The Missing Miranda Warning: Why What You Don’t Know Really Can Hurt You

When the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the consolidated case of Miranda v. Arizona, it registered as a seismic shock through the law enforcement community. This “shock effect” was the result of the broad implications created by the plain language of the ruling and the assumption that it permanently hobbled the efficacy of law enforcement interrogations. According to the Court, protecting the criminal suspect’s Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination required “something more” than the mere availability of the privilege during trial; something to offset the inherent coercion associated with police interrogation. That “something more” became the ubiquitous Miranda warning: unless police interrogators informed a criminal suspect of the essential rights articulated by the Court and obtained an express waiver of those rights, responses to police interrogation would be suppressed based on a presumption that they were the product of coercion.