Before the Honorable Supreme Court before the United States are admonished to give their attention. Landmark cases, cspans special history series produced in cooperation with the National Constitution center, exploring the human stories and constitutional dram as behind 12 historic Supreme Court decisions. Number 759, earnest miranda petitioner, versus arizona. We hear arguments of roe against wade. Quite often the most famous decisions are ones the court took that were quite unpopular. Lets go through a few cases that illustrate very dramatically and visually what it means to live in a society of 310 million different people who helped stick together because they believed in a rule of law. Good evening and welcome to cspan and the National Constitution centers landmark cases series. Tonight case number 11 out of 12 and this is a 1966 case, miranda versus arizona that helped to revolutionize policing in america. Youre under arrest. You have the right to an attorney. You have the right to remain silent and anything you say can be used in a court of law. Do you even know the miranda rights . Yes. We have a lot of stuff to do. Go ahead. Are you sure you understand your rights. Oh, yes. Yes. He explained them to me just like they do on television. Ive done nothing wrong. The right to remain silent. Talk to my lawyer. You have the right to an attorney. Anything you say may be used against you. Sergeant hoffman . You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to remain silent and anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak with an attorney as you can see, miranda rights became part of our national culture. Were going to learn the story of them tonight from our two guests. Let me introduce them to you. Jeffrey rosen returns to the table president and ceo of the National Constitution center and for you regular viewers you know they are a partner in this series and he is a Supreme Court expert and author of numerous books including the Supreme Court the personalities and rivalries that defined america. Thank you to be back. Great to be back. Former federal judge for the district of utah from 2002 to 2007 and also served as u. S. Associate Deputy Attorney general from 86 to 88 and now hes a professor of criminal law and procedure at the university of utah law school. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. So what are the constitutional issues in the miranda case . Miranda settles or tries to settle a question thats been around the country for several hundred years now. The question is how much pressure can Police Officers put on a suspect when theyre trying to get information from that suspect and what sorts of rules are going to regulate other confessions that can be used in court . As weve talked about in this series, so many amendments to the constitution concerned criminal rights and rights of prosecution law. What is it about this case that made it landmark . As the opening clip shows. Its transformed the culture and look at all of the tv shows that gave the miranda rights and i was trying before the show to see if i can do it by heart. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. How did i do . Good. It is so simple to the culture that when chief Justice Rehnquist reaffirmed miranda he said as you did in your opening, the case has come to be accepted by the culture. How many cases can we say about that . Before we get to the story of Ernesto Miranda how can we get into the 1940s, 50s and 60s policing in this country. We are in a debate about policing tactics and one really evolved in the 60s. Why is that . I think what happened in the country as we saw already significant improvement in police force in policing in this country. In the 1930s the third degree, putting pressure, threats to try to get confessions was a fairly widespread tactic, but then as you move forward in the 40s, and the 50s and the 60s those tactics started to essentially disappear and then the question was, all right if pressure isnt going to be used in the form of physical threats to get confessions, the Police Officers will use psychological tactics to get confessions and what kind of regulation should there be on those techniques . That was the issue that miranda had to wrestle with. Jeff rosen, when youre looking at that country during that period of time . Were there regional aspects of this . Were there cases after jim crow who perhaps blacks in the south would have had problems or was this uniform . Theres a huge debate about Police Brutality and it focuses on the south. So as paul said in the 1930s, the court had a broad standard that confession his to be voluntary. You couldnt use the third degree and literally beat a confession out of people, but its 1961 and the Civil Rights Commission issues a report and theres still a debate about how much is going on and in the face of this there is a criminal procedure revolution of the war in court and it issues a decision in 1961, basically applying the exclusionary rule to the states in 1963. It says you have to have a lawyer present during the Police Interrogation and the gideon case says that you have to have a courtappointed lawyer and basically, the Supreme Court led by warren is using the constitution and the fourth and fifth amendment to address what it perceives to be a real problem with Police Brutality in the south and this is the background in which this case is decided. So well spend more time in the war in court and why they took this case on, but lets tell Ernesto Mirandas story. Who is he . Also, youve got to look at not just miranda, but as well at his victim and we can talk about her shortly, but miranda was a repeat criminal. Someone who had been arrested, convicted, sentenced a number of times and i think its fair to say a drifter who really didnt have established employment or any place to work and then on the night in question, he at knife point abducted a young woman and raped her and thats the backdrop thats here and just talking about the war in court revolution and i think of the other thing thats going on simultaneously with miranda committing this Violent Crime is skyrocketing in america in the 1960s and whether its the war in court or Something Else or a little bit of both thats responsible for that, and that, of course, is part of the backdrop, too. The date in question, 1963. The womans name is patricia, 18 years old leaving work at the paramount Movie Theater in phoenix, arizona, and on the way home she was kidnapped, raped, robbed and driven to her house and we have serious accusations for very serious crimes. How did this then proceed from here . So the following week theres another robbery and some witnesses see a car that seems to belong to miranda at a bus stop. The police check out the car and they go to the place where hes living and talk to his girlfriend and she essentially fingers him. Hes accused and is taken to the station. There is a dispute as to whether or not hes told his rights and some states did it and others didnt and the fbi did rewrite at the time and essentially he signs a confession saying i did it and hes convicted and he claimed he was never read his rights and thats when the case began. We visit the Phoenix Police department and what makes this really interesting is that the detective who arrested Ernesto Miranda is still very much with us, still with the Phoenix Police department and he gave us a tour because this is very much a part of the Police DepartmentsNational History and theyve got a display there. He tells us the story from the Police Departments point of view. Lets watch. When she first looked at the lineup she said it looks like the number 1 guy, the number 1 guy was ernie miranda, and i asked her, are you sure . And she says, well, it looks like him, but maybe if i heard his voice i might be able to make a positive. I didnt say anything when we went back into the room and i waited for a while and i wasnt quite sure what i was going to say and ernie asked me, how did i do . And i said, well you didnt do so good, ernie. He said i guess i better tell you about it, then. I said that would be a good idea, and he did. He told us about the kidnapping, rape and robbery. After he told us i said would you sign a written confession which says in the beginning of the report of the form, i give this statement voluntarily without coercion or threats or promises of immunity knowing my legal rights and he wrote the statement all on one short page. The writing was excellent, and the spelling was excellent, and the description of the act was accurate. This is the entrance into the old city jail on the fifth floor of the old city county courthouse and building. Miranda would have been brought in here and he would have been processed just like every other prisoner. He would have been searched and them he would have been transported or taken over, shown his new quarters which is over here. We have four identical tanks. This particular tank here would have been where miranda was kept and it would have been what we call the felony tank. So he would have been booked into here. Ernie would have spent a week and it may have been only a couple of days. So that is retired detective carol coolly from the Phoenix Police department. You teach procedure, so we saw the signed confession. What is it about that that right off the bat led the system to get interested in this . Its almost the perfect test case because this isnt a case where someone was beaten to get a confession. Instead, the police came in and they used some tricks and said look, shes identified you as the one who raped her. You might as well tell us what happened. So it presents the issue of was psychological pressure brought to bear in a way that meant that the confession shouldnt be used . And of course, one of the other interesting things that well see as the program unfolds tonight is miranda ends up radically changing the rules. In 1963 when this interrogation took place there wasnt a single precedent in america that would support throwing that kind of a confession out. For 170 years those kinds of statements had been routinely admitted in court and i think thats when chief Justice Warren and others started getting interested in this issue. Miranda had two trials. One, the robbery trial of barbara and the other the rape trial of patricia in june 1963. What happened to him . Well, he was challenged on sixth amendment grounds because the court said you can have a right to counsel during interrogation and the first up, he was convicted on both of those, right . He was indeed. And he was convicted and sentenced to 20 to 25 years on the robbery and also in the kidnapping, rape and was scheduled to serve them all concurrently in june of 63. So then we go to the challenge. We go to the challenge and the Appellate Court, and its the arizona Supreme Court. The constitutional issue is the sixth amendment and the court summarily rejects the claim that the confession isnt properly put in evidence and the detectives informed him of his legal rights and the only question was it in violation of the sixth amendment and it may be admissible and made without an attorney and does not violate the Constitutional Rights of the defendant. The sixth amendment says what . The sixth amendment says you have the right to effective assistance of counsel and the argument that mirandas lawyers aric maing us look, when hes talking to detective coolly a moment ago, he didnt have a lawyer then and he should have had a lawyer at that point and for 170 years in american history, the rule has always been, you get a lawyer once you go to court once charges have been filed and historically, the sixth amendment would have been in play and neither would the fifth amendment. You have the right not to be compelled to be a witness against you and witnessing has always occurred in court. So under the precedence that he existed, this isnt the problem at all to use the confession of Ernesto Miranda and thats why theyre looking for creative theorys to try to present to the Supreme Court. For the Young Lawyers in the audience we want to explain how the process worked. He didnt have his appeal upheld. How does it make its way from there to the federal Supreme Court . You have to file a petition for certiorari and just a few years earlier in the gideon case by Anthony Lewis book gideons trumpet which everyone should read if they havent yet. Gideon hand wrote a petition saying i was wrongly convicted because i didnt have a lawyer for my defense and the court overturning the previous rule said that you are entitled to courtappointed counsel. So here the aclu got interested and they brought in a lawyer called john frank who is an arizona lawyer and clerked for justice black and wrote a biography of him and was a yale law professor and a very distinguished constitutional scholar and john frank decided to bring in local counsel and a guy named john flinn could argue it very well and once we got the big guns interested. And he ended up not arguing the case and he popped up later in the National Scene because he served in counsel for anita hill in the confirmation hearings. A very distinguished lawyer and miranda goes from someone who is in the bowels of the Interrogation Room to Maricopa County and they have one of the most highpowered legal teams imaginable on the Supreme Court. Warbo has been watching us and been active on twitter. Miranda was a rapist, kidnapper and armed robber and its the defense of bad people that upholds liberty for us all. There have never been a rule that the statement of the type that miranda was making would not be admissible in court. In fact, if you go around the world today its very hard to find a country that would exclude the kind of statement that miranda gave. So certainly, theres no debate that its important to protect the liberty of all persons even those who were accused of crimes and the problem with miranda is it just goes so far and the pendulum swings so far in the direction of protecting suspects interests that people like patricia, the woman who was raped were given a short shift in the decision. I should note that in the decision itself chief Justice Warren disagrees and he said that at the time the fbi was routinely giving winnings like this and he quotes the experience of other countries and says that england since the turn of the century had been given similar warnings so well have a good discussion on how rooted it was in the fifth and sixth amendment, but its not true that warren was completely making this up out of thin air. Certainly with respect to warnings, its true that the fbi was given warnings and the problem with miranda is not reading a few words off the car and you have the right to remain silent. And the problem with miranda is the exclusionary aspects of it and it sets up rules that says you cant question certain people and you reduce certain things, evidence cant be used and its the procedural apparatus thats associated with miranda that frankly today means tens of thousands of criminal cases were going unsolved every year because of the procedural requirements. Lets get back to that later on when we talk about the consequences of this and the other decisions from the war in court. First i want to talk about the war in court. The last case that we did in this series was 1962 and there are a couple of new justices that have been appointed then. Byron white was a kennedy appointee. How does the dynamic of the court change with these new additions. Fortis had been appointed to represent gideon. He is interested in criminal procedure and hes an lbj supporter and he got into trouble when lbj nominated him to be chief justice for both advising lbj on the side and for some other matters, but hes someone who is very committed to the warren courts procedural revolution. Byron white, not so much. He was kennedys only appointee, Rhodes Scholar and very deferential to pro Law Enforcement and is in dissent in miranda. So there was a balance on both sides, but essentially the most striking thing about the court deciding miranda is look at all of the former judges and politicians on this court. Hugo black, former police court judge, he saw the third degree first hand and there are so many that our viewers have to see, but the great biography of hugo black which describes how as a lawyer he is trying a hispanic defendant and he brings the defendant up and he closes the shades so the defendant looks menacing and doesnt say anything and he says i wanted to take the jury to take a look at that man and he later regrets that kind of behavior ask as a police court judge he thought he saw how the system could be abused and the third degree is used. Tom clarke, a former politician, as well and most important, of course, we have to talk about earl warren who is the District Attorney of alameda county. He actually prosecuted these people. Hes acutely sensitive in a previous case called spano which we can talk about about how defendants can be sentenced for a huge amount of time because of procedural factors and these are practical politicians and they know how the system works. I want to talk