"You have the right to remain silent." Few legal phrases are as well known as this one. Yet it did not exist until June 13, 1966, when the U.S. Supreme Court first announced it as a principle of American law in the landmark case of Miranda v. Arizona.
The case came out of Phoenix, Arizona, and was decided by the nation's highest Court in 1966. It involved a young Mexican-American man named Ernesto Arturo Miranda who had been arrested in 1963 based on circumstantial evidence he had committed a kidnapping and rape.
Mr. Miranda was brought to police headquarters in Phoenix for questioning. After a police lineup, officers led Mr. Miranda to think he had been positively identified. Then they interrogated him for two hours without telling him about his constitutional rights.
Like defendants in many famous criminal cases, Mr. Miranda was unable to afford an attorney. So he had to deal with police without help from someone trained in the law, even though court-appointed lawyers later represented him in his trial and appeals.
Mr. Miranda confessed to the crime. He soon was convicted and sentenced to Arizona prison.
Troubled by the case, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to accept it for arguments. The issue centered around two parts of the U.S. Constitution.
Page from the Miranda Opinion, 1966.
First, the Fifth Amendment says that people cannot be forced to be a witness against themselves. Second, the Sixth Amendment gives everyone the right to assistance by an attorney whenever they are accused of crimes.
Chief Justice Earl Warren announced the decision in 1966 for a Court that split 5-to-4. To enforce the Constitution, Warren wrote, police must warn criminal suspects about the right to stay silent and the right to have a lawyer's help before interrogations begin.
If police fail to give that warning, any confession they obtain from the suspect then can be challenged at trial or on appeal. The confession may be tossed out if the violation of rights by the police is a serious one.
As a result, the Court threw out the confession and ordered a new trial for Mr. Miranda. Despite this victory, he again was convicted and sentenced at his new trial and remained in Arizona prison until 1972.
The "Miranda warning" quickly entered popular culture.
In 1967, an old radio and television drama called "Dragnet" was revived in a more up-to-date TV version. The star of the show Jack Webb quickly adopted the Miranda warning as one of the trademark phrases of his fictitious character, Sgt. Joe Friday.
Millions of Americans who watched "Dragnet" learned to recite the Miranda warning from memory. So they came to accept it as a familiar and famous part of the law.
Its fame turned Mr. Miranda himself into something of a folk legend. For a time after his release from prison, he helped support himself by autographing copies of the Miranda warning for a price, until his death in 1976.
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