Supreme Court Visits Miranda

Ideological differences among the Supreme Court justices were on display as they worked toward deciding whether police must continue warning criminal suspects about their right against self-incrimination.

CBS News Correspondent Bob Fuss reports that most of the oral arguments focused on whether the warnings are required by the Constitution or just suggested by the high court as a procedure that Congress can change.

In a landmark 1966 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that suspects must be warned of the right to refuse to incriminate themselves before they are questioned by police. Failure to give such warning automatically excludes use of incriminating statements obtained during questioning as trial evidence.

The justices listened to Utah law professor Paul Cassell tell them there's no reason to read a suspect his rights as long as his confession is voluntary.

"We now have appropriate congressional action," he said in urging the court to rule that Section 3501 protects criminal suspects' rights.

He was backed strongly by Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. They repeatedly challenged the idea that Miranda warnings are constitutionally required.

Other justices seemed skeptical about reversing the Miranda decision. Justice Steven Breyer called it a "hallmark of American justice in the last thirty years."

"It is this court that will ultimately decide whether the Constitution is satisfied" by the law Congress passed in reaction to the Miranda ruling, Solicitor General Seth Waxman told the justices.

Waxman, the Clinton administration's highest-ranking courtroom lawyer, urged the justices to strike down the federal law because "the case has not been made to overrule Miranda vs. Arizona."

The Justice Department argued with the defendant that the Miranda rule is an important one tha the court should uphold. Cassell pinned his hopes on an obscure unendorsed law Congress passed in 1968 that says the warnings aren't needed.

CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart reports that the court’s revisit of the 1966 Miranda decision—and a 1968 law passed by Congress that may have overruled the Miranda ruling—could have an impact on every person arrested for a crime in the Untied States.

No matter what the court decides, most police departments are now so comfortable with Miranda, that they're likely to continue the practice.

Besides, they know that 90 percent of all suspects waive their Miranda rights and talk to police anyway.

Taking its name from accused rapist Ernesto Miranda, the Miranda warning essentially reminds suspects that they have the right to keep their mouth shut and to talk to a lawyer.

For 34 years, it's been the standard warning given by American lawmen, familiar to the public through its use on television police dramas: "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law."

When the court ordered police to start reading it to suspects back in 1966, it acknowledged that some perfectly good confessions might be thrown out if the rule wasn't strictly enforced.

And that's exactly what happened in the case of Nathan Ramirez. He confessed to a Florida kidnap and murder, but did so before he was read his Miranda rights.

On a tape of Ramirez’s confession, one detective is heard saying: "...basically when we started talking, I read you your rights."

His conviction was kicked out.

At issue Wednesday is a 1968 federal law that attorneys for the law enforcement officers in the case say gave them the right to obtain the Ramirez confession without reading the Miranda rights.

However, the significance of the case goes deeper: It's cases like those of Ramirez that infuriate Miranda opponents, who want the court to give police more flexibility.

"The Miranda decision goes too far,” said Paul Cassell of the University of Utah. ”It automatically throws out evidence even when there's no reason for throwing it out. In other words, it creates a set of technical rules and sometimes police officers will make a mistake in following those rules, but they still will have fairly obtained a confession."

The National Association of Police Organizations has written that Miranda ”is the archetypal ‘technicality’ which undermines confidence in the criminal justice system, and sets up an artificial tradeoff between the constitutional right against compelled self-incrimination and the interests of society in fair and effective law enforcement.”

But throw out Miranda, warn some policemen, and the only thing left will be secret interrogations.

"I can remember before Miranda existed. I was in law enforcement then. I know about, uh, the methodology and the practices thawere used to obtain information,” Hubert Williams of the Police Foundation.

CBS News Legal Consultant Andrew Cohen reports that whatever the Court rules, people will still have the right to remain silent, the right to an attorney if they desire and the right to a court-appointed attorney if they cannot afford one.

The main difference between a court decision affirming Miranda or a Court decision rejecting it will be in the way law enforcement officials communicate those rights to people whom they arrest.