Miranda v. Arizona | Definition, Background, & Facts (2024)

Miranda v. Arizona, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on June 13, 1966, established a code of conduct for police interrogations of criminal suspects held in custody. Chief Justice Earl Warren, writing for a 5–4 majority, held that prosecutors may not use statements made by suspects under questioning in police custody unless certain minimum procedural safeguards were followed. He specified new guidelines to ensure “that the individual is accorded his privilege under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution not to be compelled to incriminate himself.” Known as the Miranda warnings, these guidelines included informing arrested persons prior to questioning that they have the right to remain silent, that anything they say may be used against them as evidence, that they have the right to have an attorney present, and that if they are unable to afford an attorney, one will be appointed for them. Warren also declared that police may not question (or continue questioning) a suspect in custody if at any stage of the process he “indicates in any manner that he does not wish to be interrogated” or “indicates in any manner…that he wishes to consult with an attorney.” Although suspects could waive their rights to remain silent and to consult an attorney, their waivers were valid (for the purpose of using their statements in court) only if they were performed “voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently.”

The Miranda decision was one of the most controversial rulings of the Warren Court, which had become increasingly concerned about the methods used by local police to obtain confessions. Miranda v. Arizona reversed an Arizona court’s conviction of Ernesto Miranda on charges of kidnapping and rape. After being identified in a police lineup, Miranda had been questioned by police; he confessed and then signed a written statement without first having been told that he had the right to have a lawyer present to advise him or that he had the right to remain silent. Miranda’s confession was later used at his trial to obtain his conviction. The Supreme Court held that the prosecution could not use his statements obtained by the police while the suspect was in custody unless the police had complied with several procedural safeguards to secure the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

Critics of the Miranda decision argued that the Court, in seeking to protect the rights of individuals, had seriously weakened law enforcement. Later decisions by the Supreme Court limited some of the potential scope of the Miranda safeguards.

In 2000 the Supreme Court decided Dickerson v. United States, a case that presented a more conservative Court under Chief Justice William Rehnquist an opportunity to overrule Miranda v. Arizona—which, nevertheless, it declined to do. Writing for a 7–2 majority, Rehnquist concluded that Congress could not replace the Miranda warnings with a general rule that a suspect’s statements during custodial questioning can be used against him or her as long as they are made voluntarily. In 2010 a narrower majority (5–4) held in Berghuis v. Thompkins that suspects waive their right to remain silent, and thus acquiesce in the use of their statements in court, unless they “unambiguously” invoke that right—ironically, by speaking—prior to or during police questioning. In Salinas v. Texas (2014), a plurality of the Court generalized the Berghuis holding by asserting that the Fifth Amendment’s privilege against self-incrimination extends only to those who expressly claim it and not to those who simply remain silent under police questioning and that even persons who have not been arrested and read their Miranda rights prior to police questioning must expressly claim the Fifth Amendment privilege in order to be protected by it.