The Miranda case was controversial when it was decided, and guess what? It's still controversial today. Yeah, no one's surprised. It's a Supreme Court case, after all.

Here are some of the serious questions still being debated from this case:

• Do criminals deserve Constitutional rights? 
• Should it be the job of the police to remind us of our rights? 
• Do we deserve our rights if we don't know them?
• Whose responsibility should it be to be educated on our rights? 
• Should police be allowed to put a little pressure on suspects in order to get a confession? 
• How helpful should we be towards suspects who may be guilty? 
• What about suspected terrorists? Do we have different standards for interrogation?

Sounds like a bunch of stuff people would have opinions about, huh?

Hoo-boy, yes.

Whose Rights are These, Anyway?

Not everyone agrees that the Miranda rights are for, well, everyone.

Remember the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings? There was a manhunt for the Tsarnaev brothers after the bombing, and one of them was injured and taken to a hospital. He was read his rights according to the Miranda rule, and he then stopped speaking with the authorities. Loads of people felt that a terrorist involved in attacking American citizens shouldn't get the privilege of American rights like the Miranda warning—we were seriously letting this guy get off without talking?

In 2015 and 2016, the issue came up again. During the presidential race, Marco Rubio said: "If you're an American citizen and you decide to join up with ISIS. We're not going to read you your Miranda rights. You're going to be treated as an enemy combatant, a member of an army attacking this country." (Source) So yeah, Rubio was pretty clear where he stood on the situation.

And that's why we're still talking about it today.

Right Turns on Rights

The Miranda Warning, which was considered a liberal decision, is still being debated more officially in the courts. In 2003, there were two criminal cases that challenged the specifics of the Miranda Warning.

• In a Colorado case, a man wasn't read his rights because he said that he knew his rights. Does someone saying "I know my rights" mean the police are now free to use a confession? Tricky. 
• In a Missouri case, a woman was questioned "informally" without being read her rights, and she confessed in an emotional state. Does an "informal" conversation need to have Miranda rights read first? Or just "formal" conversations? What's the difference between those types of conversations?

As time has passed, the Supreme Court has made some changes to the Miranda ruling. In a 2010 case, a suspect had been read his rights, and then didn't say a word for hours. When he finally made some self-incriminating statements, he tried to have them suppressed under the Fifth Amendment. Writing the Opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy said, "A suspect who has received and understood the Miranda warnings, and has not invoked his Miranda rights, waives the right to remain silent by making an uncoerced statement to police."

In other words, a suspect has to verbally and unambiguously assert the right to remain silent and have an attorney; otherwise it's assumed to be waived. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor didn't get it; she thought it was "counterintuitive" for a suspect to have to speak in order to have the right to remain silent. She thought this ruling stripped Miranda of its protections. (Source)

You could say that the more Conservative SCOTUS of today, compared to the liberal Warren Court, seems inclined to hand power back to law enforcement officials by reading Miranda v. Arizona more narrowly. Back in the day, the major criticism of the ruling, by the dissenting justices as well as more conservative lawmakers, was the the ruling was a gift to criminals.

Moral of the story: as the political winds shift, so do interpretations of the law.

Interrogation, Chicago-Style

Regardless of how Miranda's being interpreted today, the problems of false confessions and violation of the rights of detainees are still a pretty big issue. The U.S. Department of Justice is taking a close look at Cook County (home of Chicago), which one civil rights instructor called "the false confession capital of the world" (source). One attorney with a local legal aid service thought that 99% of detainees were being held "incommunicado," i.e. not being able to call anyone or talk to an attorney.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed a task force to look into how the police were handling interrogations, because too many detainees had said that, when they asked for an attorney, they faced a lot of hostility from the police. It was their word against the police's word.

Yeah, sounds like we still need Miranda.

Does It Even Matter?

Yale Law Professor Steven Duke wrote in 2007 that the Miranda rules don't protect any suspects, innocent or guilty, when they get to trial.

Why not?

Well, he thinks that since the ruling, the whole idea of whether a confession is voluntary or reliable is pretty much ignored. Research has shown that judges and juries tend to believe confessions, and if they hear that a subject has been read their Miranda rights, that's that. The confession is voluntary and therefore true. Duke says that even though Warren wrote at length about the pressures suspects are under during interrogation in custody, all courts remember about the decision is the five-point warning.

Very few confessions have been suppressed in court since Miranda. Duke writes:

If warnings were delivered by the police and a waiver was given or signed, it is almost impossible to persuade a judge that the resultant confession or admission is "involuntary." (Source)

But he points out that the question of voluntariness of confessions is very complicated. You can be read your rights but falsely confess for a lot of reasons—wanting the attention, mental illness, fatigue from a lengthy interrogation. Plus, you can be read your rights, but then later be persuaded or subtly pressured and manipulated by your interrogators into making self-incriminating statements. Confessions are unreliable.

But since Miranda, courts don't have to think about that stuff.

Duke thinks that Miranda resulted in juries and judges ignoring the whole question of the unreliability of confessions. He writes, "we should focus on ways to help the jury determine whether incriminating statements were made and what weight should be given to them" (source). Instead of relying on Miranda Warnings, he thinks that other procedures would protect suspects better: videotaping interrogations, limiting the length of interrogations, cautioning juries about the unreliability of confessions, and having expert witnesses who might testify at trial to the mental state of the accused.

Duke thinks that, contrary to critics of Miranda who think that the ruling gave bad guys a reason to clam up, the ruling may even encourage suspects to talk rather than remain silent. He imagines a situation where a police officer reads a suspect his or her rights and offers a free lawyer—the interrogator's reassuring the suspect that the police are candid, fair and reasonable, respectful of his rights, and willing to help. If delivered in the right tone of voice, it might even imply that the interrogators are sympathetic to the suspect's situation and just want to help. The possible result? The suspects talk more, not less.

Made for TV

If you've never seen any crime TV, go get on your butt and try it out. You won't regret it. Also, check out the exact wording. We bet you could memorize it, though most police even carry a card to read from so that they can't be accused of leaving out a key word.