justice Warren said in Miranda that there's nothing magical about the words and that Congress and the state legislatures could adopt equally effective safeguards to protect the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, that is not what Congress did in the statute. Congress did not adopt any safeguard at all. Instead, it went back to a general test of voluntariness, which was precisely the test that the Supreme Court had rejected in Miranda. So what you have here now is a situation where Congress has purported to overrule the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution, and that is something that Congress does not have the authority to do in our system. GWEN IFILL: Mr. Cassell, Mr. Shapiro just referred to Earl Warren's reference to there not being any magic in the words, but certainly Americans have gotten used to the idea that these words represent some sort of protection of their basic rights. How do you argue that that's not true?
It's simply not the case to say, as Steven has, that no administration has ever relied on this law. In fact, if you go back as far as 1969, you'll find that the Nixon administration litigated this law all over the country. In 1975, the Tenth Circuit out here in Denver, upheld the law. So, it has been used actually for about 25 or 30 years. It was even used during the start of the Clinton administration. They've just made the political decision not to enforce this act of Congress. I'm confident that the Supreme Court will agree that this is a constitutional law. |
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| Voluntary versus coerced confessions | |||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: It seems that we keep coming back to the question of voluntary versus coerced confessions. Mr. Shapiro, how exactly and who gets to decide what a voluntary confession is -- something someone says of their own free will -- and what a coerced confession is, that presumably law enforcement officials forced out of someone? STEVEN SHAPIRO: Well, ultimately it's the courts that decide. And one of the things that produced the Miranda rule was, in fact, the difficulty of determining whether a confession is voluntary or a confession is coerced, given what the Supreme Court described as the inherently coercive atmosphere of custodial interrogations -- station house interrogations.
GWEN IFILL: Mr. Cassell, if you make your case before the Supreme Court, you argue that people will still continue to give the Miranda warning. If you don't make your case against the Supreme Court, the chance is that the Supreme Court will uphold the law as it currently stands. So, why is this at the Supreme Court? Why does this have to be argued? PAUL CASSELL: Well, I think the key issue is exactly what Steven just said -- should a perfectly voluntary confession be thrown out. He said that no one would argue against that. In fact, in this case, Mr. Dickerson's lawyer -- the case out of Maryland -- Mr. Dickerson's lawyer is arguing to throw out this confession that all the courts have found to be voluntary. And that raises fundamental questions about our criminal justice system: Are we going to make the search for truth the overriding and central focus of criminal justice? For too long, we've diverted our attention. We've looked at some of these side issues, these side issues and ancillary questions. This case presents an opportunity for the Supreme Court to clearly say, "We're going to make the search for truth the key issue, and we're going to give juries all reliable evidence to make that decision." GWEN IFILL: Steven Shapiro, Paul Cassell, thank you both very much. PAUL CASSELL: Thank you. |
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GWEN
IFILL: Four sentences repeated so often on cop shows and in movies that
Americans assume they are an essential protection. "You have the
right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against
you. You have the right to talk with a lawyer before being questioned
and to have the lawyer present during the questioning. If you cannot
afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you before questioning begins."
This is the Miranda warning dating from the 1966 Supreme Court decision
in Miranda versus Arizona. 
PAUL
CASSELL: Well, there are some things that are right. Giving Miranda
warnings has not proven to be a problem. What has proven to be a problem
is the exclusionary rule feature of Miranda. That is the feature that
throws out perfectly voluntary confession. For example, in this case,
all the courts have agreed that Mr. Dickerson's confession is voluntary,
and yet now for two and a half years there's been litigation over "what
time did he give his Miranda warning?" Congress has said, "let's
let in perfectly voluntary confessions." And that's what I'm optimistic
the Supreme Court will uphold. 
STEVEN
SHAPIRO: Well, I think the Miranda decision itself ought to be upheld.
And you know, Gwen, it's odd to me that this controversy has even arisen,
because Miranda really is a win-win situation. It gives the police a
clear set of rules to follow. If anything, it makes it easier to admit
confessions at trial, as long as the police obey the rules. It is fair
to defendants because it informs them of their rights. It protects the
basic Fifth Amendment right against self- incrimination. And it promotes
a sense of fairness, integrity in the criminal justice system. And so,
unlike Paul, I'm actually quite optimistic that this Supreme Court will
reaffirm the core of the Miranda holding. 
GWEN
IFILL: Mr. Cassell, your argument, as I understand it is that, at least
in part, that there are so many technicalities that Miranda is used
as a technicality to throw cases out. What evidence is there of that?
PAUL
CASSELL: Well, as the court has repeatedly said about Miranda rights
is that they're not constitutional rights. They're simply safeguards
that the Court has created. And one of the little-known facts about
Miranda is that Chief Justice Warren, himself, in the Miranda opinion,
invited Congress to come in and adopt alternative approaches for dealing
with this problem. So the law that we're talking about here -- the voluntary
confessions law -- was enacted at the express invitation of Congress.
And I think also, we're going to see considerable support for the law
throughout the law enforcement community. It's true that the politically
driven brief filed by the Justice Department supports Miranda, but the
career people in the Justice Department -- the criminal division, U.S.
attorneys around the country-- support the position I'm arguing. The
National District Attorneys Association supports it. Many of the nation's
largest law enforcement groups support it as well. So, when you talk
about where rank and file law enforcement officers are, what they say
is, "look, we'll continue to give Miranda warning, but don't throw
out a perfectly voluntary confession because there's some technicality
involved or technical question about how it was obtained." 
GWEN
IFILL: Well. That leads exactly to the next question here, Mr. Shapiro:
If someone confesses to a crime, actually says, "yes, I did it,"
and it's someone who you have every reason to believe did do the crime,
why should that be thrown out? 
PAUL
CASSELL: Well, I argue, in fact, it is true. And you'll actually see
many of those same words in the law that I'm defending. Congress passed
a law that included many of the same rights that are included in the
Miranda opinion. And so what you find in the law itself, voluntary confessions
law, is that the evidence can be used if police officers give warnings,
and to look at all of the factors. So police officers are going to continue
to give warnings if this law is upheld. That's not an issue today. What
is an issue is whether a perfectly voluntary confession from indisputably
guilty criminals can be thrown out because of some technical issue.
