Talk:Miranda v. Arizona/Archive 1

Archive 1

Bad Link

The third link in the external linksection does not work can someone either fix it or delete it. i'm only a user and don't want to undermine whoever worked on this page.

I've fixed the link. I'm not actually sure the link should be kept, but at least it works now. Thanks for noticing. Mike Dillon 01:32, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

In the right box in the law's applied section the link goes to a 14'th amendment Disambiguation page instead of directly to Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Can please someone with writing privileges correct this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.132.210.11 (talk) 00:02, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism

There appears to be significant vandalism and gibberish added to this article, see the nonsense in the header and the "bacon raping monkeys" Would a maintainer mind clearing this up ?

I agree. in writing a report i found "poop in my mouth" which when i looked at the history the vandal undid someones revision to cover this up. somehow they put it in without it being visible in the edit page thing. anyone that cares about this page please help with this 207.69.138.143 21:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)concernedhighschooluser207.69.138.143 21:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I think you must have seen a cached version of the page. I reverted the "poop in my mouth" comment about an hour after it happened and the IP address that did the vandalism did nothing too tricky. That's why you didn't see the comment in edit mode. My apologies that you viewed the article during the window where it had the offensive text. Thanks for attempting to clean it up. Mike Dillon 02:07, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Here we go again...

Okay, I'm back, and this month I'm going to add in the points I tried to make in December until someone named Noah Peters claimed that my exposition lacked NPOV.

If Noah or anyone else doesn't like my edits, please reply on this page.

--Coolcaesar 04:19, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Changed Coolceasar's edits: I think you have misunderstood the dissenting opinions. They did not believe that Miranda would end interrogations, only that they would become more difficult. And anyway, that was not the main basis for the dissents, whose main point was that the Miranda warnings were not compelled by the Fifth Amendment.

--User:Blasphemous (inserted by Coolcaesar, please sign your edits on discussion pages in the future)

I just reread the opinion on Findlaw. I concede you are correct in that both dissents focused on an originalist analysis of the Fifth Amendment, and that both justices stated only that Miranda would at least make interrogation more difficult, although they did not flat out state that it would as a certainty destroy police interrogation.

However, both dissenters did have that outcome in mind as a likely worst-case possibility. Harlan wrote: "To suggest or provide counsel for the suspect simply invites the end of the interrogation." And White strongly implied that the majority was motivated by a purpose to shut down interrogations: "The rule announced today will measurably weaken...the criminal law...It is a deliberate calculus to prevent interrogations."

--Coolcaesar 20:08, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

For discussion: Why is this in the article?

I don't know why this was in the article. It was here when I joined WP and I expanded it. Perhaps you're right that it can stay out. --Coolcaesar 09:29, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It was in the article to give background to the decision. You cannot understand why Miranda came down when it did if you do not understand the political movements which led to it. SC decisions are not bolts of lightening that strike without warning or context. I choose not to delete MPLX's nonsense on Hugo Black; he should leave factually accurate things alone. MPLX has no understanding of American legal history, his agenda seems to be to superimpose his own interpretations of English history on the U.S. Supreme Court. And, it is just massively hypocritical for MPLX to take this action when he has added an entire extraneous section to Hugo Black with lots of dubious information from interviews conducted with Black's wife and son and opinions written by other justices to now step in as the defender of streamlined articles. I am putting it back in.

Also, I am the main author of several articles on Supreme Court justices, including William O. Douglas, Baker v. Carr, Byron White, Lewis Powell, and many other outstanding articles. I have not "ruined" any articles, unlike MPLX, who has poisened Hugo Black with his unsupported revisionism and terrible writing skills (including several mispellings, grammatical errors, etc.) Apparently, the stereotype about Brits being more literate than Americans is not always true.

199.111.227.122Blasphemous

This text does not belong in an article about the Opinion handed down. MPLX/MH 05:34, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Uh, I added a lot of that text. Okay, maybe, to be consistent with WP style, many of those cases probably should be broken off into separate articles and appropriate "See also" links added. But as any criminal defense lawyer will tell you, those cases are relevant to Miranda because they reflect how it is actually applied today, nearly 40 years later. It is easy for inexperienced laypersons to get the wrong ideas about modern criminal procedure if they just read Miranda in isolation.

Miranda is a complex case with many nuances to it; if interpreting Miranda was easy, I doubt the Supreme Court would have had to revisit it so many times. Many conservatives (including Scalia or Thomas, I think) have argued that the frequency of Miranda appeals is a strong reason to return to the old mushy voluntariness-of-the-confession rule, since that fact demonstrates that Miranda was no better as a bright-line rule than the old rule it replaced). --Coolcaesar 09:25, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Because the issue is being raised on Wikipedia on a few articles, there needs to be a more precise encyclopedic review of subject material. In some instances POV is substituted for NOPOV critical thinking/review and in most instances all of the mush is sans reference material for sources. In other words "stuff" is being tacked on to articles like shanty town add-ons. The only way to avoid revert wars (which I avoid) is to prune back to the basics and build from there. A lot more pruning still needs to be done on the Miranda article which had been constructed around promoting someone's POV book, rather than placing a picture of Miranda at the top of the article. A lot more needs to go and this article should be rebuilt with many excerpts taken from Miranda itself and even substituting the first page of the Opinion for Miranda's picture which should come second. The picture of the book does not really belong at all unless all book pictures are uploaded. As for the text there right now, it is a rambling mess written by others - not the Supremes, whose work it supposed to be about. Miranda was a one time event when a decision was made and an Opinion published. That is what THIS article should be about. MPLX/MH 14:27, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

After thinking about what you said very carefully, I think I may have to concede your point that this article had too much junk in it about the case's background and subsequent developments; you are probably right that the average encyclopedia reader is interested only in the holding itself of any given case. I also agree that there needs to be extensive rewriting of the article.

However, I still feel that the relevant subsequent cases should be linked to at the end through appropriate "See also" links. --Coolcaesar 11:34, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Not just poor Mr. Miranda's confession

There does not appear to be any mention in this article of any elements of the three other conjoined cases, beyond naming them, nor how this federal constitutional question arose regarding a purely state prosecution, nor any mention of Due Process, which is fundamental to application of the U.S. Constitution to state procedures, through the 14th Amendment (other than the latter being included in Categories). Lupinelawyer 04:17, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Freaky links?

This is really beginning to bug me. Maybe there's no option, but I'd love to see article links that goto the subject at hand. Like, in an article on Olympic hockey, the Canada link goes to the National Team & its record (not the damn country!), or here, Clark link goto his dissent, not his bio. Whatsay? Can do? Trekphiler 19:51, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• This is a matter of what the editors consider most relevant, and how they choose to pipe the link. What you need to do is argue individual cases. You're distracting me from what i changed in the accompanying article, and i've no interest in the hockey article.
  --Jerzy•t 02:25, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
  

POV!

Jeez, could you quote more of White & his screed? This is so POV I can't believe it. I'm deleting:

In some unknown number of cases the Court's rule will return a killer, a rapist or other criminal to the streets and to the environment which produced him, to repeat his crime whenever it pleases him. As a consequence, there will not be a gain, but a loss, in human dignity. The real concern is not the unfortunate consequences of this new decision on the criminal law as an abstract, disembodied series of authoritative proscriptions, but the impact on those who rely on the public authority for protection and who without it can only engage in violent self-help with guns, knives and the help of their neighbors similarly inclined. There is, of course, a saving factor: the next victims are uncertain, unnamed and unrepresented in this case.

Trekphiler 19:57, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Miranda warning

It seems like there should be a link to the Miranda warning article in the lead paragraph, since that is what this case is best known for. Mike Dillon 20:37, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism again

There is more vandalism and some errors in grammar in spelling in the case entry.

Please fix!

---

There's still bits of racism and vandalism inserted maliciously into this article...I'm delving into the history to see if I can find who did it, report any IP's or usernames, and right as many wrongs as I can. Sheesh, I look this up for Government Homework and now I'm doing extra credit, haha--JohnProctor 09:39, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Well thanks for helping out, it's always needed and appreciated. delldot | talk 17:00, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Redirect

Should a redirect be created from Miranda law to this page, or is that too much of a stretch? I wanted to ask folks with more familiarity with the topic. Thanks, delldot | talk 17:00, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

• Someone created it, even tho there is no such law. I just converted the Rdr to a Dab.
  --Jerzy•t 02:26, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
  

We lost half the article to vandals and no one caught it for TWO MONTHS!

I just noticed that we had lost the entire "Subsequent developments" section I wrote most of. I have since restored it by reverting back to the last good version on 10 December 2006. The article needs to be protected ASAP because it is being vandalized on a daily basis. --Coolcaesar 04:42, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Red Links

I don't think that the redlinked SCOTUS tests and relatively obscure cases need to be red links; if they are created, they should be linked but, as it stands, they're just an eyesore. I'll leave this up for discussion for a day or two, but then I think I'll go ahead and remove them (not the text, just the brackets causing them to be redlinked). Thanks, -Bwowen is now a Forgone conclusion! t|c 23:57, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Mistake?

It think the majority opinion was given by Warren, and not "Smith"; correct me if I'm wrong

-AP US History student

Date problem

The decision was handed down in June of 1966, and Miranda was killed in January 1976, less than 10 years later. Yet the article states that he served 11 years after conviction on retrial (which surely took some time). Something doesn't add up. In light of the substantial and reliable sources for "1966" and "1976", and the lack of any source for "11 years", I'd bet that's the error. I'd delete it, but would prefer to have the actual time served. Can anybody help? --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 22:16, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

According to his biography at Ernesto Miranda, he was sentenced to 11 years, but served only a third of it before being paroled (on his fifth try) in December 1972. Isaac (talk) 03:04, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Birthdate

I clicked on the Ernesto Miranda link, and on his article it says he was born in Mexico City, but here it says he was born in Mesa, Arizona. Could someone fix the wrong location? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.101.2.76 (talk) 03:14, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

• Sounds like vand motivated by anti-Hispanic PoV. Ernesto Miranda has a ref (first AmHer one) verifying his birth place, and that now stands in the article.
  --Jerzy•t 02:49, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
  

Gender Neutral Language

I realize that the editors changing the various gender specific pronouns to his/her, him/her, he/she, etc. are trying to reduce biased language, but it's making an already dense article less readable. Would anyone object to using the singular they? I've been reading the Gender-neutral pronoun article, and all the modern solutions are either cumbersome or distracting. While I know some English majors may dislike the singular they, it's a hell of a lot more readable, expresses no gender bias, and has been in use for over 500 years. Any objections? ShadowRangerRIT (talk) 13:22, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I've made the change (and fixed a couple of cases missed by the original editor). In a few cases I went with a spelled out "the defendant's" (or other non-pronoun approach), as there were plural entities in the sentence and I did not want to risk any confusion. --ShadowRangerRIT (talk) 18:08, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Redundant information

There seem to be a number of pieces of information that are repeated multiple times throughout the article, particularly clarifying statements (e.g. Miranda warnings need not be given at the time of arrest). It's bloating the article's size, and makes it much harder to read through. Can the editors please try to avoid adding the same information multiple times, and remove redundant information? Yes, sometimes a new statement might warrant the same clarification, but this isn't a legal journal; it's more important to be accessible than to mimic the sometimes overly verbose nature of legal writing. -ShadowRangerRIT (talk) 19:28, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. There have been some inexperienced editors (probably busy cops or prosecutors) who have added some useful, sourced passages explaining bits and pieces of Miranda case law, but without any attempt to integrate their passages into the rest of the article, so the article is taking on an increasingly disjointed and rambling quality. --Coolcaesar (talk) 07:43, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

"mimic the sometimes overly verbose nature of legal writing." Ouch--Jgard5000 (talk) 20:40, 30 September 2009 (UTC)jgard5000

Don't take it too hard. I tend to err on the side of excessive verbosity myself (as you might have noticed). While not a lawyer myself, my mother is, and combined with habits related to my education and profession (CompSci/Software Developer), I'm inclined to excessive precision at the expense of concision. Of course, I try to limit myself in articles; only my talk page posts are unrestrained. :-) --ShadowRangerRIT (talk) 19:39, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

A little humor never hurts.--75.202.68.196 (talk) 10:29, 2 October 2009 (UTC)jgard5000 My grandfather, father, uncle, brother and younger son are (were) all lawyers so i have an excuse as well.

re: "...they apparently believed..."

Saying "— they apparently believed" is an editorial... it implies "their" objections were hard to decipher, were confusing, or unfounded. We do not need to say, "— they apparently believed" because we have written explanations of what they wrote in clear language what their objections were. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.18.157.124 (talk) 03:08, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

That line, which I wrote, BTW, is based on this line from Justice Harlan's dissent: "This danger shrinks markedly in the police station, where, indeed, the lawyer, in fulfilling his professional responsibilities, of necessity may become an obstacle to truthfinding." This rationale for opposing the majority opinion is nonsense unless Harlan actually believed that the suspect would actually exercise his right to counsel. Otherwise, why complain about it? I used the word apparently because Harlan did not make this point facially clear in terms that laypersons would understand. A trained lawyer (that is, one already aware of the complex evolution of Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment case law through the Warren Court period) can easily see the obvious gaps in Harlan's reasoning. This is like how many of the advanced science and mathematics articles on Wikipedia make no sense to a history major like me, but are quite clear to those skilled in the art. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:04, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Court Membership

The court membership is gone! Was it ever there?

---

Elliott Madsen —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.74.116.102 (talk) 05:14, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Improper overlap with Miranda warning article

If i missed previous discussion of this, please move this section to become a sub-section of the previous secn.)^{--Jerzy•t 23:37, 14 May 2010 (UTC)}

The accompanying article is more than twice proper size, calling for identification of natural boundaries within it. There is a reasonably clear separation (i.e., reasonably low necessary overlap) between the case and our existing Miranda warning article, and guidelines advise minimizing duplication, so the accompanying case-titled article should be limited to the case plus one short 'graph calling attention to the other cases and legislation. Does anyone feel the need for more detailed discussion before the rest of what is here is merged into the other existing article? Once that is done, it should be easier to look for other appropriate fault lines in one or both of them.
--Jerzy•t 23:37, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I was also contemplating doing something about these two articles...but with the volume of information to be checked (and I think, a fair bit to be discarded), I hadn't decided if I wanted to go that route. My initial thought was roughly parallel to yours, but also took into account the large volume of less relevant information in the Miranda warning article.

My best guess is to substantially restrict the scope of this article to the litigation itself, with a paragraph summarizing the Miranda warning that arose from the SCOTUS decision and linking to the main article. Then, at Miranda warning, restrict the scope to the implications of the U.S. law, with only a brief summary of foreign laws, and merges, new articles, etc. to cover the foreign laws (that aren't really equivalent to Miranda warnings in many important ways). TheFeds 03:49, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

• I think we're on the same track here; in fact, while i didn't have a merge target for the foreign material (whose placement sounds like we think such warnings were a Yank invention!), i ran across it since writing above, and wanted to either rename the pg in non-Amerocentric way, or split it.
  I also have to echo your sense of the complexity of the task; just making decent targets for Miranda law took up essentially all my editing time today.
  --Jerzy•t 08:41, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
  

The best place for the non-U.S. content would probably be self incrimination, with a main article link as appropriate. TheFeds 04:53, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I concur with both of you. I have become quite frustrated at the increasing redundancy between this article and Miranda warning, but I don't practice criminal law, so I don't have the knowledge or interest in fixing this. Much thanks for volunteering to take on that challenge! --Coolcaesar (talk) 11:49, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

the article should be devoted to the decision. A separate article should be created that discusses the Miranda doctrine. --Jgard5000 (talk) 13:05, 6 July 2010 (UTC)jgard5000--Jgard5000 (talk) 13:05, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

"Defective warnings and waivers"

After scratching my head for a while, i inserted what i consider the only plausible guess as to what could make sense out of it. IANAL and i could be wrong; if so, i've proven that what was there was inadequate, and someone who knows how i erred should urgently correct my lousy version by supplementing the lousy version i found.
--Jerzy•t 02:55, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Citation from Opinion

The current article includes this citation from Miranda:

"The person in custody must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that he has the right to remain silent, and that anything he says will be used against him in the court of law; he must be clearly informed that he has the right to consult with a lawyer and to have the lawyer with him during interrogation, and that, if he is indigent, a lawyer will be appointed to represent him."

However, as far as I can tell, that passage appears nowhere in the actual Miranda opinion. It seems to be a medley of phrases from the opinion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.108.43.230 (talk) 00:55, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Wow. Good catch. Thanks for noticing that. I just traced the article history and figured out what happened. That quote has been in the article for SEVEN years, back to the creation of the article on 13 January 2003 by User:Absecon 59. The problem is that it is NOT an actual quote from the majority opinion; it's from the summary headnotes inserted at the top of the opinion by the Court's Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of practicing lawyers. But the court has repeatedly held that the headnotes themselves are not law, and one of the first things that's taught in law school is to never trust headnotes because (1) they're not the law and (2) sometimes they summarize the body of the opinion incorrectly.

I think what happened is that Absecon 59 is an architect, not a lawyer, so he or she didn't know what they were doing. Virtually all lawyers who practice criminal law are too overworked to waste time working on Wikipedia, and lawyers like me who do civil litigation don't litigate Miranda issues so we don't know the opinion well enough to catch errors like that. --Coolcaesar (talk) 05:23, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

It's in holding 1.(d) of the syllabus, except that the Wikipedia version substitutes "the court of law" for "court". (Due to User:Explodingduck, here.) I've changed it and added a basic citation. TheFeds 05:33, 18 June 2010 (UTC)