The tale behind cops' most famous words

The words are almost as familiar as the Pledge of Allegiance or the Lord's Prayer. They begin invariably: "You have the right to remain silent...."

Now, after 34 years as US law, the so-called Miranda rights - uttered by crimefighters hundreds of times a day - could be struck down before summer by the US Supreme Court.

If that happens - and legal experts say it well could - the rules governing how police interrogate suspects would revert to the pre-1966 standard. Some believe it would free police from a heavy legal yoke that limits their ability to get confessions. Others worry it would dismantle a fire wall of constitutional protections for people in custody.

True, few cases get thrown out on Miranda violations. And suspects do still confess, though some prosecutors argue that a particular Miranda provision - the one that requires questioning to end the moment a suspect asks for a lawyer - has had a chilling effect.

Even here in Phoenix - where the seemingly ordinary case of one Ernesto Arturo Miranda took its first history-making steps - people today are split over the need for the Miranda rule. They are divided, too, over what would happen if it is overturned.

Larry Debus, a former Phoenix police detective who was one of the people to question young Miranda that fateful March day in 1963, is one who says the case changed the balance of power between police and suspects for the better.

"To be real honest with you, the cops had known all along that the things they were doing were wrong," he says, thinking back. "It was just a matter of getting away with it."

Gary Nelson, who stood before the nation's highest court and argued that Arizona did not trample Miranda's constitutional rights in obtaining a confession, sees it differently. He believes Miranda, who'd had plenty of run-ins with the law, was well aware of his right not to incriminate himself and his right to a lawyer.

So are "the vast majority of people," Mr. Nelson says. Overturning a criminal conviction because of a Miranda-rule violation "should be decided on a case-by-case basis," he adds.

And so, in the retelling, the tale of Ernesto Miranda serves as a mirror on the past - and possibly America's future. The court takes up the case next Wednesday.

The Miranda case was born in a dungeonlike interrogation room in the basement of the Phoenix Police Department.

Ernesto Miranda, a high school dropout and ex-convict, was under arrest for the rape of a teenage girl a week earlier. She'd spotted his 1953 Packard, and identified the car as belonging to the man who, after picking her up, drove out to the desert and raped her. He left her with the words: "Pray for me."

Now, as the day began on March 2, 1963, officers were taking turns grilling the young Mexican-American. Their quest: a confession.

Mr. Debus, now a prominent Phoenix defense lawyer, was one of the detectives in the station that night. He doesn't remember much about the suspect. "He was a little Mexican kid. In those days, that's what he was. He was a nobody." Debus does remember, however, that his colleagues tried every trick in the book, from the "good cop, bad cop" routine to threatening to throw the book at him.

Page: 1 | 2 | 3