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The Miranda Case Fifty Years Later, Yale Kamisar May 2017

The Miranda Case Fifty Years Later, Yale Kamisar

Articles

A decade after the Supreme Court decided Miranda v. Arizona, Geoffrey Stone took a close look at the eleven decisions the Court had handed down “concerning the scope and application of Miranda.” As Stone observed, “[i]n ten of these cases, the Court interpreted Miranda so as not to exclude the challenged evidence.” In the eleventh case, the Court excluded the evidence on other grounds. Thus, Stone noted, ten years after the Court decided the case, “the Court ha[d] not held a single item of evidence inadmissible on the authority of Miranda.” Not a single item. To use …


The Rise, Decline And Fall(?) Of Miranda, Yale Kamisar Jan 2012

The Rise, Decline And Fall(?) Of Miranda, Yale Kamisar

Articles

There has been a good deal of talk lately to the effect that Miranda1 is dead or dying-or might as well be dead.2 Even liberals have indicated that the death of Miranda might not be a bad thing. This brings to mind a saying by G.K. Chesterton: "Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up."4


Miranda's Reprieve: How Rehnquist Spared The Landmark Confession Case, But Weakened Its Impact, Yale Kamisar Jan 2006

Miranda's Reprieve: How Rehnquist Spared The Landmark Confession Case, But Weakened Its Impact, Yale Kamisar

Articles

June marks the 40th anniversary of one of the most praised, most maligned-and probably one of the most misunderstood-U.S. Supreme Court cases in American history, Miranda v. Arizona. The opinion by Chief Justice Earl Warren conditions police questioning of people in custody on the giving of warnings about the right to remain silent, the right to counsel and the waiver of those rights. 384 U.S. 436. This ruling represents a compromise of sorts between the former elusive, ambiguous and subjective voluntariness/totality-of-the-circumstances test and extreme proposals that would have eliminated police interrogation altogether. But William H. Rehnquist didn't see Miranda that …


Miranda And Some Puzzles Of 'Prophylactic' Rules, Evan H. Caminker Jan 2001

Miranda And Some Puzzles Of 'Prophylactic' Rules, Evan H. Caminker

Articles

Constitutional law scholars have long observed that many doctrinal rules established by courts to protect constitutional rights seem to "overprotect" those rights, in the sense that they give greater protection to individuals than those rights, as abstractly understood, seem to require.' Such doctrinal rules are typically called "prophylactic" rules.2 Perhaps the most famous, or infamous, example of such a rule is Miranda v. Arizona,' in which the Supreme Court implemented the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination4 with a detailed set of directions for law enforcement officers conducting custodial interrogations, colloquially called the Miranda warnings. 5


Congress' Arrogance, Yale Kamisar Jan 2000

Congress' Arrogance, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Does Dickerson v. U.S., reaffirming Miranda and striking down §3501 (the federal statute purporting to "overrule" Miranda), demonstrate judicial arrogance? Or does the legislative history of §3501 demonstrate the arrogance of Congress? Shortly after Dickerson v. U.S. reaffirmed Miranda and invalidated §3501, a number of Supreme Court watchers criticized the Court for its "judicial arrogance" in peremptorily rejecting Congress' test for the admissibility of confessions. The test, pointed out the critics, had been adopted by extensive hearings and debate about Miranda's adverse impact on law enforcement. The Dickerson Court did not discuss the legislative history of §3501 at all. However, …


Confessions, Search And Seizure And The Rehnquist Court, Yale Kamisar Jan 1999

Confessions, Search And Seizure And The Rehnquist Court, Yale Kamisar

Articles

About the time William Rehnquist ascended to the Chief Justiceship of the United States, two events occurred that increased the likelihood that Miranda would enjoy a long life. In Moran v. Burbine,' a 6-3 majority held that a confession preceded by an otherwise valid waiver of a suspect's Miranda rights should not be excluded either (a) because the police misled an inquiring attorney when they told her they were not going to question the suspect she called about or (b) because the police failed to inform the suspect of the attorney's efforts to reach him.


The Three Threats To Miranda, Yale Kamisar Jan 1999

The Three Threats To Miranda, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Miranda v. Arizona (1966) was the centerpiece of the Warren Court's "revolution" in American criminal procedure. Moreover, as Professor Stephen Schulhofer of the University of Chicago Law School has recently noted, a numbir of the Miranda safeguards "have now become entrenched in the interrogation procedures of many countries around the world." But Miranda is in serious trouble at home.


The Warren Court And Criminal Justice: A Quarter-Century Retrospective, Yale Kamisar Jan 1995

The Warren Court And Criminal Justice: A Quarter-Century Retrospective, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Many commentators have observed that when we speak of "the Warren Court," we mean the Warren Court that lasted from 1962 (when Arthur Goldberg replaced Felix Frankfurter) to 1969 (when Earl Warren retired). But when we speak of the Warren Court's "revolution" in American criminal procedure we mean the Warren Court that lasted from 1961 (when the landmark case of Mapp v. Ohio was decided) to 1966 or 1967. In its final years, the Warren Court was not the same Court that had handed down Mapp or Miranda v. Arizona.


Remembering The 'Old World' Of Criminal Procedure: A Reply To Professor Grano, Yale Kamisar Jan 1990

Remembering The 'Old World' Of Criminal Procedure: A Reply To Professor Grano, Yale Kamisar

Articles

When I graduated from high school in 1961, the "old world" of criminal procedure still existed, albeit in its waning days; when I graduated from law school in 1968, circa the time most of today's first-year law students were arriving on the scene, the "new world" had fully dislodged the old. Indeed, the force of the new world's revolutionary impetus already had crested. Some of the change that the criminal procedure revolution effected was for the better, but much of it, at least as some of us see it, was decidedly for the worse. My students, however, cannot make the …


Foreword: Brewer V. Williams--A Hard Look At A Discomfiting Record, Yale Kamisar Jan 1977

Foreword: Brewer V. Williams--A Hard Look At A Discomfiting Record, Yale Kamisar

Articles

In recent decades, few matters have split the Supreme Court, troubled the legal profession, and agitated the public as much as the police interrogation-confession cases. The recent case of Brewer v. Williams3 is as provocative as any, because the Supreme Court there revdrsed the defendant's conviction for the "savage murder of a small child" even though no Justice denied his guilt,4 he was warned of his rights no fewer than five times, 5 and any "interrogation" that might have occurred seemed quite mild.6


The Citizen On Trial: The New Confession Rules, Yale Kamisar Jan 1967

The Citizen On Trial: The New Confession Rules, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Commenting on why it has taken the United States so long to apply "the privilege against self-incrimination and the right to counsel to the proceedings in the stationhouse as well as to those in the courtroom" - as the Supreme Court did in Miranda v. Arizona - this author notes that, "To a large extent this is so because here, as elsewhere, there has been a wide gap between the principles to which we aspire and the practices we actually employ."