{"id":4419,"date":"2012-02-27T09:41:06","date_gmt":"2012-02-27T14:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/?p=4419"},"modified":"2016-11-16T20:10:58","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T01:10:58","slug":"supreme-court-narrows-miranda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/supreme-court-narrows-miranda\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Narrows Miranda"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Tuesday, the Supreme Court held that police officers do not need to read prison inmates their Miranda<\/em> rights when questioning them about events unrelated to their current incarceration.\u00a0 Justice Samuel Alito, writing for a six-justice majority, overturned the decision by the Sixth Circuit, which had held that prison inmate Randall Lee Fields\u2019 constitutional rights had been violated under Miranda v. Arizona<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The case before the court was Howes v. Fields<\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0 Fields had been incarcerated for disorderly conduct.\u00a0 While serving his sentence, he was escorted from his jail cell to a locked conference room on the premises, where he was questioned for five to seven hours by two police deputies about an event unrelated to his incarceration: engaging in sexual conduct with a 12-year-old boy.\u00a0 Fields was not read his Miranda<\/em> rights, but was told that if he did not want to cooperate he was free to leave the conference room at any time.\u00a0 He did not ask for an attorney or to go back to his cell. \u00a0Fields, however, told the officers more than once that he did not want to speak with them anymore, and at one point he became angry and started yelling.\u00a0 The officers cursed at him, telling him to sit down and that he could leave if he did not want to cooperate.\u00a0 During the questioning, Fields first denied but eventually admitted the sexual conduct allegations.<\/p>\n

When Fields was later prosecuted for criminal sexual conduct, his confession was admitted into evidence.\u00a0 After being convicted and sentenced to a ten to fifteen year prison term, Fields challenged the admissibility of the statements under Miranda<\/em>, but lost his appeal in a Michigan appellate court.\u00a0 He then sought habeas relief in federal court, which was granted on the grounds that the state court had unreasonably applied the Supreme Court\u2019s Miranda<\/em> precedents.\u00a0 The Sixth Circuit affirmed<\/a>, stating that under Miranda<\/em> and its progeny, \u201ca Miranda<\/em> warning is required whenever an incarcerated individual is isolated from the general prison population and interrogated . . . about conduct occurring outside of the prison.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There were actually two questions before the court in this case.\u00a0 The court could have restricted its holding to the first inquiry: whether Fields had successfully demonstrated that his case could properly be appealed to a federal court.\u00a0 Fields\u2019 case was in federal court through a habeas petition under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, 28 U.S.C. \u00a7 2254(d)(1)<\/strong><\/a>, under which the district court and Sixth Circuit found that the relevant requirement to granting habeas relief had been met: \u201c[did the state court proceeding result] in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established<\/em> federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States?\u201d\u00a0 The Supreme Court unanimously disagreed with the Sixth Circuit, stating that \u201cit is abundantly clear that our precedents do not clearly establish the categorical rule on which the Court of Appeals relied.\u201d Thus, all nine justices held that the federal court system did not have jurisdiction to hear Fields\u2019 appeal, because whether and how Miranda<\/em> rights applied to this case were not \u201cclearly established\u201d by Supreme Court precedent.<\/p>\n

The court could have ended its analysis here.\u00a0 In fact, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, writing for the three justices who concurred as to this first question but dissented as to the rest of Justice Alito\u2019s opinion, implied that the next question\u2014whether Miranda<\/em> warnings were required in Fields\u2019 case\u2014was not even properly before the court. \u00a0But a majority of the court decided to go further, and address the scope of Miranda<\/em>. In 1966, the Supreme Court held in Miranda <\/em>that the Fifth Amendment\u2019s privilege against self-incrimination (no person \u201cshall be compelled in any case to be a witness against himself . . .\u201d) applied to a criminal suspect subjected to custodial interrogation.\u00a0 Miranda<\/em> held that in such situations, the Fifth Amendment required that suspects be informed of their now-familiar rights: \u201ca right to remain silent, that any statement he does make may be used as evidence against him, and that he has the right to the presence of an attorney, either retained or appointed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Justice Alito\u2019s opinion concludes that Randall Fields was not \u201cin custody for Miranda<\/em> purposes\u201d at the time of questioning, and therefore that Fields was not constitutionally entitled to receive the warnings set out under Miranda<\/em>.\u00a0 Part III-A of the opinion starts off with the court\u2019s general framework for determining whether a custodial situation exists, for Miranda<\/em> purposes:<\/p>\n

As used in our Miranda<\/em> case law, \u2018custody\u2019 is a term of art that specifies circumstances that are thought generally to present a serious danger of coercion.\u00a0 In determining whether a person is in custody in this sense, the initial step is to ascertain whether, in light of \u2018the objective circumstances of the interrogation,\u2019 a \u2018reasonable person [would] have felt he or she was not at liberty to terminate the interrogation and leave.\u2019\u00a0 And in order to determine how a suspect would have \u2018gauged\u2019 his \u2018freedom of movement,\u2019 courts must examine \u2018all of the circumstances surrounding the interrogation.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The court then argues that \u201cfor at least three strong grounds,\u201d imprisonment does not necessarily create the serious threat of coercion that gives rise to the need for Miranda<\/em> warnings under the Fifth Amendment.\u00a0 First, without reference to any studies, law review articles, or even other cases, the majority asserts that \u201cquestioning a person who is already serving a prison term does not generally involve the shock that very often accompanies arrest.\u201d\u00a0 Second, Justice Alito states that a prisoner is \u201cunlikely to be lured into speaking by a longing for release\u201d from prison, as compared to a person who is not incarcerated and may feel pressure to answer questions by the hope that he or she will be allowed to leave and go home after doing so.\u00a0 Finally, the court claims that a prisoner \u201cknows that the law enforcement officers who question him probably lack the authority to affect the duration of his sentence.\u201d\u00a0 These factors, combined with the facts of the case, convinced the court that Fields was not \u201cin custody\u201d for Miranda<\/em> purposes.<\/p>\n

It is hard to view Justice Alito\u2019s opinion as anything but a rejection of Miranda<\/em>.\u00a0 Fields was in prison, questioned for five to seven hours late into the night in a secured room, and sworn at by armed state officials, who continued to question him even after his repeated insistence that he did not want to be questioned any more.\u00a0 Justice Alito admits that these facts lend \u201csome support to respondent\u2019s argument that Miranda<\/em>\u2019s custody argument was met,\u201d but then states that these circumstances were offset by others, the \u201cmost important\u201d being \u201cthe undisputed fact that [Fields] was told that he was free to end the questioning and return to his cell.\u201d\u00a0 Alito is in effect arguing that the interrogation was reasonable.\u00a0 The Miranda<\/em> case itself, however, did not frame the question as one of \u201creasonableness.\u201d\u00a0 Instead, Miranda<\/em> required that all of the components of a Miranda<\/em> warning must be given \u201cwhen an individual is taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom by the authorities in any significant way and is subjected to questioning.\u201d\u00a0 This definition seems to encompass Fields\u2019 situation; the majority\u2019s claim that Fields was not \u201cin custody\u201d is unconvincing.\u00a0 The decision can instead be seen as a shift away from the \u201cin custody\u201d inquiry, to a totality test that is distinct from Miranda<\/em>: whether all the surrounding circumstances suggest that the persons being questioned should be entitled to have their rights fully stated to them.\u00a0 One point of interest regarding future Miranda<\/em> cases is that in the last significant Supreme Court decision on the scope of such rights, Berghuis v. Thompkins<\/em><\/a>, the court also ruled in favor of the state, but the justices split 5-4.\u00a0 What has changed since?\u00a0 Justice John Paul Stevens sided with the dissenting justices in Thompkins<\/em>.\u00a0 In this case, his replacement\u2014Justice Kagan\u2014sided with the majority to make the vote 6-3.<\/p>\n

In a dissenting opinion to Dickerson v. Unites States<\/em><\/a>, decided in 2000, Justice Scalia (joined by Justice Thomas) wrote that \u201cit is simply no longer possible for the Court to conclude, even if it wanted to, that a violation of Miranda\u2019s rules is a violation of the Constitution.\u201d\u00a0 Although Howes v. Fields<\/em> goes to great lengths to show that the court\u2019s analysis falls within the Miranda<\/em> framework, Justice Alito\u2019s opinion hints that the court is moving towards the position Scalia took in Dickerson<\/em>\u2014that the scope of protection under the Fifth Amendment should be narrowed in a way that suggests that a violation of Miranda<\/em>\u2019s rules will not always be considered a violation of the Constitution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Tuesday, the Supreme Court held that police officers do not need to read prison inmates their Miranda rights when questioning them about events unrelated to their current incarceration. The prisoner in this case was questioned without being read his Miranda rights, and during questioning confessed to actions that formed the basis of a criminal sexual conduct conviction. Justice Alito\u2019s opinion concludes that the prison inmate in this case was not \u201cin custody for Miranda purposes\u201d at the time of his questioning, and therefore that Fields was not constitutionally entitled to receive the warnings set out under Miranda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":4421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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