Re /考虑米兰达
BU Law invites scholars from across the country to examine the legacy of the landmark 米兰达诉亚利桑那州案 Supreme Court case.
We’ve all seen it in detective movies and TV police procedurals—the 米兰达 warning—usually rattled off while a police officer neatly packs a suspect into his or her cruiser. This year marks the 50th anniversary of 米兰达诉亚利桑那州案, landmark US Supreme Court case that established that warning.
This fall, 波士顿大学法学院 gathered legal scholars from across the country to reflect on the complexity and controversy of the ruling. The 米兰达诉亚利桑那州案 conference was organized by BU Law Professor and Joseph Lipsitt Faculty 澳门威尼斯人注册网站研究 Scholar Tracey Maclin, a noted scholar of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.
Decided in 1966, the 米兰达 case consolidated four cases related to police custodial interrogation. In each case, questions arose over whether the defendants’ constitutional protections against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment were violated while they were interrogated in police custody. 米兰达 裁定由于警方没有向嫌疑人提供有关其权利的信息，他们获得的供词在刑事审判中不能被采纳。 该裁决确立了人们熟悉的警告，并附有很少出现在屏幕上的附录：警方必须确保嫌疑人理解这些权利，嫌疑人必须同意在审讯开始前放弃这些权利。
尽管这一警告在今天看来司空见惯，但在当时却备受争议。 执法机构预测，这一裁决将限制警方的审讯策略，并对认罪率产生负面影响，从而导致更少的罪犯被送上法庭。
保罗·卡塞尔, Ronald N. Boyce Presidential Professor of Criminal Law and University Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Utah College of Law, delivered the opening keynote, asking, “at the end of the day, does [米兰达] strike a fair balance between the need to get a confession while still protecting [suspects] from abusive police practices?” To answer this question, Cassell examined empirical evidence of the ruling’s effect on law enforcement. He argued the decline in crime clearance rates, the only nationally available data on police effectiveness, was proof of 米兰达‘s negative impact on law enforcement.
Other presentations considered, among many topics, the assumptions that underlie the ruling, the relationship between 米兰达 and the right to counsel offered by the Sixth Amendment, the decision’s role in national security cases, and a proposal to create an application might improve the process of giving the 米兰达 warning by removing the potentially coercive human element.
In his presentation, 大卫-罗兹曼, director of BU Law’s Criminal Law Clinical Programs, noted that often police officers who become detectives are “master salespeople,” capable of selling a suspect something that is not in their own best interest. He argued that manipulative police interrogation tactics, along with subsequent court decisions, have “largely gutted [米兰达], so it is no longer a bulwark against the coercive pressure of custodial police interrogation.”
耶鲁Kamisar密歇根大学法学院克拉伦斯·达罗杰出大学名誉法学教授，在会议结束时讨论了该裁决的优点以及自该警告成立以来的缺点。 “It’s become increasingly clear that some system for recording how the rights are delivered is needed,” he said, arguing that the 米兰达 warning is insufficient to counteract sophisticated interrogators. “Suspects won’t always understand that they have a right to not incriminate themselves,” he said, “and/or the suspect doesn’t realize that he is in effect being compelled to incriminate himself. Shouldn’t somebody tell the suspect something?”
In her remarks, Dean Maureen O’Rourke emphasized the importance of events like the 米兰达诉亚利桑那州案 conference, which allows scholars to explore a topic from every side in an environment in which everyone is free to join the conversation.
Papers presented at this conference will be published in a forthcoming issue of the 波士顿大学法律评论.