The Miranda Ruling of 1966 and Today’s SCOTUS Decision on Berghuis v. Thompkins

I hereby and explicitly invoke my right to remain a simple dino and ask Zoners what they think of the new SCOTUS 5-4 ruling to alter the Miranda v. Arizona 384 U.S. 436 (1966) ruling.





I’ve just read in a NY Times / AP article and elsewhere that in Berghuis v. Thompkins, 08-1470, the Court has sided against Van Chester Thompkins, who was convicted of murder and later had his conviction voided by a Cincinnati appeals court because they agreed that his verbal indication of remorse late in a long interrogation session came after an extended period in which he had, the argument goes, tacitly invoked his right to remain silent by not saying anything of consequence. The SCOTUS, sounding rather like the original opponents of Miranda’s appeal (the 1960’s Arizona Supreme Court, in particular, but also Richard Nixon and fellow conservatives, as I’ve read in a few scattered articles) now says you have to invoke that right explicitly.

The former understanding was that you would retain your right to stay silent unless you said otherwise, as in, “Yes, I understand the rights you’ve read to me, but sure, I’ll cooperate and talk anyway, and I’ll do it without a lawyer present.” What you were formally understood to retain implicitly you must now make explicit if you want to retain it and stop an interrogation, or else the police can question you as long as they like. That’s how I understand what I’ve read about the ruling.

What are the implications of this? Can you think of a scenario or two in which this might result in a serious weakening of Miranda, or in a miscarriage of justice involving a coerced confession? The Thompkins appeal has been made to sound almost too easy to serve as an adequate basis for a decision – there are probably more ambivalent or ambiguous hypotheticals to consider, cases in which the police abuse their authority and gather confessions by devious means.

The basic issue and question is this: Miranda v. Arizona was a big step forwards against the possibility of accused persons being forced by corrupt law enforcement agents and institutions to incriminate themselves falsely. Without what have become known as Miranda Rights, there’s always a risk of getting trapped in some Elizabethan Star-Chamber or Kafkaesque jurisprudential nightmare, wherein you’re presumed guilty from the outset and possibly coerced or bamboozled into telling your interrogators want they want to hear. So has this ruling weakened Miranda in a substantive way, one that calls this advance into doubt? Or is it more or less a clarification and an extension rather than a dilution (or worse) of the older ruling? The dissenting justices seem to think it’s the latter, but I am not yet entirely clear on the points Justice Sotomayor and others have made to that effect. Help a Dinosaur of Little Brain to understand, if you please….