When Alexander Hamilton first meets Aaron Burr in the smash Broadway hit “Hamilton,” the future Vice President offers the future Treasury Secretary a bit of “free advice”: “Talk less,” “smile more.” Burr’s admonition, of course, applies to many facets of modern life. But it takes on particular urgency for those facing custodial interrogation in police stations from Montauk to Mayville. And yet, as both empirical experience and rigorous scholarship universally confirm, a person confronted by the “sometimes awesome power of the sovereign” (People v. Settles, 46 N.Y.2d 154, 160 (1978)) will often speak to police for at least some period of time—almost always to his or her detriment. Rarely does a suspect come out of the interrogation room in a better tactical position than before.
Why do suspects consent to interrogation when they know intuitively that consenting to interrogation usually ends badly? Why, in other words, do suspects “talk more” and “smile less,” when they should be heeding Burr’s contrary advice? Chief Justice Earl Warren attributed this disconnect to the “inherently compelling pressures” of the interrogation process itself, “which work to undermine the individual’s will to resist and to compel him to speak where he would not otherwise do so freely” (Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 467 (1966)). Thus, to combat the pernicious effects of “incommunicado interrogation” (id. at 457), the U.S. Supreme Court directed police to inform suspects of their rights before the start of questioning in a custodial setting. Any confession obtained without a valid waiver of these rights, the Miranda court continued, would be inadmissible at trial (see id. at 444-45).
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