EDITORIAL
A Weakened Miranda Rule
Published: March 5, 2012
The Supreme Court recently did significant damage to the Miranda rule, which requires that suspects in custody be told of their right to remain silent and to have a lawyer present, and that any statements they make could be used against them in criminal proceedings.
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New Ruling Puts Limits on Warning to Prisoners (February 22, 2012)
Without these warnings, statements made are inadmissible as evidence, the court said in the 1966 case Miranda v. Arizona, because “the very fact of custodial interrogation exacts a heavy toll on individual liberty, and trades on the weaknesses of individuals.”
That is exactly the principle violated by the court’s new ruling inHowes v. Fields. The case involved Randall Lee Fields, who was in jail in Michigan for disorderly conduct, was interrogated by sheriffs there and, based on what he said, was sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison for a sex crime.
The court’s 6-to-3 majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito Jr., said that Mr. Fields should not be considered in “custody” for Miranda purposes because a person already in jail is not shocked and coercible as someone newly arrested might be; cannot be induced to speak in hopes of being released; and does not worry that a sentence will be lengthened if he does not cooperate. Mr. Fields was not threatened or physically restrained and “was told at the outset of the interrogation, and reminded thereafter, that he was free to leave and could go back to his cell whenever he wanted,” Justice Alito wrote.
But Mr. Fields had no choice when he was taken from his cell to be questioned in a locked conference room for seven hours into the night, without being told why he was being interrogated about behavior unconnected to his disorderly conduct. He surely would have felt an acute imbalance of power with the police.
As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in dissent, “I would ask, as Miranda put it, whether Fields was subjected to ‘incommunicado interrogation ... in a police-dominated atmosphere,’ whether he was placed, against his will, in an inherently stressful situation, and whether his ‘freedom of action [was] curtailed in any significant way.’ ” Clearly, the answers are yes.
Mr. Fields, as Justice Ginsburg noted, “did not invite or consent” to the interview. The court’s majority makes it more likely that the police will now try to define custody in a way that circumvents the spirit and principle of the Miranda rule.
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