Miranda, Ernest

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Ernest Miranda

Born March 9, 1940 (Mesa, Arizona)

Died January 31, 1976 (Phoenix, Arizona)

Robber, rapist, murderer

Ernesto Miranda was a career criminal whose name became familiar to every American following a Supreme Court decision that created what became known as the Miranda Rights. Miranda's conviction in an Arizona court in 1963 would be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1966. In Miranda v. Arizona the Court determined Miranda's Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination had been violated during a police interrogation. This Court decision was one of several important rulings identifying legal safeguards for defendants in the criminal justice system.

"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."

The beginning of the Miranda Rights

Life of crime

Ernesto Arturo Miranda was born in 1940 and grew up in Mesa, Arizona. He was called Ernie as a youth but went by Ernest as an adult. He was the fifth son of Manuel A. Miranda, a house painter who had immigrated to the United States from Sonora, Mexico, as a child. Ernie's mother died when he was five years old and his father remarried the following year. Ernie did not develop a close relationship with his stepmother and drifted apart from his father and older brothers.

Miranda was absent from the Queen of Peace Grammar School as often as he attended, and by eighth grade he had dropped out of school entirely. He was detained that year for felony car theft and put on probation. The following year Miranda was arrested for burglary and sent to Arizona State Industrial School for Boys at Fort Grant. He was released in December 1955 only to be sent back to Fort Grant in January 1956. This time he was arrested for attempted rape and assault.

When he was released a year later, Miranda moved to Los Angeles. By the fall of 1957 the teenager found himself imprisoned for the third time in less than three years when he was picked up on suspicion of armed robbery and placed in the custody of the California Youth Authority. Upon his release Miranda was sent to Arizona where he joined the U.S. Army in April 1958.

Miranda soon went AWOL (absent without approved leave) and was caught in a "peeping Tom" charge (watching someone without their knowledge). This earned him six months of hard labor in the military post stockade at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He received an undesirable discharge in July of 1959 at the age of nineteen.

Criminal justice

Miranda's life of crime continued. He was arrested March 13, 1963, in Phoenix, Arizona, as a suspect in the armed robbery of a bank worker. While in police custody, Miranda signed a written confession to the robbery, as well as the kidnap and rape of an eighteen-year-old woman in the desert outside Phoenix. The police interrogated Miranda for two hours without advising him he had the right to remain silent or to have an attorney present during questioning. The police form he signed was a preprinted warning of rights with a blank for the name of the person making the statement. Signing the form indicated the confession he gave was voluntary, making it admissible in court.

On March 14 Miranda was taken before a city magistrate and charged with failure to register as an ex-convict. He was sentenced to ten days and transferred to the county jail. This allowed police time to hold him while investigating the more serious charges. They soon charged Miranda with robbery, kidnapping, and rape. He was assigned an attorney to defend him at trial.

Ernest Miranda was convicted of robbery on June 19, 1963, in Maricopa County Superior Court. The following day his trial began for the kidnapping and rape charges. Miranda's confession was admitted into evidence and the jury deliberated for five hours before returning a guilty verdict on June 27. Miranda received two concurrent terms in the Arizona State Prison at Florence. He received twenty to thirty years for each of the charges against him.

In December 1963 Miranda's attorney appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court on the grounds that Miranda did not know he was protected from self-incrimination and that he had been tricked into confessing to the crimes. By February 1966 the case had made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren (1891–1974; see sidebar).

Earl Warren

Earl Warren graduated from the University of California in 1912 and received a law degree two years later. He first practiced law in San Francisco and Oakland. In 1919 Warren began a life in public service when he became deputy city attorney of Oakland. In 1920 he became deputy assistant district attorney of Alameda County. Warren served as district attorney of Alameda County from 1925 until 1938.

Warren was elected attorney general of California in 1938 before serving three terms as the state governor beginning in 1942. President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969; served 1953–61) nominated Earl Warren as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1953, a position he held until his retirement in 1969. Warren chaired many notable cases during his tenure, including the commission investigating the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963; served 1961–63).

Warren's Court decisions worked toward fairness in criminal proceedings. Earlier courts had emphasized property rights, but under Warren the Court focused more on individual rights, especially those guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. During his early years as an attorney in criminal justice, Warren had recognized the possibilities for police abuse during pretrial interrogations. He argued that reform was needed to ensure American citizens were duly informed of their rights when accused of committing a crime.

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution states, "No person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." The rules used to determine whether a confession of guilt was voluntary or forced were vague. Chief Justice Warren led the Supreme Court as they began to look for cases that would enable them to give a clearer, more meaningful rule to define a voluntary confession. Several cases where a defendant had not been adequately advised of his or her rights were reviewed by the Court in the mid-1960s. Miranda v. Arizona was one such case reviewed in 1966. The Court determined Miranda's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination had been violated. The Supreme Court handed down its opinion on June 13 and it contained what is now referred to as the "Miranda Rights."

Miranda rights

After hearing arguments in the Miranda v. Arizona case, the Supreme Court overturned Miranda's conviction on June 13, 1966. The landmark ruling confirmed that in order for a confession to be admissible in a court of law it must be given voluntarily. It was determined that Miranda had not been informed of his rights before he signed the confession. Chief Justice Warren wrote the Court ruling that outlined how law enforcement must handle defendant interrogations during an investigation. Fair interrogation procedures of crime suspects, while in police custody, had to begin with what became known as the Miranda Rights.

The Court did not specify the exact wording in its decision but did require that the warning must be given once an individual had been taken into custody before they are interrogated. Over time a simple version of the warning was printed on wallet-sized cards and distributed to police departments so the wording was consistent. It was later reported that Miranda kept copies of the cards in his wallet and would sign them for a fee.

The so-called Miranda Warning changed little over time. It became familiar to the public thanks to the numerous police and detective shows on television and in movies that used it in their scripts. The Miranda Warning included the following four rights: (1) you have the right to remain silent; (2) anything you say can and will be used against you in a court

of law; (3) you have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning; and (4) if you can not afford an attorney, one will be provided for you at government expense.

The Supreme Court ruling was received with mixed reviews and became controversial. Some saw it as lending dignity to the suspect in the legal system and others saw it as weakening the ability of law enforcement to fight crime. Most saw it as an effort to strike a proper balance between the two.

Final justice

The Supreme Court decision did not free Miranda but offered him a new trial without the confession he made to the police. Ernesto Miranda's second trial for rape and kidnapping opened in mid-February 1967 at the Maricopa County Superior Court. This time his common-law wife testified that Miranda had confessed to the crime when she visited him in prison in 1963. (A common-law marriage is when a couple who can prove they have lived together for a certain period of time are considered legally married in some states under certain conditions.) He had asked her to make a personal appeal to the victim in order to have the charges dropped. The jury deliberated for an hour and twenty-three minutes before finding Miranda guilty. He was sentenced again to twenty to thirty years in the Arizona State Prison at Florence.

Released on early parole in December 1972, Miranda was back in prison by 1975 on yet another charge. In 1976 Miranda ended up in a Phoenix bar fight and was stabbed to death. The man suspected of killing him chose to exercise his right to remain silent after being read his Miranda Warning. He refused to talk to the police and, due to a lack of witnesses or other physical evidence, was never charged with Miranda's murder. Ernesto Miranda was buried at the Mesa City Cemetery in Arizona.