Nearly 50 years ago, in its 1966 decision in Miranda v. Arizona, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination was “one of our Nation’s most cherished principles.”1 To secure this right against infringement during the process of custodial interrogation, where psychological pressure may “work to undermine the individual’s will to resist and to compel him [or her] to speak,”2 the Miranda court set out four specific warnings that the police must provide to suspects before questioning. These warnings are that a suspect has the right to remain silent, that anything the suspect says can be used against him or her in a court of law, that the suspect has the right to an attorney, and that if he or she cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for him or her prior to questioning. “Although Miranda‘s bright-line rule was controversial at first, it ‘has become embedded in routine police practice to the point where the warnings have become part of our national culture.’”3 Indeed, one only has to turn on television shows such as Law and Order or Bluebloods to view dramatizations of police officers routinely providing the warnings to suspects.
While the words of the Miranda warnings are familiar to us as lawyers, we rarely stop to think about the magnitude of those words. The four Miranda warnings are more than just words. They are reminders of the fundamental constitutional rights that we are privileged to enjoy in the United States. The responsibility of protecting the rights secured by Miranda falls to the courts of this State, which must scrupulously ensure that defendants understand the import of the warnings before admitting inculpatory statements into evidence.
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