Miranda was a good stab at what needed to be addressed about police powers, but in its wake, it has produced a number of cases that go against the very principle the Miranda was trying to protect. There are examples of cases such as Dickerson v. United States, where the defendant admitted that his confession was free and voluntary and he was not coerced in any way, shape or form, yet the Court threw out his confession because he had not been read his rights.

The end of Miranda isn’t to get people their rights read. That is the means to an end, the end being to protect against police brutality and certain tactics. But to say that we have to be on guard so that if the suspect speaks freely and of his own volition, we have to inform him that he should want to shut up? To me, as many dissenting Justices have stated, the goal of the law here should be to prevent coerced confessions, not to prevent stupid ones.

Tony Luken

Senior

Political Science