The Meaning of Miranda
Senator John McCain said yesterday that it would be a serious mistake to read Miranda rights to suspected terrorists. McCain’s virtual comrade-in-arms, Senator Joe Lieberman, thinks we should strip suspected American terrorists of their U.S. citizenship so that they would not enjoy the constitutional rights accorded to citizens.
Here’s the thing about Miranda rights: they are not actually bestowed upon the suspect by reading them. They are rights that the suspect already has, just by virtue of being a suspect in a criminal investigation, and they apply whether they are read or not.
What Miranda does is to construct a presumption that statements given to police while the suspect is in custody were not voluntarily made unless the accused has been informed of his right not to give evidence against himself. It is an application of the Fifth Amendment‘s protections against self-incrimination:
[N]or shall any person…be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself….
A couple of points here: First, the Constitution accords this right to any person, not just citizens. Second, whether certain constitutional rights must be accorded to suspected terrorists is not really a matter of executive discretion. It’s a question for the courts. Miranda rights are not “optional.” The Miranda warnings are optional, in a sense, but if law enforcement opts not to give them, the courts may opt to exclude the accused’s statements from evidence. The court may further exclude the “fruits” of investigative leads derived from the accused’s statements, if it appears the statements were made involuntarily. So, while informing the suspect of these rights may make him less forthcoming, failing to Mirandize him makes it substantially more likely that the evidence obtained will be excluded from prosecution and, thus, more likely that the suspected terrorist will not be convicted.
I think there are some arguable points about the merits of Miranda. But it seems like Miranda hawks (or peacocks?) like McCain and Lieberman are really objecting to the underlying rights accorded to the accused, not to the reading of those rights.
Comments
One Response to “The Meaning of Miranda”
Leave a Reply
About Me
- I write this blog.
-
My twitter feed:
Good points.
The people of the Nutmeg State are at least not paying the Senator directly, so all they are out is sane representation. Now when Joe was the Attorney General they must have really been getting a raw deal.