But what if the confession is coerced? A confession induced with a nightstick clearly is suspect. But what about those that are the product of subtle techniques? Those confessions born of 36-hour interrogations? Or in response to lies? Are they trustworthy? Should they be used at trial?
No one foresaw that the answer to these old questions would be found in the confession of a 23-year-old man suspected of kidnapping and raping an 18-year-old girl.
The son of a Mexican immigrant, Ernesto Arturo Miranda was born in Mesa, Arizona, in 1940. His mother died when he was six; his father remarried less than a year later. Ernesto fought constantly with his stepmother and became estranged from his father.
As a student at the Queen of Peace Grammar School in Mesa he rarely attended classes and dropped out after the eighth grade. In 1954 he was arrested for his first felony, burglary. Sentenced to probation, he returned to the courthouse less than a year later to face another burglary charge; this one landed him in the Arizona State Industrial School for Boys. Just a few weeks after his release he committed his first sexual offense, attempted rape and assault.
After two more years at the Industrial School the 17-year-old attempted a fresh start in Los Angeles, where he was arrested for lack of supervision, curfew violations, peeping Tom activities, and eventually armed robbery. He served 45 days in the county detention home before being sent back to Arizona. Uneducated, broke, and alone, Miranda decided that the U.S. Army might be a way out. He spent more than a third of his year-and-a-half military career at hard labor for going AWOL and being caught in another peeping Tom act.
Read Full Article »