Court To Revisit Its Miranda Ruling

By Richard Carelli Associated Press Writer Monday, Dec. 6, 1999; 6:52 p.m. EST

WASHINGTON  The Supreme Court, confronting its landmark Miranda ruling head-on, agreed Monday to decide whether police still must warn criminal suspects they have a "right to remain silent" and to get a lawyer's help.

The justices said they will rule by summer on whether Congress in 1968 effectively overturned the 1966 decision, familiar not only to police and suspects but to generations of Americans who have witnessed countless arrests in movies and on television.

Clinton administration lawyers are refusing to defend the anti-Miranda law enacted by Congress, but a federal appeals court upheld it earlier this year  setting the stage for this constitutional showdown.

The court, far more liberal 33 years ago than it is today, sought to remedy "inherently coercive" interrogations by requiring police to inform criminal suspects of their rights before questioning them. Failure to give the warnings can result in evidence  a confession or some incriminating statement  being lost to prosecutors.

But in a surprising ruling earlier this year, the conservative 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a long-ignored 1968 federal law known as Section 3501 means failure to issue Miranda warnings no longer requires automatic exclusion of evidence in federal prosecutions.

That ruling would let prosecutors use incriminating statements that Charles Dickerson of Takoma Park, Md.  accused in seven bank robberies in Maryland and Virginia  made to FBI agents even though he may not have received a proper Miranda warning.

The appeals court's rationale would apply to state prosecutions as well. By an 8-5 vote last February, it said Section 3501 made failing to give Miranda warnings just one of several factors in deciding whether statements to police were made voluntarily.

Section 3501 says "the presence or absence" of any factor such as a Miranda warning "need not be conclusive on the issue of voluntariness."

Neither Dickerson nor the federal prosecutors who had opposed his appeal focused on the 1968 law. But University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell, representing the conservative Washington Legal Foundation as a friend of the court, sought to revive the dormant Section 3501.

He succeeded in the 4th Circuit court and was appointed Monday to defend the law when the case is argued before the nation's highest court in March or April.

"We're cautiously optimistic about our chances of winning," Cassell said after learning of the court's action. "This is an issue that has been waiting to be decided for over 30 years. The court today is much more sensitive to the need for confessions, which are vital to solving large numbers of criminal cases," he said.

The Miranda decision, named for the late Ernesto Miranda, a career criminal in Phoenix, flowed from the Fifth Amendment's guarantee that no one "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself."

But the court never explicitly has said its decision or the police warnings were required by the Fifth Amendment. If the Miranda ruling was not constitutionally based, the court never really had the authority to make the warnings mandatory.

After Dickerson's appeal was filed, the Clinton administration refused to defend Section 3501. Justice Department lawyers contend that the Miranda ruling "is of constitutional dimension" and "cannot be superseded merely by legislation."

"At this point in time, 33 years after Miranda was decided and many years after it has been absorbed into police practices, judicial procedures and public understanding, the Miranda decision should not be overruled," government lawyers told the court.

The political sensitivity of the case was highlighted when Attorney General Janet Reno decided to sign the government's brief herself, a rarity.

Dickerson's lawyer, James Hundley of Fairfax, Va., said after the case was granted review Monday: "I disagree with the 4th Circuit's conclusion that the statute they relied upon is constitutional."

If the Supreme Court decides the Miranda warning is not required, "It would do away with a significant check on police power," Hundley said. "You need to have these kinds of checks and restraints on police to make sure that individual freedoms are not sacrificed in their pursuit of justice."

-- Ouch (@ .), December 06, 1999

Answers

Well, judging by the recent 1st and 2nd anmendment infringments and "updates", the law will be changed to "you will be forced to testify against yourself, and we have the right to kick your ass if we want to." the constitution is almost dead. WHERE IS EVERYONE?!??!

-- Crono (Crono@timesend.com), December 07, 1999.

So what? Congress passes laws all the time that are later found to be unconstitutional. We are a Constitutional Republic and all laws are subservient to the Constitution, not the other way around.

-TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.COM), December 07, 1999.