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Human Dignity and the Psychology of Interrogation in Miranda v. Arizona*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Christopher Manfredi
Christopher Manfredi
Affiliation:
Department of Government, Claremont Graduate School
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Extract

Miranda v. Arizona, holding confessions obtained during police interrogation inadmissable unless preceded by a full and specific disclosure of a suspect's rights, is perhaps the best known U.S. Supreme Court decision on due process. The decision was built on the twin pillars of human dignity and free will. The Court determined that the intent of the Fifth Amendment is to protect human dignity, and argued that dignity is jeopardized by state actions whose effect is to diminish free will. Consequently, the Court extended the restrictions on police investigators it had been developing since Bram v. United States. In that decision, the Court ruled that confessions could not “be extracted by any sort of threats or violence, nor obtained by any direct or implied promises, however slight, nor by the exertion of any improper influence.” In Miranda, the Court attached the widest possible meaning to “improper influence,” ruling that interrogation is, in itself, an influence against which suspects must be protected by procedural safeguards. It is instructive to reflect on these issues at a time when similar questions are being raised in Canadian courts under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 1 , 1986 , pp. 109 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 1986

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References

Notes

1. 384 U.S. 436 (1966).

2. 168 U.S. 532 (1897).

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19. 384 U.S. 436, 457 (1966).

20. 297 U.S. 278, 286 (1936).

21. Ashcraft v. Tennessee 322 U.S. 143 (1944); Rogers v. Richmond 365 U.S. 534 (1961); Spano v. New York 360 U.S. 315 (1959); Malloy v. Hogan 378 U.S. 1 (1964).

22. 309 U.S. 227 (1940); 314 U.S. 219 (1941); 322 U.S. 143 (1944).

23. 309 U.S. 227, 239 (1940).

24. 314 U.S. 219, 236 (1941).

25. Ibid., 240.

26. 322 U.S. 143, 154 (1944).

27. Ibid., 162.

28. 350 U.S. 422, 445 (1956).

29. 352 U.S. 191, 198-199 (1957).

30. 360 U.S. 315 (1959); 361 U.S. 199 (1960).

31. 360 U.S. 315, 320-321 (1959).

32. 361 U.S. 199, 206 (1960).

33. 365 U.S. 534 (1961); 373 U.S. 503 (1963); 378 U.S. 478 (1964).

34. 365 U.S. 534, 541 (1961).

35. Ibid., 535.

36. Ibid., 541-542.

37. Ibid., 544.

38. 373 U.S. 503, 505-506 (1963).

39. Ibid., 504.

40. Ibid., 513.

41. Ibid., 514.

42. Ibid., 523.

43. 378 U.S. 478, 479-483 (1964).

44. Ibid., 485.

45. Ibid., 488-489. Footnotes deleted.

46. William Tucker has argued in an article based on his forthcoming book Vigilante (Stein & Day) that the ultimate objective of the Miranda majority was to eliminate confessions entirely from the American criminal justice system. See Tucker, William, “True Confessions: The Long Road Back from Miranda,” National Review (October 18, 1985), 28–36Google Scholar.

47. 378 U.S. 478, 490-491 (1964).

48. 384 U.S. 437, 437 (1966).

49. Ibid., 467-473.

50. Ibid., 473-475.

51. Ibid., 448-454.

52. Graham, Fred P., The Self-inflicted Wound (New York: MacMillan, 1970), 154Google Scholar.

53. 384 U.S. 436, 445 (1966).

54. Ibid., 449.

55. Ibid., 448.

56. Ibid., 449-454.

57. Ibid., 455.

58. Ibid., 458.

59. Ibid., 461.

60. Ibid., 465.

61. Ibid., 467.

62. Ibid., 460. Justice Fortas confirmed this interpretation of the privilege against self-incrimination one year later in In re Gault. See 387 U.S. 1, 47 (1967).

63. 384 U.S. 436, 460 (1966).

64. Ibid., 444.

65. Driver, Edwin D., “Confessions and the Social Psychology of Coercion,” Harvard Law Review 82 (1968), 44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66. Ibid.

67. Ibid., 45-46.

68. Seidman, Louis Michael, “The Supreme Court, Entrapment, and Criminal Justice Dilemma,” in Kurland, Philip, ed., Supreme Court Review (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 150Google Scholar.

69. See generally Wilson, James Q. and Herrnstein, Richard J., Crime and Human Nature (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985)Google Scholar. See also my review in the Claremont Review of Books 4, no. 4 (Winter 1985), 6–7Google Scholar.

70. One could take this argument even further and speculate that the depreciation of free will implicit in Warren's decision might also permit the removal of personal responsibility for crimes committed under other adverse conditions such as economic or social deprivation. The impact of such conditions was considered crucial in the 1967 report of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice. See, for example, the chapter on juvenile delinquency in the Commission's report The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967), 58–60Google Scholar. “Delinquency,” the report argues, “is not so much an act of individual deviancy as a pattern of behavior produced by a multitude of pervasive societal influences” (80). Chief Justice Warren's opinion, in other words, is consistent with theories of crime causation prevalent during the mid-1960s. It would be interesting to examine the broader relationship between these theories and the Supreme Court's decision on criminal procedure.

71. 384 U.S. 436, 457 (1966). Similarly, the defendant in California v. Stewart was indigent and possessed a sixth grade education.

72. Horowitz, Donald, The Courts and Social Policy (Washington, D. C.: Brookings Institution, 1977), 33–56Google Scholar.

73. Graham, , The Self-inflicted Wound, 154Google Scholar. Graham describes how the Court clerk set aside cases and marked them as “Escobedo Cases” so that the Justices would have a selection of cases from which to choose when they finally decided to solve the coerced confession problem.

74. 384 U.S. 436, 537 (1966). Justice White dissenting.

75. Ibid., 505. Justice Harlan dissenting.